August 19, 2025 • 36 mins
What happens when children struggle to read despite their best efforts? How can parents spot the early warning signs of dyslexia or dysgraphia? And why do millions of children continue falling behind in reading despite classroom interventions?
Daniela Feldhausen, founder of Kids Up Reading Tutors, brings both professional expertise and transformative solutions to these pressing questions. After 25 years practicing law in Washington DC, Daniela discovered her true calling while volunteering with struggling readers at a local elementary school. This passion led her to pursue a master's degree in special education, specialized training in teaching children with dyslexia and dysgraphia, and eventually building a tutoring practice that now helps 70 children nationwide.
The conversation reveals startling insights about how early reading difficulties can be detected—even before formal reading instruction begins. Brain scans can identify dyslexia markers in four-year-olds, and simple games like rhyming activities can help parents spot potential challenges. Daniela explains the science behind phonological awareness, the critical skill that many struggling readers lack: understanding that words consist of individual sounds that can be manipulated.
Parents will find practical strategies they can implement immediately, from car games that build sound awareness to the proper use of audiobooks as a bridge to independent reading. The discussion also clarifies the often-misunderstood relationship between dyslexia (reading difficulties) and dysgraphia (writing difficulties), explaining how they frequently stem from the same underlying processing challenges.
Perhaps most importantly, Daniela emphasizes that effective reading intervention requires frequency—tutoring once or twice weekly simply isn't enough for most struggling readers to catch up. Her innovative online tutoring model allows for the intensive, consistent support these children need, regardless of geographic location.
Whether you're concerned about your own child's reading development or simply interested in understanding how to better support literacy in our communities, this episode provides enlightening insights and actionable solutions for helping every child discover the joy and power of reading.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The SJ Child Show is Bradford's 13th season.
Join Sarah Bradford and the SJChild Show team as they explore
the world of autism and sharestories of hope and inspiration.
This season we're excited tobring you more autism summits
featuring experts and advocatesfrom around the world.
Go to sjchildsorg to donate andto get more information.
(00:25):
Congratulations on 2024's20,000 downloads and 300
episodes.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hello, we are back.
It's so nice to be here todayand I am really excited with
this conversation, some reallygreat value we're going to bring
to you today, and we all knowhow important it is to keep our
kids, you know, as up to date intheir education and wellness as
possible, and that is somethingour guest, um, daniela
(00:57):
Feldhausen hopefully Ipronounced all of that right.
Um, beautiful.
And is it a German last nametoo?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
it is a german.
Last name it's a german.
Well, the first name exists inlots of languages, but the last
name is definitely german andyou know you are here today in
germany.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Bless your heart for being with us.
Um total coincidence, but I'mhappy to be here.
I I love that.
I love that Well, and it'sexciting that we can do this
from so far away from oneanother.
It's so incredible to be ableto make these things happen.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself, the introduction, and
we'll jump right into this.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Sounds good.
Okay, so I was actually alawyer in DC for about 25 years,
wow, and I had beenvolunteering in a local
elementary school, working withkids who were having a hard time
with reading, and I was justreally loving it.
And over time I just kept goingback to the school and saying,
(02:01):
hey, I'm really loving this, canyou give me another kid?
Can you give me another kid?
Back to the school and saying,hey, I'm really loving this, can
you give me another kid?
Can you give me another kid?
And then at some point Idecided you know what I like
that more than I like thelawyering, or maybe it was just
time for a change.
Let's put it that way.
So I actually went back toschool, I got a master's degree
in special ed.
I did a bunch of specializedtraining in teaching kids with
(02:25):
dyslexia and dysgraphia to readand spell, and then I started my
own little tutoring company.
At first it was just me, but itwas way more families who were
asking for help than I couldpossibly help.
And then I started trainingother folks to do this work with
me, and so we're up to aboutalmost 20 tutors.
At this point I think we're 18and we're working with about 70
(02:48):
kids all across the country.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
That's amazing.
Thank you for this special workyou're doing, because I love it
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I'm so happy to be helping all of these kids.
It makes such a difference intheir lives.
It really does To be goodreaders.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, absolutely, my daughter's dyslexic, my husband
as well, and so firsthand Iunderstand firsthand what it's
like as a parent, what it's liketo be a wife with someone who
has to help.
Sometimes I mean that might bea position people don't
understand, so that's kind ofinteresting.
But the power of the righttutor and how magical that can
(03:26):
be as well, because having thatspace where your child can be
supported and and you know, forchildren to be able to have that
space to be tutored by someone,I personally saw that
(03:49):
difference when someone took thecare, the time, the want to
help you know my kiddo to andthe difference it made in the
confidence and how.
It's just incredible.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, yeah, it is absolutely incredible.
And you know, if you look atthe results of the nation's
report card it's called the NAEPit turns out that there are a
lot of kids, millions andmillions and millions of kids,
who are not reading at gradelevel.
It's not just the kids withdyslexia, it's a lot more kids
than just the kids with dyslexia.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, and how do we get in there?
