I love Wanikani and have been enjoying my slow but successful run so far. Nearing the end of level 7, however, I am encountering the same issue over and over again which is making me feel so down. I can remember all of the various readings for the kanji parts but cannot always get the right one. By way of example, I easily recognise the kanji for ‘older’ and know the reading for year to be either nen or toshi. I know ‘above’ to be either jou or ue but I can’t recall which combination to use. I often go with what sounds right but this is often wrong. For ‘older’ I tried ‘nenue’ or ‘toshijou’ which were both wrong. On the third attempt I tried ‘toshiue’…success, but a frustrating way to go about it! There is often no help from a mnemonic as Wanikani just says if you know your readings you should be ok. Has anyone any tips on how to overcome this issue.
Many thanks.
Just by sheer force of habit…!
Read, listen as much native material as you can - and eventually they will stick.
Sorry I don’t have any more useful tip but these irregular words are not things to easily learn in isolation
Thanks for your advice.
Yes, I am trying to read and I do find I know words in wanikani but then often don’t recognise them in text but when I do they stick more. Will keep on it and try not to get too frustrated. Just thought there might be a magic formula I’d overlooked! 
This is valid complaint, since this happens a lot and it can be somewhat discouraging when all you see from WaniKani is that “you should know it”. I think they have started to address this for some words but definitely not all of them, like you’re experiencing.
To be honest, if it’s a word I don’t already know and so I keep missing the answer based on the ambiguous reading possibilities, I still end up letting the SRS system take care of that on its own. All I can say is don’t let the “you should know this reading” phrasing faze you.
Yeah, you’re NOT alone in thinking this way, but what I do is create my own mnemonic in these situations when I need one to help me remember the meaning or pronunciation.
If you’re NOT doing this, give it a try! If you ARE doing this, then…oh well, keep plugging along 
As someone who is just now finishing level 10, levels 7-10 have a lot of these. And also some words with unique readings. And the meanings were pretty hard for some words too. I had to slow down a bit, and even my review rates dropped from around 95% to 80%. I read somewhere that these are extra hard levels. I am hoping it gets a bit easier soon so I can speed up again.
Embrace the SRS, you will eventually remember it without thinking, you will just know which meaning and reading is right. It’s like in english. If both “water” and “aqua” mean water, how do you know it is “watermelon” and not “aquamelon”? You just know because you saw the word so many times and only one of them sounds right.
Thanks everyone for your advice. It’s really helpful to hear a different perspective.
This might get better with paying attention to on’yomi vs kun’yomi because every time wanikani says “this is a jukugo word” it’s combining on’yomi readings, but there’s a bunch of exceptions like 年上 (though checking the page https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/年上 it does mention it’s an exception. )
This is a useful article on on’yomi and kun’yomi if you don’t understand my comment.
The good news is that I think those complicated and irregular readings (年頃, 今年, 今更, 生える, 下さい, 上手 etc…) are more common with basic kanji and vocab and as such are overrepresented early on. That’s not to say that you don’t have tricky readings even with super advanced vocab, but it happens less often. You also get better at noticing certain patterns and guess ahead of time when a word is likely to have an exceptional reading or a rendaku for instance.
It’s like this with every language: the most common constructs are also those that tend to be the most irregular because they’re used all the time and as such it’s not difficult for natives to remember all the quirks. Think of the conjugation of “to be” in English for instance.
For exceptions to the jukugo rule of “all on’yomi”, for me it’s usually enough with reading the pronunciation segment. Usually they tell you there if the word is an exception. In any case, don’t be too harsh on yourself. I don’t personally intend to perfectly memorise all 6000+ vocab words perfectly. Sometimes I need to look things up. There are many words that I will hardly or very seldom use, especially as a beginner (三日月 - crescent moon is a good example of an exception and a word that I will seldom use).
One thing that could help is that on’yomi go with on’yomi and kun’yomi with kun’yomi. Which means that both “toshijou” and “nenue” are impossible.,You could have “nenjou” or “toshiue”. Most of the time, it will be all on’yomi, but OF COURSE 年上 is an exception, and I don’t think there’s a way to know beforehand…
Sometimes you can find mixed on/kun too, but it’s not that common.
Mmm; I have 出立 in my SRS at the moment, and I have to go “no, wait, this one has a weird reading” every time at the moment…
Hm, yes, of course you’re right. And easy words too, like 場所. My bad….
So I guess we’re back to « you just have to memorize them »…
Actually I just thought of something else which might help you. There are leechfinder & practice scripts that helps reviewing the leechiest items.
The way this works is that you will not just only practice from japanese (written) to reading and meaning, but also in the other directions (so you will « hear » the word and have to spellnit and translate it for example).
It’s something I do when my leeches get too numerous and it usually works very effectively to anchor some of the words in my head. I usually do it two days in a row and that’s it!
Some Kanji occasionally use Kun’yomi in compounds. 手 very often goes kun-on / on-kun, though sometimes it also does on-on (i.e. 手).
～場 vs ～場 too.
Really, you need to learn words as words, not as a collection of kanji. When you see 年上 you should think としうえ not “kanji for year, kanji for above”, and not とし、うえ either.
This is easier said than done, but it helps if you focus on the audio - listen to it several times, repeat the sound out loud - for the word when learning it. Then, when trying to remember it「ねんじょう」or whatever will sound wrong, and that can be enough to trigger the “oh maybe this word is 訓読み / that weird irregular one” thought.