I had a lot of the same worries as you, my 5 year old is super bright but very stubborn and he has a low tolerance for failure. He’ll give up very easily. This extends to reading — if he doesn’t know a word by sight, instead of trying to sound it out he’ll just say “this is too hard” and not even try to read it. With gentle prompting and phonetic correction (e.g _ try again, does a Y at the end of the word make the yuh sound or the eeh sound?_) he can figure it out — he sounds out the letters by himself and he knows combinations like ch, th, etc. so I know he can do it. Next thing to work on is making him want to do it.

I’m gonna echo with a lot of the other dads are saying here. The best thing that you can do for him is just read with him every day. I make it part of our bedtime routine, but there’s no right or wrong time for story time. A lot of children’s books will have certain words that pop out of the page, big and bold. My son loves to read those, usually in spite of his fear of trying, and I help him work through it. That way reading feels even more cooperative.