You know, it looks like we'rehaving a little bit of technical
issues, so give me just amoment.
I'll have to go back in.
Oh, you might be having thatsame issue, I see I don't know
what's going on.
(04:50):
Go into the settings and go tothe camera settings under mirror
my camera.
If it says catch up myappearance, unclick that,
unclick that.
Okay, it is unclicked and thenhopefully this won't, it won't
happen.
That was exactly like.
What a crazy thing, right, Iknow, and it's fine.
I, four minutes is where I'll,I'll clock it and I'll just go
(05:14):
in and erase one minute and 30seconds or whatever.
That's totally fine.
Um, but yes, let's see.
We will kick off with howimportant it is to have a kid,
(05:36):
have a tutor, you know, takeinterest in wanting to help
those kids and millions ofchildren, like you said, without
support or not at reading levellevel, and it really just seems
like reading in general hasgone like into, kind of like a I
don't want to say unimportant,but people aren't don't seem, as
you know, excited about books.
(05:56):
Or are parents not puttingenough emphasis on the
importance of reading and howyou have to do it every day of
your life?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think definitely things are changing
and kids have lots ofopportunities to do lots of
other things besides reading,but I do think that a big part
of it is that the kids don'thave the skills to read.
They don't have the skills todecode or sound out a word they
don't know, which makes readinghard, and most people don't like
(06:30):
to do things that are hard forthem.
And so, you know, the way toget kids reading more, the way
to get them to love reading, isto make it nice and easy, and
that's what we try to do andhopefully that's what teachers
all across the country aretrying to do.
I mean, we all need to bepushing in the same direction
here.
We need to make it really easyfor these kids to be able to
(06:52):
read, so that they will want toread.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's what I always, youknow, tell kids and tell
families when I'm first meetingthem.
You know, we always start outwith a conversation with the
parents and then I do somescreeners with the kids to
figure out, you know, what doesthe child already know and what
skills are they missing, andthen we can tailor our
(07:13):
instruction, our tutoring, toexactly the skills that they're
missing, because that's what alot of kids need.
A lot of times what's happeningis that at some point, you know,
the school will realize that,oh my gosh, this child is not up
to grade level, is not readingwell, and then, if they're in
second grade, for example, thechild will get extra help with
(07:34):
those second grade skills.
But the schools don't.
Maybe they can't always go backand look and see if are there
any missing kindergarten skillsor any of the missing first
grade skills.
And so what we do is we go backand we test the kids for all
those things that they shouldhave learned in kindergarten and
all those things that theyshould have learned in first
grade and in second grade, andthen we start with the earliest
(07:57):
skills and shore those up andthen build up from there.
There just aren't.
I mean, even if the teachersknow exactly what they're doing,
they've been fully trained,they've got years of experience,
there aren't enough hours inthe day, there aren't enough
hours in a week to teach kidswho are struggling all the
things that they need to learnTricky In some alternate
(08:22):
universe.
I would love it if everyonedecided that reading was the
number one skill that kids hadto learn in school, and so we're
really going to focus on that,and if that means that some
other things have to be setaside, so be it.
But I might be the only one whothinks that.
That's not how schools operate.
They've got lots of things thatthey need to teach kids, and so
(08:42):
reading isn't the one and onlypriority which is, you know,
it's the reality, it's thereality, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And you know, maybe start for new parents that might
be listening.
Are you reading to your littleones?
I mean, I know that when I Iloved reading, you know, to my
kiddos and just to see.
And while you were talking, Ikind of like I don't know why my
brain does this.
It shows me things, it makes mefeel things, and so I was
remembering the first time, orremembering kind of, a story
(09:16):
that someone had told me aboutstories.
That's interesting, right, astory about stories.
And they told this beautifulstory and you had to close your
eyes and imagine and envisionall of the things, and it was
bright and colorful andwhimsical and all of these
things.
And then they showed us apicture and the picture didn't
do any justice to theimagination and I thought that
(09:40):
it was such a great tool to havethat contrast, to see what your
imagination can do versus whatyour eyes can see, just as plain
as it can be, and how muchpower there is in that, in that
using that information and usingyour imagination.
So while you were talking, Ilike remembered that from being
(10:02):
a child and remembered thatfeeling of, oh, I love that, I
love the feeling of using myimagination.
I guess, I guess I'm a feeler,but so, yeah, I think that
that's really fascinating andyou know it's important.
Uh, today, you know, I had myson was reading, um, as an
infant I did the your baby couldread program and it worked and
(10:26):
we did it and it was true forhim.
But it did not, was not thesame, was not the same case for
my daughter.
It was, um, and how interestingto kind of realize that, um,
those challenges, they have tobe reconciled, if you will, with
(10:46):
tools, with resources, withskills to, because at that age,
at a toddler age, you know, Icould see that she didn't have
the same interest as her brotherhad.
You know, he was doing the sameexact thing, um, and it was a
very different outcome.
