Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. So this is episode two. Thanks for sticking with us. We're gonna start our episode with the concept of the week. So, the concept of the week is our opportunity as practitioners to share some of the things that we talk about in our intervention sessions with our students. So our concept of the week is decoding. Decoding is the process of taking a written word and making meaning from that word. This means we have to recognize the symbols in our language, the letters, and map them to their sounds, which is the phoneme.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: So today's topic of discussion is how and why we explain dyslexia to our students.
A note to all parents, dyslexia is not anyone's fault. No matter what anybody says, it is not caused by not reading enough or talking enough to your kids.
For an example, our school district, when our daughter couldn't read, told us that it was because we didn't read to her.
We have been reading since she was in the belly. So it was not that she actually was tested for dyslexia, and she definitely qualified.
And that was a devastating thing for the school to tell us, because, first of all, it's incorrect. It's not based in science. And second of all, as you all know, as a parent, you're trying your best, and to have somebody tell you that you did something to harm your child, you never want to hear that.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: First of all, I just want to say I'm really sorry that that happened to you and also that you're not alone. That's an experience I've heard over and over again.
One of the things that breaks my heart about the work we do, and especially around assessments, is I get a lot of parents who feel so guilty for not catching this sooner. I. And just a side note, both Nicole and I know that everybody is on their own journey. So despite being very prevalent, dyslexia is not talked about in schools often. So no matter when the diagnosis comes, we can intervene and we can grow reading skills.
It does not matter when we catch it. We can do something about it.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yes. My daughter is 13, and she is starting to read. So you just never know when you catch it. And then you were able to get into the intervention, and it worked.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yes. So we do want to talk about. All right.
When and why to talk about dyslexia for our students. We're going to start with the why. So why do we talk about dyslexia with our students, meaning your kids.
So you, as parents, when you sit down with your kid and have this discussion. So, first of all, why? Right. Students need to know that there is a reason, there is a name for what they're going through. They need to know there's a reason they're struggling, and it is not that they are not trying.
Can't even tell you how many times I have heard a parent just be so upset that a teacher has said, this kid is not trying or they're being lazy, or if you would just do more, mom, than it would be working.
Not true.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: And our students feel they understand that they're not where their peers are, and so they start feeling that they think that they are stupid. I've had more than many, probably ten or more students who have told me that they think that they're stupid because they can't read like their peers, and that is not true.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
Over and over. Right. Humans are hard wired to compare ourselves to others because we had to for survival. So young kids especially, they're trying to figure out where they belong and how the social structure works. And so when they're feeling like their peers are reading and they are not, or they are struggling and their peers are not, that is internalized and comes out in all kinds of ways sometimes. So using that word dyslexia with your students and with your kids at home, it normalizes it. It gives them a reason, and it also just, it gives us something to build upon, and it also gives us.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: The common language to use so that when we're talking with other professionals or parents, we can all be on the same page of what we're talking about.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Over and over. I have experienced, and I know Nicole has as well, students coming to us for assessments, and they have no idea why they are there or what dyslexia is. This is not good for them emotionally.
It can cause a whole lot of anxiety, and I confidence goes down the floor.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Some parents we talk to feel like they're protecting their child by not using the word dyslexia. And other parents feel like they lack the understanding themselves in order to explain it to their student or child.
So we can definitely help with explaining with different age groups and how to do it.
But students know, students always know that there is something going on. And so even if you don't use the word dyslexia, they know something different.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Thousand percent. Thousand percent.
So we're going to get into the how. How do we talk about dyslexia at home?
We'll share a little bit about how we talk about it in the office.
And for the purposes of this episode, we are going to break it down into age groups, every student is going to be a little bit different. We understand that each child develops differently, and so you may need to adjust what you say to your child. We're going to give you some bare bones to go on and you know your kid best. So we're going to start with this young elementary school group of guys.
Often, that is when they're kind of very first having those issues, and they might be arriving at our center.
So something I might say to a young child in those early elementary school years, I'm thinking first and second grade, I might say to that student, you have a special kind of brain. Your brain might have trouble recognizing letters or sounds. You may need a little bit more time to read, and you may need somebody to teach you in a different way.
And then I'm gonna leave it be for a minute.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you bring out that the brain may be really good at other things, like art, music, building, or sports.
