Dyslexia in Boys: Early Signs, School Support & What Parents Can Do

Many boys who struggle to read aren’t lazy or unmotivated — their brains are wired differently.

In this episode of Mothers of Boys Survival Guide, Suzy Shaw talks with dyslexia expert Russell Van Brocklen about the early signs of dyslexia in boys, why it’s often missed in school, and practical ways parents can support their child at home and advocate for the right accommodations.

If you’ve been told to “wait and see,” this conversation offers clarity, hope, and real strategies you can use now.

👉 Watch, share, and subscribe for more support for boy moms.

Episode Transcript

Dyslexia in Boys (00:00):
Early Signs,  School Support & What Parents Can Do
Hi everyone, I'm Suzy Shaw, author of the Mothers of Boys Survival Guide, and here to
support the MOB, Mothers of Boys, as we navigate the wild, wonderful world of raising sons. Today,
we're taking a deeper dive into a topic so many of you have written to me about,

(00:24):
which is boys who struggle to read.A few weeks ago we shared an episode called
Raising Readers, Encouraging Boys Who Struggle to Read, and the response was huge. We also shared a
companion resource page, Tips to Encourage Boys to Read. You can find both on the MOB website, which

(00:44):
is mothersofboys.life. It's packed with simple, doable strategies you can start using right away.
Today, we're zooming in on one of the biggest reading challenges boys face,
which is dyslexia. Dyslexia touches as many as 15 to 20% of all learners, yet so many

(01:06):
parents are still left confused, overwhelmed, or blamed for their child's reading struggles.
My guest is Russell Van Brocklen, founder of dyslexiaclasses.com, who has spent decades
helping kids and families finally understand what's going on in that incredibly differently

(01:29):
wired brain. Welcome, Russell.Thanks for having me.
So, how is dyslexia distinguished from other learning disabilities? And for moms who
are listening and who suspect something, what are the earliest signs of dyslexia?
Well, for boys, it's much easier than girls, because boys act out. So typically, really,

(01:54):
what it is is there's a book called Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz. I use the second
edition. Parents are going to want to get a copy of that. Again, it's Overcoming Dyslexia
by Dr. Sally Shaywitz. I use the second edition.If you go to page 78, figure 23, page 78, figure
23, it shows you exactly what's going on. The back part of my brain has almost zero neuroactivity.

(02:20):
The back part of a typical brain is massive. The front part of my brain is two and a half times
overactive. So I shift things from the back part of the brain to the front part of the brain. And
I'll tell you briefly later how we do that, but generally, how do you tell if your kid's dyslexic?
If they're old enough, find out what their speciality is, their area of

(02:42):
extreme interest and ability, and ask them this question: In your speciality, do you have ideas
flying around your head at light speed? Key question, but with little to no organization.
If they're ADD, ADHD, or dyslexic, they're going to answer yes. The
treatment is the same for all three.You know, digging a little bit more into

(03:05):
understanding the brain, right, what is unique about dyslexia? And is it often compounded with
autism or other sorts of learning disabilities?There is some connection with autism. It's very

(03:26):
much more connected with ADHD and ADD. And what you will find is there's a pattern,
and I'm just going to give you the pattern of very successful dyslectics.
So what happens is kindergarten through college, we're not good. Once we walk into grad school,
day one, we own the place. We're at the top of our class immediately, or soon thereafter.

(03:48):
Let me give you an example. One of my clients, I'm just going to call him John, he's 13,
he absolutely loves chemistry. His favorite video, he said, “oh, this is made for kids
like my age.” It's about how to take, not joking, how to take paint thinner
and turn it into cherry soda. He's fascinated by it. Well, I looked it up. It's for advanced
college kids. He's 13. He thinks it's for him.Okay. So what's going on is K through college,

(04:15):
do you remember going through all your education? They would start off at the big picture and then
eventually get to the details, and they try to make you well-rounded before you specialize.
Make sense?Yep.
Let me just give you an example, the model that I created. Number one, you have to work with
a kid in their specialty. Just so your listeners understand, I'm giving you an example of Kimberly,

(04:39):
who I started working with last December 27th. She's a homeschooling mom. She spent 700 bucks
to have the state of Ohio test her kids. Reed, at the time I spoke to him, two weeks before,
he was evaluated reading at the 11th percentile, writing at the 4th percentile. Six months later,