And so, and then to find out,you know, years later, that she
(11:08):
was dyslexic, and I don't knowabout you or stories you might
have heard, but you know she wasa very, um, early learner, um
hyperlexic in her speaking, asfar as that was going.
And so for her teachers it wasvery, you know, just, they
(11:28):
didn't even question whether ornot, like she was reading or
following along.
But then I started noticing alittle bit of backwards writing
and I brought it up and theysaid no, no, no, we're not going
to test her for that.
That's silly.
She's so bright, she's alwaysbringing up these questions and
she's she has the comprehensiondown, so that they didn't
(11:49):
realize that there was reallythis gap.
That first second grade she wentcompletely without any any help
.
And third grade came COVID alsoand we were had the opportunity
to be home and to see itfirsthand.
And, like you said, there's notenough hours in the day,
there's not enough teachers,there's not enough teachers per
(12:10):
child to really be able to likeactivate that child's you know
learning success.
And so it was really in thatbeing able to really
individualize and like seespecifically, oh my gosh, this
is one child, these are herskills, like you said, these are
the skills.
(12:30):
And then these are the you knowdeficits and things.
And how can we fix this?
And it was through the tutoringthat it was just like this
turnaround.
But the teachers I was.
It was frustrating for me atthe after that point to think
why would they not have testedher and and started her on this
earlier journey of gettingsuccess and getting help?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
So, yeah, yeah, I mean there are different things
going on in different schools,but you know, it's actually
possible to tell at a very earlyage, like they've done brain
scans of four-year-olds, likeyou can tell when a child is
four years old, that later, whenyou start to teach them to read
, they're going to have troublewith reading, like they're
(13:15):
actually.
It's actually a brain-basedthing and they're actually brain
differences between kids withdyslexia and kids who don't have
dyslexia.
The good news is that most ofthat can get resolved, yeah,
yeah.
So the kids with dyslexiagenerally have a really hard
time with something we callphonological awareness or
phonological skills orphonological processing or
(13:38):
phonemic awareness.
I mean, there are differentterms around it.
But basically what all of thatis about is whether the child
really understands how ourreading and writing system work.
Do they understand that wordsare made up of individual sounds
and if you put sounds togetherin different combinations, you
get different words?
(13:58):
To somebody who's a good readerand a good speller, it's like
yeah, of course words are soundsand sounds are words.
Of course.
That's not obvious to thesekids, and so you have to
literally teach them in a funway that words can be broken
down Like you start.
So there you know.
We do a whole series ofexercises with our students and
(14:21):
we'll start, for example, with acompound word like baseball.
Okay, can you say baseball?
How can you say baseball butdon't say base?
So they have to break that wordinto two pieces and then remove
one of those pieces.
And that is kind of thebeginning.
That's sort of the entry pointinto some of these exercises.
(14:43):
You do it with two syllablewords silver without the
umbrella, without the um andthen you start breaking down
individual syllables into thefirst sound and then the rest of
the word and you basicallybreak it down more and more and
more until by the end the kidscan take a word and tell you
each individual sound in thatword.
(15:03):
And that's of course superimportant for spelling, for
example.
Right, if you want to spell aword, you need to be able to
hear those sounds in first grade.
Then when you get to secondgrade, then you also have to
start knowing more about theword and about you know, is it a
past tense word?
You have to, you know.
So there's more morphology.
(15:23):
There are things that getinvolved, but certainly at the
first grade level it's primarilyabout do you hear all those
sounds.
Can you separate that word andall those different sounds and
then write down the letter orletters that go with each of
those sounds?
And some kids and it might bethat your daughter was one of
these some kids actually seem tobe reading quite well and
(15:47):
nobody really notices the issueuntil they start looking at the
spelling.
So I'm kind of curious how washer spelling?
Was her spelling good or not somuch?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No, not at all.
No, not so much, and that wasdefinitely a struggle point too.
And I think, the ability she's13 now, so she's far past that
and now she has the ability todo voice text and all of these
other accommodations that shecan have to help her.
(16:18):
And but also in that, I thinkthat she did a lot of writing
down um or watching music lyrics.
She loves music and I think itreally, really helped in the
practice of things you know, andlike and, like you said,
finding making it fun.
What are you interested in?
What do you want to?
What would you be wanting tolearn?
(16:40):
What do you have a desire tofind out more information about,
to put them and how to showthem that this can be fun and
you can use this and theseskills are very important for
your life and you know, when yougo to the grocery store when
you're older, you need to readthe grocery labels, you need to
(17:02):
know what you're buying and youknow and things like that.
So I there's like practical,real life things that it's, you
know, necessary to show them,it's there for, but then it's
also it's fun and and there's somuch you can get creatively out
of it as well.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Absolutely, absolutely, um.
And there there is anotheroption for kids who are
struggling with with reading thewords on the page, um, which is
audio books.
Audio books are a wonderfulthing, um, kids don't get the
practice decoding or soundingout the words, but they're
getting all of those otherwonderful benefits of reading.
