Road Grader

Our son is in 1st grade and shows virtually no desire to embrace the learning process. Whenever he senses that he is about to do any form of work, whether he is at home or in school, he tenses up and withdraws, hoping to wait you out and not have to do the work.

He reads fairly well but doesn’t want to read because its boring.

He writes well but doesn’t want to write because its boring.

My wife and I try to make learning fun by playing learning games or incorporating the “learning” into every day occurences – going to the store, counting blue cars on the road, etc. Once our 1st grader realizes what you are doing, he tells us that he doesn’t want to play anymore and goes back into his shell.

Now I realize I may be sounding like Chicken Little here and I also realize that, given a choice between schoolwork and, well, anything, then anything is always going to win out!

With that said, how do we help our son get over his emotional fear of having to do school work?