A lot of our students come, and they are very highly academic in other areas, or they are really good at art, music, or sports. So they have some really great strengths that will help them throughout their lifespan.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Some things to keep in mind when we're talking about this age group. Those of us who are raising kids in this age group will know this very well.
Things to keep in, keep it short and simple. Use the small words here. Talk about the brain. Talk about it being special and different.
Answer only the questions they ask. I can't tell you how many times this is advice talking to me. Right.
My son especially likes to ask these. They seem like really, really big questions, and I kind of launch into this long winded scientific answer, and he looks at me like, okay, I just asked, like, if it was green, not the whole thing, man. It's too much. It's too much.
They probably don't have the attention span to handle a long conversation. They're also not experiencing it the same emotionally as you are when they come to us with these questions. It's so hard as a mom to not attach our own emotions to it. They are for sure having emotions, but they're not the same as your emotions around it.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Everybody processes things differently in a different timeframes, and so you might be at one point, and your student may be in a completely different point, and just being aware of that really help you navigate going forward.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. For sure.
All right, we want to talk, then about the older elementary school kids. So depending on your student, depending on their maturity level, this may be your third graders up through your 6th and 7th graders, roughly.
For those kids, I'm going to add a little bit more detail here. I'm going to tell them your brain works a little bit differently than other brains. You may struggle in reading or writing, and things may take you longer to master.
You may need extra time or more instruction. You may need accommodations, which means assignments may look a little different for you. You will need to learn to ask for help when you need assignments changed for you.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: And again, we definitely want to talk about them with them, about their strengths, talk about things that they're really good at, and use those things to help them build their reading and writing skills.
Bring a sports book with you, and then have them write about sports. So bringing their strong interests in something that's a little bit harder to do will at least make them more engaged in that activity.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah, thousand percent. I use a lot of analogies with this age group.
I have a student, a young lady who is a dancer, and we talk about, okay, when you're learning a new dance, you're not learning it at full speed.
You're learning it at half speed or slower. You're learning it one chunk at a time. Students of this age group, really, they really can grasp an analogy, and they like things related to things that they are interested in, some general things with this age group.
One, I love this age group. These are just, these are just really fun years. They're starting to super come into their own.
They're a lot. They're a joy to work with.
I've definitely expanded my work with this age group since coming to work here. As a former high school teacher who, I love a teenager, I love them.
They're all the fun.
But this age group I have really found so joyful to be around.
These students may ask more questions. They're starting to get very curious about the way they work.
Be prepared for these students to have big emotions. I think sometimes we associate those big emotions with our littlestead students, and often, if we're using the word dyslexia with those guys, they're kind of like, all right, what's for dinner?
Sounds good.
You know, the other thing is sometimes these students appear to really understand something when they don't.
I see this most often with our young girls in this age group. A lot of times they're aiming to please, you know, and they kind of have this, oh, sure, I really understand this topic, and they often don't. So be prepared to have this conversation more than one time, just like any big conversation. We ever have with our kids.
It's.
It's kind of astounding to me. And this is another place I fell down as a mom. I don't know about you, but sometimes I kind of look at my kids and like, but we already talked about this.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Why are we talking about this again?
[00:14:05] Speaker A: We're talking about this again because they need to hear it again. And.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Or maybe they're processing it and days later they ask you a question.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: And you're like, wait a minute, I thought we covered that. And then all of a sudden you're like, okay, step back, redo this and start over. 1000%.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
Okay. So moving on to our older middle school and high school students. I have a real heart for this age group. This is where I started my career.
I love a teenager. I think they are going through so much, and often this is an age group that gets no credit for what they are doing. So shout out to anybody raising a teenager. Good for you, and please enjoy them.
I would go into a lot more detail with this age group. They really need to know about themselves, and they're craving knowing about themselves at this age. I would talk about. I would say your brain is wired differently than a lot of other people's brains. In order to read and write, we all need to use many different parts of our brains. Your brain has difficulty taking information it needs from one area to another. This means that you probably struggle to make meaning from words in print. This is also why you probably struggle to put words on paper.
These are skills that can be strengthened with a lot of practice and hard work.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: The other thing with this group to talk about too is talking about the other things that can make it easier to be successful at school, like accommodations and modifications and what would work best for the student.