They're learning about ourlanguage, they're increasing
(17:42):
their vocabulary, they'relearning about the sentence
structure, grammar and syntaxand they're learning about the
world around them and they havethings they can talk to their
friends about.
I mean, there's so, so, so muchthat you get out of a book in
addition to the practicedecoding, which is absolutely
important.
But you know, when we're workingwith a student, we'll often
tell the parents.
(18:02):
You know what it might not be.
Your child might not be readyto be sounding words out and to
be reading on their own rightnow.
But until we get them to thatpoint where they can read on
their own, how about you havethem listen to a bunch of audio
books and maybe even have themlisten to series and get them
hooked on a series?
And once they're hooked on aseries on the audio book version
(18:24):
, then you know, as soon astheir skills are up to par, then
maybe we can have a nice smoothtransition over to reading the
book that you know, with thehard copy piece of paper in
front of you, we're on thescreen or whatever, but you know
sounding out and decoding thosewords I reading as opposed to
you reading.
I love that.
Yeah, all of your books are awonderful, wonderful thing.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
What about I'm going to?
I'm going to kind of see howdeep we can go with this.
What about for our reallychallenged readers, possibly
vision impaired readers?
How do we help with thosestudents?
And do you tutor and have youhad those students to work with?
Speaker 3 (19:07):
We have not worked with any students with visual
impairments.
We've absolutely worked withstudents with ADHD, on the
spectrum, who've had cochlearimplants.
I mean, we've worked with lotsof kids but no one with vision
issues.
But yeah, I mean, like I said,the audio books are a wonderful,
(19:28):
wonderful thing.
There's no.
A lot of parents are like, oh,but I'm not supposed to let them
listen.
No, no, no, absolutely,absolutely, absolutely, have
them listen to audio books.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And you know, I asked thatquestion because I've, in the
past maybe month or so, had someguests who came on who were
vision impaired, and I learnedso much.
I learned so so much and I justI didn't realize the lack of
access that is out there and dueto those types of things.
(19:58):
So it really got me in mycreative mind wanting what can I
do?
How can we, you know, how canwe help the help this?
But I learned a lot aboutscreen readers and, um, the
glasses, the meta glasses andhow they can help.
So those are just some theglasses, the meta glasses and
how they can help.
So those are just some sidenotes that I thought were really
(20:18):
interesting to kind of wonderabout Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I was going to say, what if kids have the diagnosis
of dyslexia, then they can getaccess.
There are a couple of servicesout there that will give you
access to audio books.
So there's Bookshare andLearning Ally I think is what
the two of them are called and Ithink one of them is completely
free for kids who have thediagnosis and I think the other
(20:44):
one is like, I'm going to say,150 bucks a year or something
like that, and you can get booksthat have been read by a you
know, a real life human being,and when that's not available,
then you can get books that will, that are read with a computer
generated voice.
But, for example, you canchoose the voice that you want
(21:05):
and you can increase or decreasethe speed.
So there are a lot of thingsthat you can do there.
You know, if you're listeningto audiobooks as well.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I love that.
What are some tips we can giveto parents to maybe, if they're
not, they don't know that theirchild is struggling in reading?
How could they identify thosestruggles?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Sure, there's a.
We actually have a checklist onour website called the Red
Flags for Dyslexia.
So if you go to our website youcan get a big, long checklist
of different things to look for.
But just briefly, just a couple.
One, for example, would be ifyour child is having a hard time
with a particular word, likeyou've sounded the word out with
(21:50):
them over and over and overagain and every time they get to
that word it's like they'restarting from scratch.
They're starting all over again.
It's just not sticking at all.
That would be something thatmight make you wonder.
Something else might be they'rehaving trouble with rhyming.
So if you ask your child, youknow, give me some words that
(22:11):
rhyme with bat, and obviouslythis is age dependent, but at
some point they should be ableto say oh, you know other words
that rhyme with bat are hat andcat and sat and and so on and so
forth.
If you ask them, you know whatrhymes with bat and they say
ball, or they give you the bigbrown eyes.
They have no idea what you'retalking about.
(22:33):
I would say that's another flag,because rhyming really is
breaking that word down into thebeginning part and then the
vowel and everything that comesafter it, and then you're
swapping out that beginning part, what we call the onset.
And if a kid can't break itapart, those are those
phonological skills I wastalking about a few minutes ago.
(22:54):
If you don't have thephonological skills to break
that word apart into the firstsound and then the rest of the
word and then swap that firstsound out, you're not going to
be able to rhyme.
Yeah is if your child's havingtrouble with articulation, like
if they're having troublepronouncing an L or pronouncing
(23:14):
the S or the R or some of theother letters, that's not
directlya sign of dyslexia.
But there's a large overlapbetween kids who have trouble
with language issues so eitherarticulation or other kinds of
language issues and kids whohave trouble with reading and
writing, reading and spelling.
