For myself and husband, we try:

1. Keep the junk food stash in high cupboards where its not accessible at all to my kids
2. Enforce strict rule of asking for permission before eating
3. Offer fruits and snacks instead for snacking
4. For junk like chocs and chips especially, we pour out the amount they are allowed to eat into small bowls (vs eating directly from the packaging where its likely they’ll eat every single last piece)
5. Talk the walk (very important as monkey see, monkey do)
6. Talk about why we cut down on junk food often (benefits, lifestyle goals, health, weight goals, etc)

It is not easy and everyday is a battle!

zac's mum\" post_id=\"2022769\" time=\"1620251693\" user_id=\"53606:[quote=\"zac's mum\" post_id=2022769 time=1620251693 user_id=53606]

glitterpen\" post_id=\"2022760\" time=\"1620229247\" user_id=\"187525:

I am facing the same problem with my boys. #1 likes to read sci-fi and non-fiction books like Nat Geo and Sci based books. He occasionally reads fiction books but his choice and interest is very limited. I tried enticing him with lots of different titles but he dislikes most of it. He loves comics and will pore over his Beyblade comics over and over again though.

This doesn't seem like a problem to me? My girl basically only reads books with unicorns or fairies in them (better still: magical unicorns!), and I'm not sure that's better. At least your boy is learning stuff from his books.

I think the “worry” for this profile of kids is that the comics consist mostly of pictures & short speech bubbles, with hardly any descriptive text. Yes, there is a storyline, but told in graphics rather than text. So the child grows up with limited expressive & descriptive vocabulary in his word bank. Same concern with the non-fiction & scientific books. Facts rather than narrative stories.

There is indeed good stuff to learn from all genres of books. Looking at the bright side, at least they are not throwing away the same amount of time on tv or iPad games. But I think the general idea is that reading narrative stories improves one’s grasp of the English language so much more.[/quote]Yes, you're right. My worry is exactly that. I don't discount the benefits of reading sci-fi and non-fiction books and the joys of comics especially the one-liner humor and illustrations. My boy can sit through hours going through his collection of comics and Nat Geo magazines. But he has always had a strong interest in animals, science, general trivia and that kinda stuff since young. And love for comics came from being introduced to cartoon series, toys, etc.

But there is nothing like fiction books to expand vocabulary and build content and flair for composition writing, hence why I keep pushing fiction books to him. It doesn't matter if its real-like fiction like people or make-believe fiction like unicorns or talking animals... fiction books will teach him dialogue-writing, sequencing, descriptive phrases, vocabulary, moral values, etc, etc.

Im still persevering in my quest to make him love reading books!

zac's mum\" post_id=\"2022630\" time=\"1620182436\" user_id=\"53606:[quote=\"zac's mum\" post_id=2022630 time=1620182436 user_id=53606]

chasingrainbows\" post_id=\"2022610\" time=\"1620177265\" user_id=\"160135:

If u happen to have a Kindle e-reader, search for Beyblade and there are some fiction books that will come up:
https://postimg.cc/QBRD5ysZ

My boy was exactly the same as you describe. He was into both Beyblade & Minecraft. I bought some hard copy Minecraft story books & he liked them. One day he searched the Kindle store for Minecraft e-books and he was hooked into the Dave the Villager series. Those are good adventure stories & the language is good. He picked up plenty of vocab from those books. His English improved by leaps & bounds after that. Not sure about the Beyblade series but u can take a look.

If he is open to bedtime stories & parent-child bonding time, u can try reading aloud to him at those times. Many of the stories (including Harry Potter series) end the chapter with a cliffhanger. He couldn’t bear to wait 24 hours till the next night for the next chapter, so he would pick up the e-book himself after school & continue reading on his own.

He devours such story books, several per day & his reading speed is faster than an adult’s now. His general English (Paper 2) is no problem as he learns all the sentence structures, grammar, contextual clues etc simply from voracious reading of such adventure books.

However, not much help for Compo (as slmkhoo has said). However, when I passed him some good model Compos and a good-phrases book to read recently, he was very keen and kept commenting: “Wow, this phrase is really good! I think I’ll use that...

Jia you! I think the trick may be to find story books that are linked to his interests.

Thank you for your recommendations! I have not started my boys on e-books as I still prefer the good old paper books but maybe I'll look into the hard copies of the titles you mention.

Yes, its tricky to find books that interest him. For a while I thought I had nailed it, but he ended up going back to his sci-fi and Nat geo books. I worry for his compo writing. :lightrod: He goes as far as reading model compositions but I keep telling him that the whole point of fiction books is to expand his creativity and vocab and build his flair for writing, especially on creative phrases and narrative writing styles. Model composition are limited in so many ways, but that'll do for now I guess.

I am facing the same problem with my boys. #1 likes to read sci-fi and non-fiction books like Nat Geo and Sci based books. He occasionally reads fiction books but his choice and interest is very limited. I tried enticing him with lots of different titles but he dislikes most of it. He loves comics and will pore over his Beyblade comics over and over again though.

Hello everyone! I’m a FTWM with two boys - a 5 year old & a 3 year old.

Currently reading up on P1 registration in preparation for my DS’s registration in 2018!