Because at that age, they need to start advocating for themselves and helping that process and knowing when to ask for their accommodation or their modification.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah, 1000%. You know this group often, right? We just expect them to ask for what they need when they need it. And often we fail to do the teaching piece of, hey, these are the options for you. We will get into the specifics of accommodations and modifications in a different episode, but they need to be involved in this discussion at this point.
They need to try different accommodations that can be a struggle with these group of kids. They often are resistant to doing anything that is going to make them look different from the group. Right. The name of the game is fit in and survive.
And they are often pretty resistant to things that make them feel alone. And so I also do like to reinforce that you are not alone in having dyslexia. There are many strong examples of people who have dyslexia and are extremely successful.
You are not defined by your dyslexia, and it doesn't have to be the most interesting thing about you.
That is definitely a discussion I've had a lot over the years. I would also really try to get them on the idea that, like, we are a team and we can work together on how to talk about your dyslexia, how to talk about what you need and how you need to get that in, what you want to share.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Your peers, your teachers.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. You know, they don't have to if they don't want to.
General things about this age group. This age group is highly concerned with their identity.
They are trying to figure out who they are and how they fit in, where they fit in, where they don't. Am I a choir kid? Am I a band kid? Am I. I mean, who.
They have big opinions about who is in and who is out.
You know, the other thing is they are not adults yet, but they are looking for opportunities to be autonomous. They are looking for opportunities to stretch their legs and practice that independence.
And they need some grace. They need some chances to not be successful at that sometimes. That is truly how they're going to learn best.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: They're the age group where they're going to transition to adulthood, and you want them to have some life skills that can help them through. If they're going to do a trade or go to a post secondary school or get a job, that's kind of the time when they need to start learning those things, especially for advocacy for themselves, because they're going to have to go out by themselves to their boss and tell them, yep, I need help with this for that.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think I am not there yet as a mom, but this is a time that I am already thinking a lot about.
You know, I think that that parent role switches from managing your kid and managing all the things that they have to do and getting them where they need to go and all the things to kind of being a consultant. Right. If we're doing our jobs right as moms, boy, I hope so. It's hard.
We want our kids coming to us, and we want them asking us those questions.
Sometimes these teenagers, they look like they're not listening when they really, really are. And the opposite is also true.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: And still, again, this is not one and done conversations. You're probably going to have to break them up over several times or go back to it, revisit it, because everybody processes information at different rates, and sometimes you might just miss a piece or need it repeated to understand it. And so just know that that is going to happen with all these conversations.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
I'm going to call an audible here, Nicole, we don't have this in our outline.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So Nicole's kids are older than my kids, so you've got a couple years on me. You have three kids. I have two, and mine are younger than yours.
You also have two students with dyslexia. Two children with dyslexia. So I'm wondering if you feel comfortable sharing one, maybe uncomfortable conversation that you've had to have with one of your kids on this subject.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, with both of them, it was really hard to get them to start with the intervention. They thought they didn't really need it, obviously.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: That jen, they would just magically start reading on their own. I don't know.
And I just remember them yelling, why do I have to do this on a Saturday? I don't want to do this on a Saturday.
But as it got easier and as they did the intervention, they started to enjoy it, and now they asked to come, so I. They're, they're younger, so they were more in the middle elementary school ages. So we did talk about the changes of the brain, and we did talk about that. They're just not processing the letters and the sounds the same way as other students. And my oldest, she was like, uh, whatever. She's kind of like that.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: I can see that.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
And my youngest, he is so social and outgoing. He was just like, okay, that's great. I get to go see another adult, and I get to talk, talk to them. So, yeah, I can also see that. Yeah, our kids are very social and love attention, so that's a good thing for intervention because they're one on one with an interventionist, and they get to talk to them, and they get that attention for 50 minutes at a time, and they love it, so.
But, yes, it's hard to know how much to tell them.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: And still they will ask questions like, I can read now, you kid a little bit. You're not all the way there. You're not independent. You're not able to just pick up any book and read it yet. So it's different levels.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm even experiencing that at home, too. I have two kids. His son is six, and he's just really learning how to read in earnest. He does not dyslex. He does not have dyslexia. So a typically developing reader, he too, right? He is trying to attack the big words, and he, as a practitioner, I know too much. So I'm starting to see him doing those guessing behaviors.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Oh, no. Oh, no. Miss Sidebar, I'm not good at reading with my own kid. So here we are.