(23:34):
So if there's a family historyof dyslexia, or if the child
themselves has an issue of beingwith a speech language
pathologist or speech languagetherapist for you know
articulation issues, for exampleor if they're having trouble
expressing their thoughts orunderstanding what other people
(23:56):
are saying, those are all signsof a language-based disorder.
And kids with those languageissues, many of them, also have
then trouble with reading andspelling.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
So I think that was like four or five or something.
Like I said, there's a big,long list on our website,
kidsupreadingtutorscom.
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So I'm going to write that down too and let's talk
about, because some peopledyslexia is more widely known, I
think, than dysgraphia, andpeople might not even know what
that means.
So let's talk about that, givethat a definition and dive into
that a little deeper.
Absolutely, yeah, so dysgraphiais.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I'm sorry I'm going to start with dyslexia.
So dyslexia is considered I'mjust going to paraphrase here,
but you can go find the fullerdefinition on the website of the
International DyslexiaAssociation but basically,
dyslexia is unexpected troublelearning to read, usually
associated with or the result ofthis problem with phonological
(24:54):
processing that we were talkingabout a few minutes ago.
So that's dyslexia.
It's all about the reading.
The dysgraphia, on the otherhand, is about writing, and it's
a little bit murkier, orbroader, if you will, because if
you're having trouble writing,there are a bunch of possible
(25:16):
causes why you might be havingtrouble writing.
One of them might be thatyou've got a, you know, a poor
pencil grip.
You're holding on to yourmarker or your pencil the wrong
way and, as a result, it'sreally hard for you to form
those letters.
Or maybe you never learn toform the letters, or maybe your
(25:37):
hand gets really tired whenyou're writing.
So those are more about thephysical aspects of it, for any
of those things that could beconsidered dysgraphia, and you
would go talk to an occupationaltherapist to get help for your
student.
So that's sort of one kind ofdyslexia or dysgraphia.
Rather, who has no problem witha physical act of writing has
(26:07):
no problem with spelling oranything like that.
They're having troubleorganizing their thoughts in
order to then be able to clearlywrite an essay.
So that's a totally differentkind of dysgraphia and for that
you might go talk to someone whospecifically teaches kids to
organize their thoughts.
You might be looking at graphicorganizers and there are lots
of them out there.
You just Google graphicorganizers to help kids organize
(26:29):
their thoughts for the essaythat they're supposed to write
for school.
The other kind, or another kindof dysgraphia is the kind that
we work on, which is basicallythe flip side of dyslexia.
So if you've got dyslexia,you're having trouble with this
phonological, these phonologicalskills, and you probably
(26:51):
haven't learned the phonicspatterns.
So the phonics patterns are,for example, if you see an EA in
a word, it's probably E likeeat, but it might be E like head
, or it might be a like great,and so there are all these
correspondences between thesounds and the letters that kids
have to learn.
We call those the phonicspatterns, and if a child has
(27:16):
dyslexia, generally they'rehaving trouble on the
phonological side and generallythey haven't learned those
phonics patterns.
The same thing is true for thisparticular kind of dysgraphia.
If you're having trouble withthose phonological skills and
you don't know all of thosephonics patterns, you're likely
to have a hard time withspelling.
And so most of the kids we workwith are in fact having trouble
(27:40):
in both areas.
Makes sense, right.
But we do every once in a whilework with kids who are just fine
on the reading front.
They've figured out the phonicspatterns and they've got you
know well enough.
And then they have goodvocabularies, lots of background
knowledge and they can just useall of those other skills
(28:02):
they've got to get there on thereading front.
So the reading comprehension isactually pretty good, but the
skills aren't there in order tobe able to spell.
The memory is good enough toget them there in reading, but
they can't actually memorize allof those.
You know all of the letters andall of the words that they need
(28:22):
to be able to spell.
So for most kids, dyslexia anddysgraphia are just two sides of
the letters and all of thewords that they need to be able
to spell.
So for most kids, dyslexia anddysgraphia are just two sides of
the same coin.
If you've got dyslexia, you'vealso got dysgraphia.
But there are those handful ofexceptions and it sounds like
your daughter might be one wherereading is fine.
It's the spelling that it's aproblem, but the underlying
issue is still the phonologicalissue and the phonics issue.
(28:43):
And then you have to learn.
You know morphology, you haveto learn, you know a bunch of
other things to be a goodspeller.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And so interesting and because I mean we just, like
I said, with all the earlyeducation going on over here, I
thought we were, you know,covering all the bases, but it's
just, it's a very unique whenyou don't know what you're up
against, and so it's so helpfulto have people like you and kids
up reading tutors so that wecan get some support for our
kiddos if they are struggling.
(29:18):
What types of practices do yousend parents home with?
Homeworks and things like that?
Maybe a practice they couldstart today if they have one
they like?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
themselves as kids.
That was a long time ago, andso most adults don't remember
those phonics patterns.
And so you know you don't wantparents who don't remember the
phonics patterns trying to teachthem to children who are
struggling to remember thephonics.
That is true, not a goodcombination right there.
