What the experts never told you about preventing dyslexia

Saving Jack and Jill – Learning Disabilities

What the experts never told you about preventing dyslexia

                In medicine, the Chinese focus on prevention while westerners focus on treatment. Unfortunately, we focus on learning problems much the same way. Prevention of most learning disabilities is possible and so much more effective than treatment after the fact.

I hate to admit that one of the most embarrassing times in my life was when the elementary school notified me that my 4^th-grade son needed to stay after school twice a week for remedial reading class. How could I, the early-reading and gifted-child expert, have a son who couldn’t read on grade level? He was struggling with comprehension and spelling. What a wake-up call for me! I had been too busy with my career to notice my son’s lapse.

                After a couple of months of school tutoring, he hadn’t improved much in reading comprehension, so I pulled him out of the after-school classes and fixed it at home. My son didn’t really have a learning disability; what he had was perfectionism and impatience.

He was too impatient to take the time to sound out big words, then upset if he didn’t get them right the first time. The teacher’s “help”, as is often the case, was to tell him to guess at the word based on context. What a confusing, horrible method, yet pretty universal.

                So what was the fix? I realized that too much sight-reading at school had trumped the preschool phonics lessons I had given him years ago at home.  I simply started having my son read chapter books (no pictures) out loud to me. We started with an Animorphs series book, which has a higher vocabulary.

When he came upon an unknown word, I had him take the time to break it up into smaller syllables and sound out each separately, then string them together. If he still didn’t recognize the word, we discussed its meaning. In only a couple of sessions, my son started choosing chapter books from the library and reading all by himself at home. His spelling also began to improve.

                We are still working on his writing because he doesn’t have the patience to get his ideas down on paper, easily. But he will. One thing I noticed, that the schools missed, is that my son has a disconnect somewhere in his brain between having a thought and writing it down.

He could tell me about his last-night’s dream, but he couldn’t write it down as a story for me. Something got lost in translation. The schools thought he was just lazy or stubborn. His IQ is above average, so no one realized he has a problem.

                Thank goodness for “mothers’ intuition.” I got out my Flip® video camera and taped my son while he told me about his dreams. Then we played the video on our TV. My son watched and listened to himself tell the story, sentence by sentence. I would pause the video after each sentence and have him write it down. It worked really well! I suppose a tape recorder might help, too, if no video is available.

                Recording my son and re-playing it, helped make a connection in his brain for him to get his ideas down on paper. Basically, we slowed down the thought-process for him, and bypassed the frustration of forgetting things before getting them translated through his hand onto the paper. We could re-play anything he missed. It worked well, and he began to feel successful with writing.

                Another frustration for my son was that he is a slow, tedious writer. He is a perfectionist and is too careful with forming his letters. The video allowed him to write at his pace without losing the thoughts in his head. It also kept him more focused because we could re-play parts if he was distracted.

In the past, the slow act of writing could itself be a distraction for him, then a frustration with a lost thought. In school he would often crumple up his papers and quit. Teachers assumed he was having a “bipolar moment” and missed the word-disconnect between his ears, eyes, brain, and hands. We are teaching him cursive writing to overcome this.

                What parents do now may determine if their child’s learning disability is a stumbling block or a stepping stone. My son would have never thought of a solution on his own, which is why direct-instruction from adults is so important (and why some of the “unschooling” movement’s ideas don’t sit well with me – more in Vol. 6 of It's Not Rocket Surgery!).

For a child, twenty minutes with a parent can mean more in cognitive improvement than six hours with a teacher, as shown by Hartman Rector, Jr. (Vol. 11), and others. Parents need to be involved, whether their children attend public, private, or home school.

                We will discuss the paradox of resource class later in Vol. 9 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! In short, sight-reading and public school remediation classes often destroy self-esteem without much progress. Kids don’t let each other be too smart or too stupid without teasing.

And commercial remediation such as Kumon® or Sylvan® can cost parents an arm & a leg. Why should they have to pay to fix what schools do to their children? They already paid their school taxes!

As researcher Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld says, “Dyslexia can be artificially induced in school (by sight-reading),” and “Dyslexia: the disease you get in school.”

http://thegodfreymethod.com/blog/saving-jack-and-jill-what-they-never-told-you-about-dyslexia

12 ways to give your child dyslexia

Have you fallen for some of these dysfunctional reading theories?