I read to them a lot, but reading with them I find frustrating, so.
All right, well, thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry I called a curveball.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: That's why we're here, right? Yeah.
So really, for all age groups, some advice would be to read and connect with your children. Find books that you both enjoy reading to your student or child or listening to a book. This really increases vocabulary. And the more vocabulary you have, the more words you have, which increases your fluency rate later.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if they can recognize a word from an auditory perspective, they're more likely to be able to attack that word.
Yeah, for sure.
I'm also a really big fan of audiobooks or educational podcasts. We pop those on in the car or at home. It's a good alternative to having that, I don't know, quote unquote screen time.
The dreaded screen time.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: And just remember to talk about their strengths, too. Talk about the things that they are struggling with. With you. The more they talk to you now, the more when they're a teenager and things might be their peers might have more influence, you're going to have more of that relationship to be able to help them navigate those sticky situations when they get to be teenagers.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
Talking about reading and writing as a skill that can develop and get stronger over time. I really can't emphasize this one enough.
I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with again. Right. Going back to my early days with my juniors and seniors in high schools who are breaking down and saying, I'm just a terrible reader and I'm never going to be good at reading.
I'm not going to go into a career where I have to write because I just can't write. And just having that fixed mindset where this is something, I'm terrible at it and I'm never going to improve.
I still, my heart kind of breaks and I go back to how I didn't. I think as a first and second year teacher, maybe handle that the best way, trying to remind them that it's a skill and it can get stronger over time just like any other skill. And it's okay if you're not perfect at it. I'm not perfect at it either. And I do this for a living.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: And it's okay to say, I don't know. When somebody asks you something, sometimes my students will ask me a question about some rule, and it's something that I never even considered before.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: And then I have to go look it up and bring it back to them because I'm like, I don't know that answer.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: And very interesting question. I mean, my students love that. They love. And I'm like, I don't know. We're gonna go figure it out together, though. Here we go.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: And really choose your homework battles when you're gonna have them and not.
Our house can get very.
There's a lot of big emotion in our house, and it's a lot over the homework and how hard it is and knowing when to push and when not to push.
It's really hard.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: That's a really tough thing.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Same. I think early as a mom, the advice that was given to me is, like, always choose that connection with your kid because, as you said earlier. Right. Building those connections. Boy, I hope this is true. As still a young kid mom, building those connections. Now.
I sure want them coming to me with the hard stuff when they're older. So, you know, beating them over the head with something, it's often just not the way.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, if it's that hard, you should maybe advocate or have the student advocate to the teacher. What can we do to make this better?
[00:29:19] Speaker A: How do we solve this?
[00:29:20] Speaker B: It should not be that bad, right?
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah. How do we solve this? There's always that plan.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Circumental.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: All right, well, we like to end our show by talking about what's going on in our lives.
You know, we're real people doing real things, so we like to talk about what's going outside of dyslexia. So what are we doing in our personal lives, our life right now? It is, as we're recording this, it is September, and school just started. So our life right now is just adjusting to new school year. This is the first school year that I've had two kids in school. This has been a bit of a learning curve for me as a mom. They are both extremely excited about being in school, especially my daughter. She is obsessed. She comes home and tells me every night what her teacher wore to school that day.
I can see her teacher, and I'm loving.
I'm loving watching them be so excited. And also the downside of them coming home exhausted and the big emotions happening in the house right now are real.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
We also just started school.
Out of my three children, two, like I said, have the diagnosis of dyslexia, and all three of my children have a diagnosis of ADHD, which we will be talking in a later episode about codiagnoses and how they impact students learning. So getting back into the routine is always struggle at the beginning of the year because every year there's new teachers and new ways of doing things and having to kind of negotiate through all that has been a little bit of a fun time.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yay, September.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: So thank you for joining us today, and please follow us on social media.
And if you like our podcast, please.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Please like it on.
I don't know, I'm fumbling for words here. Please follow our show on whatever podcast player that you're using and please give us a rating that is part of how this podcast gets pushed out so that we can gain more listeners and help more families. So thank you.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Thank you.
