Not finishing books--how do you handle it? DO you handle it?

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

My almost-eight-year-old is reading just fine, but she keeps starting books and not finishing them. I find half-read books laying all over the house, and it makes me twitchy! She does this with larger books, like the Tumtum and Nutmeg books, which I would kind of expect at this age. But she even does it with simple books like Geronimo Stiltons and Magic Treehouse books. Is this something I should address, or will it resolve itself if I just leave it alone? I'm a one-book-at-a-time kind of girl, so it's stressing me out :lol:

[Ellie]

I say leave it alone. There's nothing to address or to resolve. :-)

[Danielle1746]

I'm the same way you are--one book at a time--so it would drive me crazy too. Does she have an assigned reading time? Does she only read during that time? If she reads on her own outside of an assigned reading time, I would suggest just having her read one book from start to finish during that assigned reading time. Anything she does outside of that, she can read whatever she wants. Or if she only reads during an assigned time, then just set a reasonable goal for her to completely finish one or two books a week (or whatever is appropriate). Then she can read as many books or parts of books as she wants, but she has to completely read an entire book every so often.

[Eagle]

Maybe she just doesn't want the books to end?

 

I wouldn't worry about it as long as she is enjoying reading.

[TheBugs]

My son is the same way! Also with the magic tree house books. He starts lots of books and never finishes them. I guess he just gets bored. He also starts projects that he doesn't finish. He had grand plans to write a children's cook book, which never amounted to anything.

 

My daughter reads books from start to finish and she will reread books she really enjoys.

[mom2bee]

You are assuming that this is something that needs addressing and/or resolving.

 

Give her an assigned list of reading books for school purposes, require that she work on the assigned books, during an assigned reading time. Require that she finish the books that you assign for school within the allotted time frame. (What is reasonable will depend on your DD's abilities and schedule etc...Maybe 1 week to finish 3 basic chapter books from cover to cover.)

 

If she is reading for leisure and doesn't finish book A before starting books B-G, yet she is finishing the majority of the books that she starts and understanding them, then I say leave it be.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

You are assuming that this is something that needs addressing and/or resolving.

 

Give her an assigned list of reading books for school purposes, require that she work on the assigned books, during an assigned reading time. Require that she finish the books that you assign for school within the allotted time frame. (What is reasonable will depend on your DD's abilities and schedule etc...Maybe 1 week to finish 3 basic chapter books from cover to cover.)

 

If she is reading for leisure and doesn't finish book A before starting books B-G, yet she is finishing the majority of the books that she starts and understanding them, then I say leave it be.

 

 

Actually, she's NOT finishing the majority of books she starts. That's the problem. From what I can tell, she's starting many but finishing very few. Just yesterday I cleaned up seven books laying around the house, laying propped open. I left them all open and brought them to her, and she closed them all and put them away. I can think of two books in the past month or so that I know she finished. She's very open with me about when she hasn't finished a book.

 

I'm willing to accept that there isn't an issue, which is why I also asked "DO you handle it?" I'm just concerned because I've never seen this before. This is a child who tells me she LOVES the newest book she's reading, and she wants to get more out of the library right away! And then, she never finishes any of them. I don't know if that signifies some kind of problem or just an age-appropriate (is it?) short attention span. Then again, this is a child who defies my expectations in every way possible, so...I don't know!

[Arcadia]

My 7 year old used to do that. He says the stories get boring past a certain point. Now he is better at picking out story books that are interesting enough to him to finish. There are also books he read before bedtime and he forgot about when he woke up. I just pass those books to him and he finishes them.

[In the Rain]

Have you asked her why she doesn't finish? I'm a curious kind of person, so I ask my dd when she abandons books. She always has a reason.

[Ellie]

The only "issue" I would address is her leaving her stuff all over the house. :laugh:

[Soror]

My son does that some, I assume it is because he is not really into the book or perhaps it isn't at quite the right level. I agree w/ mom2bee if it was a big issue with not finishing school books then I would worry more and try to figure out the why. If it was due to it being too hard or too easy we'd look to find some different choices, the same if he just found it boring. I hope to pick books he likes, within certain parameters for assigned reading for his own reading that is on him, although I try to find books that are good that I think he will like.