                Proponents of sight-reading and whole-language rely on the inaccurate theories of Frank Smith’s, Understanding Reading, as well as other misguided publications. These practices can actually cause reading problems and exacerbate dyslexia:

1. They argue that early reading is bad for children.
2. They say that reading is discovered, like language.
3. They encourage children to guess at words by initial letter, word-length, and context.
4. They consider phonics to be lower-order, sub-skills. 
5. They promote cooperative learning, where children help each other discover.
6. They use picture clues for words in isolation.
7. They use a cueing system (hints for guesses).
8. They call errors, “miscues.”
9. They believe that spelling and grammar will come by the osmosis of reading books.
10. They had to develop remedial, reading-recovery methods to try to counteract the failures of students to learn.
11. They believe that comprehension and meaning-making are of primary importance when reading a word not seen before.
12. They guess, “What would make sense here?”

                While some of these theories look good on paper, they do not work in practice. Decades of educational decline cannot be ignored! I have shown in several, previous articles why these ideas fall short.

                The early learning-window, of ages 2 to 5 years old, is so important to catch and take full advantage of before it’s gone. Introducing phonics now, the right way, prevents dyslexia and increases your child’s capacity to learn for life. My son, River, has proven the statistics wrong. He should have learning disabilities because of his birth mother’s lifestyle choices, but he doesn’t. His IQ is 116, above average, mostly because I taught him phonics early the right way. This helped him get ahead and stay on track. Dress your child’s mind for success with The Godfrey Method. Single and low-income parents can help their kids beat the odds, too.

                Young children are hungry to learn new things. Children make all kinds of learning leaps if given the right foundation. One mother taught her preschool daughter Kaitlyn the lower-case-letter phonics and words using The Godfrey Method. Then Kaitlyn taught herself which upper-case (capital) letters match the lower-case ones by playing on the computer. Her mom opened a blank word document for her to play ‘typing.’

                All the letters on a keyboard are written in upper-case letters. So as Kaitlyn pushed an upper-case key, a lower-case letter would show up on the computer screen. She quickly figured out which upper-case letters to push for the lower-case letters desired. Capitals weren’t necessary for her to learn reading at first.

                With TGM one young boy, Datan, learned to read so well that he started reading his books upside down for more challenge. His mom took that as a cue to insist that his teacher move him up in reading level at school!

                Even if you send your child to preschool, you should still use TGM at home [especially since several preschool chains teach sight-words, ugh]. A wonderful preschool teacher, Karen, started using TGM in her preschool and the picture-letters worked far beyond her expectations. She has been teaching preschool for over 20 years, now. She says this is the best program that she has used for helping the children associate and remember the sound that each letter makes. She also said that they learn faster and easier than any students ever before. She recommends that parents get this and use it with their children at home to reinforce what she teaches at preschool.

                Have you ever watched a child learn to throw a ball? He tries it a few times and his mind naturally adjusts his body to make the ball go higher, lower, further, and/or faster. Did he have to read a physics textbook to learn to throw a ball? Did he have to know the equations for initial velocity, gravity, force, angle, distance, or the trajectory of the ball? NO!!! Your child’s mind is a super-computer that makes internal learning leaps. It’s the same for reading, again: if given the right foundation.

                This is not an argument for self-discovery. The child must be instructed directly to learn well, just like s/he learns to throw better with coaching. However, this is an argument to Keep It Simple for Success. You don’t have to read a huge manual on the mechanics of reading, nor have a teaching certificate, to teach your child, either. The Godfrey Method is simple, effective, and the child never forgets.

                Reading is hearing with your eyes. Only phonics instruction wires reading on the hearing-side of your brain. Sight-reading wires it on the other side and causes a mass of confusion. One of its names is dyslexia.

Without these preventatives, the cracks in your child may be dyslexia, speech problems, resource remediation classes, being teased at school, low self-esteem, insecurity, childhood depression, low self-confidence, lack of imagination, lower IQ, slower learning capacity, and/or caught in the downward educational trend. They all may be preventable or curable. You, mom and dad, are the key. It’s not rocket surgery!

http://thegodfreymethod.com/blog/open-world-12-ways-give-your-child-dyslexia 

6 ways reading affects your child's future

Will your kids be ready for the jobs of the future?

• The jobs of the future require an education and that requires reading. 
• Reading ability affects your kid’s future and the future of our nation.
• We’re running behind as a nation in core science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
• And they all start with reading.
• We all hear reports of China and India becoming the next centers for technology and innovation.
• The old days of succeeding without reading are over.

You can turn this around for your child with early reading the right way!

• With The Godfrey Method, more children can graduate high school and go on to college. 
• We can prevent / cure dyslexia and other reading problems.

                Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, says,

          “Being near the bottom in education is a tragedy for our kids and a threat to our future.

          “To restore our prosperity and do right by our children, we need to better educate them in the basics… to prepare them to excel in the workforce.” 

Will your child excel in the technology workforce of the future?

http://thegodfreymethod.com/blog/open-world-6-ways-reading-affects-your-childs-future