(05:00):
she followed this process an hour and a half a week. He was reading at the 65th
percentile and writing at the 64th percentile. His friends wanted him in public school for
social reasons. He's now in public school, mainstreamed in everything, A's and B's.
Wow.She solved this in six months. What is the
model? Number one, you have to focus on the kid's specialty. The exact opposite of what the school's

(05:26):
doing. The school is not trying to be hard on these kids, but 80+ percent of their population is
not neurodiverse. If you go to a typical kid, and if they do two things, if they plan properly and
then work really hard, they're going to do very well. If they don't, they don't do well. It really
comes down to those two variables, generally.But with dyslectics, the school wants to make

(05:49):
us well-rounded. We want to specialize. To give you an example of how powerful that is,
there's a book that I use a lot. Her name is Casey, the most successful kid I ever worked
with. This was the book I assigned her. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,
all 900 pages. She was 10 years old, second-grade reading level, and I gave her a very simple

(06:13):
process to read. She locked herself in her room for two to three hours a night for six months.
But she did that of her own accord?Her own volition. Mom had no
idea. That's just Casey.Yeah, passion for the topic.
Yeah, but I never saw this before. I'll never see this again. But just
to give you an example about the motivation.So she goes through that, and six months later,

(06:38):
she's reading at the 10th grade level. Eight grade levels in six months, I worked with her
for 15 minutes a week. This was all Casey.Why am I spending so much time on this?
Because then her mom wanted to know, did this transfer over? I gave her my most popular book,
Walt Disney's Triumph of the American Imagination. Why? Because kids go to

(07:01):
Disney, they want to know about the Disney magic. It's two universal themes in there.
Normally, it takes two to three years. Casey did it in three months. I asked her later,
her mom's there because I knew she'd get a kick out of this. I said, “Casey,
what did you think of that book?” “I hated it.” Mom's having a good laugh over this, but

(07:21):
here's the key. Casey did then go and literally destroyed the book because she hated it so much.
Key point. I asked the most motivated kid I ever worked with, how much did your motivation
drop from the Theodore Roosevelt books you like? She said 50%. Further research found the typical
drop outside of the speciality is 75- 80%. You're starting off outside the speciality,

(07:45):
you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot during the intervention period.
Next thing, you have to ask, you can't ask a dyslexic student while they're years behind,
a general to a specific question. If you ask them, what effect did Martin Luther King's
I Have a Dream speech have on the 1960 Civil Rights Movement? It's like asking us to grab

(08:08):
fog. There's nothing to grab onto. If you ask them a specific to a general question,
“What personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech?” Then we can find
the answer. That answer gives us a question, gives us an answer. It forces the brain to organize
itself by using writing as a measurable output.If you ask your dyslectic child in your specialty,

(08:34):
do you have ideas flying around your head with little to no organization? They're going to say,
yes. We force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.
The third thing is, we use the front part of the brain, which is word analysis followed
by articulation. That's the model. You use that and you get those huge
increases like Kimberly got with her son.So, what do you think is the biggest

(08:58):
misconception that you hear from moms and parents about dyslexia?
Well, it's the first two things I mentioned to that model, that these kids are academic
specialists. That's number one. Number two, during the intervention period,
until they're at grade level, you really have to focus on their specialty. I get them a book and an

(09:18):
audiobook in something that they like. Then you have to teach from the specific to the general.
Then what really confuses them is how do we move to word analysis followed by articulation
to move things back from nothing's going on to where they have two and a half times the
neural activity. Would you like me to show you what that process looks like?

(09:39):
Absolutely. Yes.Okay. The number one
thing parents come to me is, my son is writing a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words. Nobody
has any clue how to fix this. We're going to focus on the front part of the brain.
The first thing we do is, do you know any elementary school dyslexic boys ever?

(10:03):
Oh, sure. We've done other podcasts on similar issues in elementary school, but they don't sit
still. They're not interested. They would prefer to be outside doing something else.
Right. Here, I'm going to tell you how to fix all that. Yeah. I need you to tell me a boy,
change his name for his protection. Tell me his made up name, how old is he, and

(10:27):
just generally a little bit about him.Let's call him John. John is a quiet boy
and a pure space cadet, if he is not interested in what's going on in school, but gets totally
overlooked by the teachers because he's not acting out in school. He's not a behavior problem,

(10:53):
but he can't get his work done in the morning.What is his age, and what grade is he in,
and how far behind is he in reading and writing?I will say he is in third grade, and also doesn't
quite have the hand-eye coordination, the hand coordination to hold a pencil correctly, and is

(11:21):
behind in reading and does everything else slowly.Okay. First thing I'm going to tell you is going
forward, he doesn't use pencils, no iPads, no iPhone. He types on a laptop with a real
keyboard. That's a big mistake people think, and teachers say, well, the kid needs to

(11:42):
know how to write. I said, really? Here's what I found out doing this for 25 years.
When I gave the very best student my original program, he scored in the 70th percentile. I said,
here's a simpler prompt, but you're going to hand write. The grade came back between the
6th and the 30th percentile because he stopped typing and went to handwriting.