[*Lulu*]

Sister is a huge starter of books she will never finish!

 

I find it is one five reasons:

 

The book is too hard

The book is too easy

The subject is not interesting

The writing is not good

A more engaging book shows up

 

I do as pp suggested and assign on chapter book at a time that I am confident is a stretch, but not too much of one, and have her read a set number of minutes each day until it is done. Quite frequently the book resonates with her and she reads it outside those times. I also have started assigning shorter books and articles that can be completed in one sitting. (So I can check comprehesion, etc.)

 

Even when it makes me crazy I try to give as much freedom in thier pleasure reading as possible.

[mom2bee]

Ah, well if she isn't finishing them, then maybe I'd have a talk with the child. (We'd definitely address leaving stuff all over the house!!!)

I might limit her books for a while, to see if she winds up finishing some things. (She may have too many options. How can she have 7 books to leave around?)

If she goes to the library, I would tell her she needs to get somethings that she will finish, and some things she is simply curious about.

Is there a childrens librarian who could help her find things she might be more interested in? I know how hard it is to find a good book sometimes!

 

Have her start a series of books that she can live with and ask her to finish the whole series. I recommend something short like The Faerie Realm by Emily Rodda. or The Little House Books. While she is working on the series, she can read as much or as little as she likes of other books for leisure purposes.

 

I feel sheepish to confess that I can't sit through a 30 min (24 on Netflix) show most days.

[stripe]

I find half-read books laying all over the house, and it makes me twitchy!

 

Just out of curiosity, how do you know they are half-read? Is there a bookmark in them? are they left lying down, opened? I agree that leaving books lying around would bother me more than not finishing things...My kids don't always finish their books. Often for one of two reasons: they love the book and don't want it to end OR it's so boring they don't care what happens.

 

I think it's okay to walk away from a book. I don't finish everything I read. I just got a book from the library, started reading it, and said, no, I don't want to read this big, heavy sad thing about some soldier. Just NO.

[In the Rain]

The only "issue" I would address is her leaving her stuff all over the house. :laugh:

 

:lol:

[Mom-ninja.]

Let it go. This is not a big deal.

 

She just hasn't found a book that really grabs her yet.

 

My middle ds starts many books and doesn't finish them all. I would say over half the books he starts he doesn't finish. They don't interest him enough to finish or he becomes side tracked and gets back to it much later.

 

I do the same thing and yet I do manage to finish lots of books.

[zoo_keeper]

It's also possible that she has already read the book but is rereading it again (and maybe only the interesting parts). My eldest scatters the house with books propped open to various pages. When asked, sometimes she's on the first pass through, but she does the same thing with books that she has read half a dozen times before. And discarding the book doesn't mean that she's done with it forever. She could just be done with it until after snack time, homework time, recess time, bath time, what have you. It doesn't phase me at all (expect the lack of picking up after herself and my paranoia that she's slowly ruining library book bindings).

[BugsMama]

This bothers me too! LOL.

In our house, I only require "school books" to be finished, all others he can stop reading whenever he wants. I keep thinking eventually he'll get sucked into a story and finish it on his own. Sometimes, he just gets wore out with a book, and it helps for me to read the next couple chapters out loud, and then he'll finish it.

[HSinNH]

I only insist that books assigned for school are completed. Pleasure reading outside of school is just that....for pleasure. If my DC are not enjoying a book, I do not insist they finish it, as I do not finish a book I am not enjoying.

 

On a side note, though, my DC do finish most books they read. So, I can see how this might bother you if it happens a lot. Perhaps she just has not found the type of book she loves yet, as she is still young. Just a thought.

