How do you help a kid stop guessing words without turning reading time into a nightly battle?
My son is in 1st grade and keeps guessing words from the first letter or the picture. Now he's starting to say reading is dumb, which worries me more than the reading level. I don't want every bedtime book to turn into a test. What helped without making him feel behind?
We separated practice from pleasure. Five minutes of phonics, then I read aloud whatever fun book he picked. If every book became work, he shut down.
Ask what kind of reading instruction he is getting. My daughter needed explicit phonics, not just more leveled books. Once the code made sense, the guessing reduced.
Joke books helped my son. He wanted to read the punchline, so he actually tried. It was not beautiful literature, but who cares.
Audiobooks in the car kept stories alive while decoding was hard. Later when reading improved, he already had the vocabulary and interest.
I would watch the confidence piece closely. We said, you are learning the code, not you are bad at reading. Small wording but it helped.