(12:03):
Why? Writing the letter W compared to just hitting a key takes up so much of our limited working
memory that the whole thing goes off the rails.I can relate to that because I became much
better when computers were invented. To me, it's almost like playing an instrument, right? It's an

(12:24):
interactive thing, like maybe playing the piano or the guitar, instead of the looping letters…
that they don't even teach cursive anymore.The key thing is you type on a computer with
a real laptop, a real keyboard. iPads and iPhones don't work on the screen.

(12:44):
What we do is we tell John, you're going to list 10 things that he really, really likes and then
10 things that he really, really hates. Then what you're going to do is we're going to go up here,

the parent is going to type out (12:57):
HERO + WHAT  ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Then John's going to copy
that. That's okay. Professor James Collins, strategies for struggling writers- default
writing strategy of copying. He's going to copy it. Then we're going to swap out HERO for John.

(13:17):
JOHN + WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Then we're going to swap out WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT
for the first thing on the list that he really likes. For John, what is the thing,
what is his specialty, what does he really love to do outside of school? Just his favorite thing.
Legos.Legos. That's
Legos. We have JOHN + WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? We swap out “what are we talking about” for Legos:

(13:42):
JOHN + LEGOS? See how we got there?Yep. Got it.
Now, I'm going to try to fool you by asking you the simplest questions ever. If you answer them
correctly, this works. If it doesn't, it's not going to work. Do you think I'll be able
to fool you?Probably.

(14:04):
Okay. All right, so here's the question. What we have to do is we have to swap out that + for a
word, John + Legos. We have to swap out the plus sign for a word. Here's my question. Does John
like or dislike Legos?He likes Legos.
Okay. But that's not what I asked.You said, does he like or dislike Legos?

(14:31):
Yes, that's exactly. And then you didn't do what I asked. Do you see your mistake?
Because I was supposed to swap out the plus sign for ... No, I don't ... You've totally lost me.
Okay. Are you totally confused now?I am.
Are you ready to have your epiphany on dyslexia?Go for it.

(14:53):
Okay. I asked, “Does John like or dislike Legos?” As an educated person, when you added the like,
you automatically corrected it to likes to make it grammatically correct. John's
dyslexic. He doesn't know how to do that. He doesn't know how to add the S.

(15:14):
Okay.To get him to add the S. Let's say I
want you to imagine you were John's mother.Okay.
You had $10 million in the bank and a private school came to you and said, we've been doing
this for 50 years. We can absolutely guarantee you with a 98% level of certainty, we will show
him how to do this in the best possible way. We're $75,000 a year, are you going to pay it?

(15:43):
That's a lot of money and probably not.You have 10 million in the bank.
Okay. I am.Okay. Well,
most of us don't have “house money” because it's four to five years. Because what they're
going to use is an Orton Gillingham structured language, multi-sensory approach. They're going
to do hearing, seeing, touching. It will take you two years to become certified and $11,000. That's

(16:06):
what the best traditional method is. That's what Bill Gates would do with his grandkids.
How do we not do that? I'm going to use modern neuroscience. I'm going to take from the back part
of his brain and we're going to move it to the front part. Now we're going to do word analysis.
What we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and have John write out. Okay. It's very simple.

(16:31):
We ask, John, do you like or dislike Legos? He's going to say like. Then I'm going to say, John,
read what you wrote out loud. Does that sound generally correct? He's going to say no. I'm going
to say, John, fix it. John likes Legos until it sounds generally correct. Do you see how like and

(16:52):
dislike is a simple form of word analysis?Mm-hmm. I do.
We're going to do that with 10 likes and 10 dislikes until he can get that done
correctly. Then we're going to go because reason one. Can you see how the reasons
are a simple form of articulation? Give me a simple reason why John likes Legos.