[Five More Minutes]

To your question about whether or not to intervene, I'll give the helpful response of saying, "It depends." :001_smile:

 

Here's my unfinished book saga. When my daughter stopped completing books that she'd normally finish, I became a bit concerned. In her case, she had been reading very well and for her age had a strong ability to concentrate on a story. I looked around for what had changed, and realized that she had recently encountered an absolutely inane series of books that she was checking out of the library at an alarming rate. (You know, the type of series where every alliteratively-titled book has plastic characters involved in the exact same plot to save their two-dimensional world from the same villains.) She had started chewing through these at about the same time that I noticed that she wasn't able to finish other books.

 

It was the change in reading capacity that concerned me. My hunch was that the junk stories were subtly changing what she expected in a story: easy vocabulary, quick resolution to a plot, and a pretty main character with special powers. She wasn't finishing books because she no longer wanted to do the work of reading.

 

So we made a few adjustments that she seems to have thrived with. She was only allowed to check out a limited number of the cringe-worthy series at a time. (I think we limited her to three per library visit.) And we established assigned reading time during school, where she was expected to read something that either dh or I agreed was acceptable at that time. We made a sticker page for her with about 10 titles on it (some blank for her to be involved in the choice). When she finished a book on the page, she got a sticker, and when she finished a whole page, she got to pick out a book of her own from an amazon wishlist that I had prepared for her. FWIW, dh and I worked really hard to find challenging, engaging, exciting books to list on those pages, because we wanted to help her rediscover her delight in following a story to the end.

 

Outside of her reading time, she could read anything she wanted, including books from the Truly Awful series. And if she encountered an assigned reading book that was really, really dragging her down, we'd talk about it and let her leave it, explaining that readers don't always finish every single book.

 

I'm glad we made the adjustments that we did, because her reading is stronger again and is a real source of delight for her. She still leaves books unfinished (mostly re-reads), but that's okay now because it seems to be just part of being a reader.

 

So it depends. Are you also concerned about a decrease in reading capacity? Then maybe something more structured during school time would help her through this.

[Rivka]

My 8-year-old is a chronic non-finisher. I like to have several books going at one time myself, so I'm not overly concerned, but I did want to make sure that her automatic response to running into something confusing/difficult/slow to start/sad was not always avoidance. She is free to start, stop, abandon, and re-read as many books as she likes, but with assigned school reading she is to pick one at a time and read it until it's done.

 

I don't have a set reading period per day, though. I have an assigned reading shelf that she has to get through during the year. I just set up the third grade shelf because we promote grade levels on Memorial Day (just a weird historical artifact), and it has 15 books on it. That means that the majority of her reading will still be free choice, at whatever difficulty level she likes, and unfinished if she prefers - but at least she'll finish 15 high-quality books this year.

[FriedClams]

I'm the odd one out - I'd have her finish them. I don't think kids can love reading if they never get to the end of a story. I have a gentle kid who woud stop every time there was conflict or a broken rule. I made her keep reading to see the resolution or consequence of the rule break. It was good for her. She is a voracious reader and making her finish helped her to realize conflict is ok, and that she likes a varietyof genres.

[m0mmaBuck]

I am capable of doing this. I got 100 pages into "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and just couldn't care so I took it back to the library. Same thing with the second book in the Chaos Walking series.... I got through the 1st one and about 1/3 of the way through the second I just didn't care any more. If a book doesn't grab me within the first 100 pages, I just take it back to the library.

 

Is it possible she isn't engaged in the books enough to care if she finishes? I have forced DS to finish books because, quite honestly, he would never read anything if he wasn't forced. DD, on the other hand, will articulate why she doesn't care to finish and if I see it as a valid reason I will let her stop.

[Greenmama2]

I have a seven year old version. I struggle with it tbh, especially when she is constantly whining for me to buy new books (or loosing library books grr). I have always liked to have a number of books on the go at the same time & I remember my mother complaining about that but I know I finished most of them.

[thundersweet]

I posted something similar years ago. I have quit worrying about it. My now almost 12yo dd still does this. She loves books and loves nothing more than a trip to Barnes and Noble or the used book store. She hardly ever finishes a book as far as I know. The last books she finished was the Hunger Games Series. I have just given up. After reading this post, I have decided we are going to start utilizing the library and save some money and room!

 

Sandy