Our younger son reads better than his older brother, and the older one has noticed

maple_notebook_960324 Apr 2026

Our boys are a year apart and at the same school. The younger one, finishing class 1, has suddenly taken off with reading. Shop signs, cereal boxes, the newspaper headlines, everything. The elder, finishing class 2, reads well enough but slowly, and doesn't enjoy it. Last week the little one read out a page from his brother's storybook, and the elder shut the book and walked off. Since then he won't read aloud if his brother is in the room. We've never compared them out loud, I'm sure of that. But they compare themselves. How do you stop reading turning into a competition between siblings? ❤️

5 comments

quiet_sketch_844324 Apr 2026
Same story at ours, two girls. The younger one read early and the elder hated reading for a whole year. What helped was giving the elder something only she did: reading to her ammamma in Telugu every night. The little one couldn't, so no competition there 🙂 In a year it evened out.
umber_drum_472824 Apr 2026
Separate reading times and separate books. Never the same book for both.
moss_bookmark_278324 Apr 2026
Two daughters here, six years apart, so I can't claim the same experience. I would only say that 'reads slowly and doesn't enjoy it' in class 2 is very common and often just a stage. If it continues into class 3, it may be worth asking his teacher what she sees in class, rather than drawing conclusions from home.
willow_lantern_107924 Apr 2026
our son was the slow reader at that age and only had cousins to compare with but it still bothered him. comics fixed it. he wouldn't touch a storybook but would read the same comic twenty times. reading is reading
moss_balcony_391524 Apr 2026
Only one child here, so take this carefully. I'd wonder about making the elder the one who reads to the younger, so he's in charge of it. The risk is that the little one corrects him, which would make it worse. I don't know which way it would go with your two.