(17:13):
Because he likes building things.JOHN LIKES LEGOS BECAUSE HE LIKES
BUILDING THINGS. Do you see when you say John, he likes Legos because he likes building things. You
see that reason is a form of articulation.Right.
We're moving from the back part of the brain where he has nothing going on essentially to the front
part that's two and a half times overactive. We're giving him a process to organize it because his

(17:40):
thinking is scattered all over the place.We're talking about things that are very
personal to him so he has his attention. That's the model. He goes ahead and he writes that
out. Do you see now how we have a bunch of probably a whole bunch of misspelled words?
Here's how we fix that. First thing we do is we tell John to drop a period, then we tell John

(18:03):
to read what he wrote out loud. Forget about the spelling. Does it sound generally correct? If it
doesn't, fix it until it does. We're getting rid of that nasty stuff, that nasty grammar errors.
The simple to medium ones, the teachers can deal with that. We're trying to get it to the point
where the teachers can actually start working with him, his gen ed teacher. He does that.

(18:26):
Then every time there's a misspelled word, he has to retype until it's perfect spelling wise.
You're going to do that about 3 to 13 times. As he does this, he's going to tell himself,
I'm not going to make that mistake again. He keeps doing it. The more he makes the mistake,
the more he concentrates, hyper concentrates, and that's where the magic happens. Around 9 to 13

(18:50):
times, you can sometimes start seeing sweat coming down his forehead. That's how intense this gets.
Once he finally gets it right, then you move on to the next one. All the way until all 20,
10 likes, 10 dislikes, are spelled perfectly. Then you go on to reason one and reason two.
Everything perfect, reason one, reason two, and reason three. Once he's done,

(19:14):
the reading and writing has been increased to the end of second, beginning third grade level.
How long does this take? Here's what my stuff is the opposite. With Orton Gillingham,
the older the kid is, the longer it takes as they have to go back relearn for John,
kindergarten through second grade, plus all the stuff he's supposed to be learning now.
With my material, the older he is, the quicker he will pick it up. A fifth-grade student will take

(19:38):
between two to six weeks. If you're doing 15-minute session classes, five, six days
a week. If you're doing it, if you're a third grader, it's going to take the semester, okay?
Okay. But moms can do this at home, not dropping 75 grand a year.
Right. Okay. Let's just break this down a little bit into working with the school system. One of

(20:05):
the things that you have said is that typing is easier for dyslexia and dyslexics than
handwriting. That sounds like a 504 plan. You've got to make some sort of accommodation or deal
with the school to let your child bring a computer into the school so that you can use that keypad.

(20:33):
Is that how that rolls out?Yes.
I mean, how do you work with the school, really, to make it all successful?
To be honest with you, I've had some very progressive principals that are very open to this,
that literally tell their staff this is how it's going to be. I've had other parents literally,
I would say there's a company called Prepaid Legal that can help you with this,

(20:56):
and they literally threaten a lawsuit and it goes to the school board, and then they bow to it.
From a practical thing, you don't want to send your kid there with an Apple laptop. Most of
the time, it's a Samsung Chromebook using Google Docs. No internet, it doesn't work,

(21:18):
but most schools have internet. Why? Because it's cheap. It's a couple hundred bucks in
case it gets broken or stolen, or when it gets broken or stolen. That's just something
parents are going to have to figure out.What that does, or some kids, because
they're so small, is they will take an iPad or a Samsung thing and they'll put on an attached

(21:38):
keyboard. If it's a real keyboard, that's fine because they have such little hands. That works
as well. It just makes things so much easier.You take these kids, you put a pen in their hand,
literally, the whole system collapsed because we just
don't have the working memory to deal with it.Okay. Let's just talk about, you've given us some

(22:02):
great sort of case studies of how this works. It seems as though multi-sensory learning and passion
would be very, very big components in this. I love that you said to find a book or some sort of print

(22:26):
material that the child is incredibly into, and then encourage them to sort of break that down.
Can you explain just a little bit more concisely why this is so effective for dyslexic learners?
You're asking your dyslexic kid to go into school focusing on the back part of the brain, where we

(22:50):
just have next to nothing going on. His classmates are going crazy with that. It is literally, it's
like asking a clumsy kid to become a basketball star. It just doesn't work. What we need to do to
modify things just until they're at grade level.Remember Reed's doing fine. He fights, he pouts,

