[defcribed]

We don't have kids, however I have a godson and he is five.

We're concerned that he's behind with reading. As far as we can tell, he cannot read at all.

He has phonics-based 'sounding out' books from school (an expensive private one) that contain short sentences no-one would ever say in real life, obviously trying to make a sentence from a very limited array of sounds.

When we read these books with him he can sound out most of the words very slowly, i.e. saying "cuh.........ah.........tuu........." (cat) but he can't reach the conclusion without being told that cuh.... ah.... tuu equals cat. He has to be told the word after sounding it out, every time, even after doing the same word several times. I'm willing to be corrected, but I don't think what he's doing is really reading because he's not making the sounds into words. He's just reciting the sounds he's been taught at school and as far as I can tell making no connection between that and an actual word that has meaning.

Obviously methods are very different now (apparently synthetic phonics to the exclusion of all else) and my partner and I are both pretty sure we could read to a reasonable level, taught by our parents, before we went to school. In fact I distinctly remember the first reading book I was given at school and thinking it was so basic it must be intended for babies.

Looking at what else stands out, his parents do read stories to him at bed time but I wonder if the difference might be the general lack of reading in their house and how kids respond to seeing that? Though they are perfectly literate and to be honest both pretty bright, there are very few books or other reading materials in their house. I don't recall seeing an actual bookshelf with books on it anywhere. Contrast to our house where there are numerous full bookshelves and in addition to that we usually have books and other reading materials piled fairly haphazardly on most horizontal surfaces - we spend quite a lot of time reading and to be honest if you want to put your cup of tea down in our house chances are you're going to need to move a book or two. Same when I was growing up - books everywhere, as well the various bits of the Guardian (every day) spread about together with a local newspaper once a week and Dad's monthly copies of New Sci, Sci Am and Private Eye. Reading material everywhere, people constantly reading.

Does that make the difference in how interested children are in reading and how early they take to it?

And yes, he gets an awful lot of screen time. Probably far too much although his mum works hard to limit it.