But parents can absolutely workon the phonological skills with
their kids and you can startthis at a really young age.
You can start this well beforeyour kids are reading, or you
(30:08):
can do it later.
That's absolutely fine and it'sstill super, super helpful and
it's all you can do, it all inthe form of games.
So, for example, you can dothose rhyming, those rhyming
exercises that we were talkingabout before.
You can read, like read lots ofDr Seuss books and nursery
rhymes, because again, that'sall about the rhyming and that's
(30:30):
helping kids understand thatwords can be broken apart.
You can also play other games,like maybe you're in the car,
you're driving around, and youplay a game with the sound b.
Tell me all the words you canthink of, or maybe everything
you see that we're driving bythat starts with a, b, and then
you want them to be able to sayyou know bat and ball and boom
(30:52):
and you know whatever else.
And then, if you know, havethem do it with an M at the
beginning or with an L at thebeginning.
Once they can do that easily,like yeah, they can tell you six
words that start with the oldsound, no problem.
Then have them do it with wordsthat end with that particular
sound.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah, and these are things you can do in the car and
they're fun and kids will enjoythem.
So, yeah, so those would besome good be some good exercises
to do.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is not what anyone needs to do, but I just
think it was fun.
The last couple trips that wewent on we told my son loves to
count and look at letters.
He's twice exceptional, totallydifferent animal right there.
But uh he.
We said okay, well, we want youto count as many um, I think it
(31:50):
was A's or T's or whatever.
As you can see while we're outon our drives that he doesn't,
when he loses internet orsomething, sometimes he has a
really hard time with thatsettling with those type of
things.
So we try to get him thinkingabout other things with those
type of things.
So we try to get him thinkingabout other things.
I think we got home and he waslike um 857.
And I was like, and I didn'teven know what he was talking
(32:11):
about, Cause it'd been hours andhours and hours and hours, you
know and he was still counting.
It's just great.
So, yeah, you can do fun thingslike that too and it really
keeps their minds active andgoing.
And, yeah, I thought you'd likethat.
That is a good one.
Yeah, funny.
So yeah, that's wonderful.
Well, I where, um, obviouslyyou offer help online so you're
(32:37):
open to everyone, um, and thendo you have kind of in-person
places where you're at?
Well, you're in Germany nowYou're not getting you don't
live there, though.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I live in Tucson, arizona, um, and all of our all
of our tutors are in Arizona, um, but we actually do everything
online.
We actually do everything overzoom.
Um, it works beautifully and itenables the kind of
high-intensity tutoring that wedo, because once a week or twice
a week just isn't going to getmost kids caught up in a
reasonable amount of time.
Our goal is always to get kidscaught up as quickly as possible
(33:16):
, and now I mean we're in thesummer right now, so we're
working with close to 70 kidsand we are doing our best to get
them caught up to grade levelby the start of the new school
year.
Yeah, and that's generally not.
You can't do that with once ortwice a week for most kids, so
we're doing it three or four oreven five times a week,
especially over the summer, andmost parents can't take their
(33:40):
child to a tutoring center fourdays a week or don't necessarily
want a tutor in their home fourdays a week while they're, you
know, making dinner or whatever.
So, yeah, so the Zoom thingactually works super, super well
and we use thoseOrton-Gillingham materials, so
it's multi-sensory education andwe can, you know, flip our
(34:00):
cameras over and then show thekids that we're you know the
manipulatives that we're workingwith, or we can send them
things you know.
So we've.
We've actually we've been doingthis for years now, and we
figured out some great ways tomake this really interactive as
well.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Oh, that's wonderful.
It's been so much fun to chatwith you today and get to know
you more, and I am just sograteful for these types of
services and I understand somuch how important it is for our
children to just have the mostsuccess that they can have.
And reading is fun and it'simportant and it is a practical
(34:38):
skill that we all should wantour children to have and to be a
part of and to enjoy.
So so, yeah, make it as fun aspossible.
I totally love that, and pleasego to kidsupreadingtutorscom so
that you can get any kind ofresources.
You can connect with Daniela if, if necessary, and um, and she
(35:00):
could probably, you know, sendyou all the other tutors or
information that is necessary.
Social medias Can people followyou on social medias as?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
well, yeah, absolutely.
We've got a LinkedIn presence,instagram, facebook, but most
information is on our website,so that's probably the best
place to go.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much for your timetoday, and it looks like we hit
that sweet spot, right when thesun's about to go down.
For you, this has been reallyreally nice and, um, I really
appreciate you taking the timeon your vacation and, um helping
us with these really wonderful,uh, valuable information for
(35:40):
families out there.
So, thank you, thank you somuch.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
I love talking about this stuff, and if we even help one family
, that is a win in my book.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, and you can tell you love it and I love that
about it.
I love that about you loving it, all kinds of love going on
around here guys.
So, oh, my gosh, this has beenso, so great.
I really look forward tostaying in touch and, um, yeah,
the I want to know all aboutGermany when you get back.