(23:11):
he complains a bit. His parents and the teachers are walls. He has to adapt to their way of doing
things, and he can once you're done with this, and he's doing that. What you have
to do during the intervention period is you absolutely have to find the kid's passion.
Right.Then as you
focus on teaching them from the specific to the general, and then that word analysis followed by

(23:34):
articulation. There's simple ways that we show parents how to do this. The acceleration is
incredible. In Kimberly's case, again, she spent less than half a time per week a public school
would spend with Reed on English, all right? She taught him literally over seven times faster,

(23:55):
not double, not triple, over seven times faster.You have a lot of information on your website,
dyslexiaclasses.com. Can you tell us a little bit about what is on your website and other
places? You've mentioned some books already, but where parents can go for

(24:16):
reliable resources and information on dyslexia?Yeah. Generally, as I said, the book you want to
just ... not how you fix dyslexia, I disagree with them on that because I'm a front brain person,
they're a back brain person, but just so you know what dyslexia is, it's Overcoming Dyslexia by
Sally Shaywitz, second edition. She's from Yale.Then what I do, if you're interested, is just go

(24:39):
to my website, dyslexiaclasses.com with an S, plural, dyslexiaclasses.com with an S. Then
there's a button there that says download free guide. Just click on that, then all you have to do
is to fill out the three questions, you're going to get a document, the three reasons your child's
having trouble in school due to dyslexia. Then if you want to actually get value about what I do,

(25:02):
you actually have to set up a time to speak with me and you and your child. It's free,
it's a half an hour, it doesn't cost anything. Then I tell you what their specialty is and I
find their book and their audio book. This is the hardest thing of part of the process and
I find it's just better if I do it myself with your child. I ask them a couple of questions,
they're normally like, yeah, that's me. How did you know? I said, oh, I went through what you're

(25:25):
going through, but my dyslexia is worse. When I was in college, it was a first grade reading and
writing level and then we talked about that for a bit. Then I asked parents if you would like me
to show you to do what I did with Kimberly.You work at your own pace, you get ... They
said she did it in six months. Some kids are faster, some are slower, older kids are quicker;

(25:46):
typically, younger kids take a lot more time because they're younger. You can solve this at
home without the need for a 75K school, and if you want to go the entire route,
we literally show parents how to bring their kids to college, senior, first-year graduate level,
while they're still in high school. Why is this important? I was on a podcast with a

(26:09):
college professor, and they all tell me the same thing. They want the students to know
the craft of research before they go to college, and none of them do, and it drives them insane.
Russell, I know there are a lot of famous people who have dyslexia. Can you just mention some of

(26:31):
them so that moms understand that their son might be in very, very good company?
Steven Spielberg is confirmed dyslexic. Half the sharks on Shark Tank are dyslectic: Mr. Wonderful,
Damian, and Barbara. Half! There are a lot of other famous dyslectics. We don't know if Walt

(26:52):
Disney himself was dyslexic. He's strongly suspected to be. There's one quote that he
gave in, I think it was 1963, and this is his quote. He said, ”it's fun doing the impossible.”
Doing it all is life. When your dyslexic child goes to college, goes on to graduate school,

(27:14):
here's a little hint. When they go into a grad program, we own the place day one or soon
thereafter. The original idea that we've been working on for our entire lives, just solving
things in that specific area, that's the currency of the realm and it is such a huge advantage.

(27:34):
Russell, we ask all of our guests to share a guiding sort of motto or
thought with our moms. Is the Walt Disney quote, is that the one you would suggest?
I would say for your kid, they think that it's impossible. It's fun doing the impossible,

(27:55):
doing things you're not supposed to do.People are under the misimpression that
dyslexia is a reading problem. I can actually show parents, I've sort of shown dyslectics how
to read things that are beyond the ability of most reading teachers. What I tell parents is

(28:16):
really what's going on is a lack of organization in the front part of the brain because it's two
and a half times overactive. It's flying around with no cohesion. We fix that.
A lot of the other things self-correct.For example, that original program I did,
the teacher spent almost no time on spelling and grammar, yet it went from horrendous to clean at
the grad level. Doing the impossible over and over again, that's the fun part about being a dyslexic.

(28:46):
Well, Russell, thank you so much for helping us see the strength behind the struggle. Mom,
your son's brain is the blueprint for brilliance. As he matures, because I think maturity is a big
part of their success too, he will succeed with your support and find a path to thrive.

(29:10):
Thank you all for joining us today. Follow the MOB on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
and your favorite podcast platform. Be kind to yourself, moms, and have a great week.