That'd be great.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Okay, you have a great rest of the day, you too.
Bye-bye.
The SJ Child Show is Bradford's 13th season.
Join Sarah Bradford and the SJChild Show team as they explore
the world of autism and sharestories of hope and inspiration.
This season we're excited tobring you more autism summits
featuring experts and advocatesfrom around the world.
Go to sjchildsorg to donate andto get more information.
(00:25):
Congratulations on 2024's20,000 downloads and 300
episodes.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hello, we are back.
It's so nice to be here todayand I am really excited with
this conversation, some reallygreat value we're going to bring
to you today, and we all knowhow important it is to keep our
kids, you know, as up to date intheir education and wellness as
possible, and that is somethingour guest, um, daniela
(00:57):
Feldhausen hopefully Ipronounced all of that right.
Um, beautiful.
And is it a German last nametoo?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
it is a german.
Last name it's a german.
Well, the first name exists inlots of languages, but the last
name is definitely german andyou know you are here today in
germany.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Bless your heart for being with us.
Um total coincidence, but I'mhappy to be here.
I I love that.
I love that Well, and it'sexciting that we can do this
from so far away from oneanother.
It's so incredible to be ableto make these things happen.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself, the introduction, and
we'll jump right into this.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Sounds good.
Okay, so I was actually alawyer in DC for about 25 years,
wow, and I had beenvolunteering in a local
elementary school, working withkids who were having a hard time
with reading, and I was justreally loving it.
And over time I just kept goingback to the school and saying,
(02:01):
hey, I'm really loving this, canyou give me another kid?
Can you give me another kid?
Back to the school and saying,hey, I'm really loving this, can
you give me another kid?
Can you give me another kid?
And then at some point Idecided you know what I like
that more than I like thelawyering, or maybe it was just
time for a change.
Let's put it that way.
So I actually went back toschool, I got a master's degree
in special ed.
I did a bunch of specializedtraining in teaching kids with
(02:25):
dyslexia and dysgraphia to readand spell, and then I started my
own little tutoring company.
At first it was just me, but itwas way more families who were
asking for help than I couldpossibly help.
And then I started trainingother folks to do this work with
me, and so we're up to aboutalmost 20 tutors.
At this point I think we're 18and we're working with about 70
(02:48):
kids all across the country.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
That's amazing.
Thank you for this special workyou're doing, because I love it
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I'm so happy to be helping all of these kids.
It makes such a difference intheir lives.
It really does To be goodreaders.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, absolutely, my daughter's dyslexic, my husband
as well, and so firsthand Iunderstand firsthand what it's
like as a parent, what it's liketo be a wife with someone who
has to help.
Sometimes I mean that might bea position people don't
understand, so that's kind ofinteresting.
But the power of the righttutor and how magical that can
(03:26):
be as well, because having thatspace where your child can be
supported and and you know, forchildren to be able to have that
space to be tutored by someone,I personally saw that
(03:49):
difference when someone took thecare, the time, the want to
help you know my kiddo to andthe difference it made in the
confidence and how.
It's just incredible.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, yeah, it is absolutely incredible.
And you know, if you look atthe results of the nation's
report card it's called the NAEPit turns out that there are a
lot of kids, millions andmillions and millions of kids,
who are not reading at gradelevel.
It's not just the kids withdyslexia, it's a lot more kids
than just the kids with dyslexia.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, and how do we get in there?
You know, it looks like we'rehaving a little bit of technical
issues, so give me just amoment.
I'll have to go back in.
Oh, you might be having thatsame issue, I see I don't know
what's going on.
(04:50):
Go into the settings and go tothe camera settings under mirror
my camera.
If it says catch up myappearance, unclick that,
unclick that.
Okay, it is unclicked and thenhopefully this won't, it won't
happen.
That was exactly like.
What a crazy thing, right, Iknow, and it's fine.
I, four minutes is where I'll,I'll clock it and I'll just go
(05:14):
in and erase one minute and 30seconds or whatever.
That's totally fine.
Um, but yes, let's see.
We will kick off with howimportant it is to have a kid,
(05:36):
have a tutor, you know, takeinterest in wanting to help
those kids and millions ofchildren, like you said, without
support or not at reading levellevel, and it really just seems
like reading in general hasgone like into, kind of like a I
don't want to say unimportant,but people aren't don't seem, as
you know, excited about books.
(05:56):
Or are parents not puttingenough emphasis on the
importance of reading and howyou have to do it every day of
your life?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think definitely things are changing
and kids have lots ofopportunities to do lots of
other things besides reading,but I do think that a big part
of it is that the kids don'thave the skills to read.
They don't have the skills todecode or sound out a word they
don't know, which makes readinghard, and most people don't like
(06:30):
to do things that are hard forthem.
And so, you know, the way toget kids reading more, the way
to get them to love reading, isto make it nice and easy, and
that's what we try to do andhopefully that's what teachers
all across the country aretrying to do.
I mean, we all need to bepushing in the same direction
here.
We need to make it really easyfor these kids to be able to
(06:52):
read, so that they will want toread.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's what I always, youknow, tell kids and tell
families when I'm first meetingthem.
You know, we always start outwith a conversation with the
parents and then I do somescreeners with the kids to
figure out, you know, what doesthe child already know and what
skills are they missing, andthen we can tailor our
(07:13):
instruction, our tutoring, toexactly the skills that they're
missing, because that's what alot of kids need.
A lot of times what's happeningis that at some point, you know,
the school will realize that,oh my gosh, this child is not up
to grade level, is not readingwell, and then, if they're in
second grade, for example, thechild will get extra help with
(07:34):
those second grade skills.
But the schools don't.
Maybe they can't always go backand look and see if are there
any missing kindergarten skillsor any of the missing first
grade skills.
And so what we do is we go backand we test the kids for all
those things that they shouldhave learned in kindergarten and
all those things that theyshould have learned in first
grade and in second grade, andthen we start with the earliest
(07:57):
skills and shore those up andthen build up from there.
There just aren't.
I mean, even if the teachersknow exactly what they're doing,
they've been fully trained,they've got years of experience,
there aren't enough hours inthe day, there aren't enough
hours in a week to teach kidswho are struggling all the
things that they need to learnTricky In some alternate
(08:22):
universe.
I would love it if everyonedecided that reading was the
number one skill that kids hadto learn in school, and so we're
really going to focus on that,and if that means that some
other things have to be setaside, so be it.
But I might be the only one whothinks that.
That's not how schools operate.
They've got lots of things thatthey need to teach kids, and so
(08:42):
reading isn't the one and onlypriority which is, you know,
it's the reality, it's thereality, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And you know, maybe start for new parents that might
be listening.
Are you reading to your littleones?
I mean, I know that when I Iloved reading, you know, to my
kiddos and just to see.
And while you were talking, Ikind of like I don't know why my
brain does this.
It shows me things, it makes mefeel things, and so I was
remembering the first time, orremembering kind of, a story
(09:16):
that someone had told me aboutstories.
That's interesting, right, astory about stories.
And they told this beautifulstory and you had to close your
eyes and imagine and envisionall of the things, and it was
bright and colorful andwhimsical and all of these
things.
And then they showed us apicture and the picture didn't
do any justice to theimagination and I thought that
(09:40):
it was such a great tool to havethat contrast, to see what your
imagination can do versus whatyour eyes can see, just as plain
as it can be, and how muchpower there is in that, in that
using that information and usingyour imagination.
So while you were talking, Ilike remembered that from being
(10:02):
a child and remembered thatfeeling of, oh, I love that, I
love the feeling of using myimagination.
I guess, I guess I'm a feeler,but so, yeah, I think that
that's really fascinating andyou know it's important.
Uh, today, you know, I had myson was reading, um, as an
infant I did the your baby couldread program and it worked and
(10:26):
we did it and it was true forhim.
But it did not, was not thesame, was not the same case for
my daughter.
It was, um, and how interestingto kind of realize that, um,
those challenges, they have tobe reconciled, if you will, with
(10:46):
tools, with resources, withskills to, because at that age,
at a toddler age, you know, Icould see that she didn't have
the same interest as her brotherhad.
You know, he was doing the sameexact thing, um, and it was a
very different outcome.
And so, and then to find out,you know, years later, that she
(11:08):
was dyslexic, and I don't knowabout you or stories you might
have heard, but you know she wasa very, um, early learner, um
hyperlexic in her speaking, asfar as that was going.
And so for her teachers it wasvery, you know, just, they
(11:28):
didn't even question whether ornot, like she was reading or
following along.
But then I started noticing alittle bit of backwards writing
and I brought it up and theysaid no, no, no, we're not going
to test her for that.
That's silly.
She's so bright, she's alwaysbringing up these questions and
she's she has the comprehensiondown, so that they didn't
(11:49):
realize that there was reallythis gap.
That first second grade she wentcompletely without any any help
.
And third grade came COVID alsoand we were had the opportunity
to be home and to see itfirsthand.
And, like you said, there's notenough hours in the day,
there's not enough teachers,there's not enough teachers per
(12:10):
child to really be able to likeactivate that child's you know
learning success.
And so it was really in thatbeing able to really
individualize and like seespecifically, oh my gosh, this
is one child, these are herskills, like you said, these are
the skills.
(12:30):
And then these are the you knowdeficits and things.
And how can we fix this?
And it was through the tutoringthat it was just like this
turnaround.
But the teachers I was.
It was frustrating for me atthe after that point to think
why would they not have testedher and and started her on this
earlier journey of gettingsuccess and getting help?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
So, yeah, yeah, I mean there are different things
going on in different schools,but you know, it's actually
possible to tell at a very earlyage, like they've done brain
scans of four-year-olds, likeyou can tell when a child is
four years old, that later, whenyou start to teach them to read
, they're going to have troublewith reading, like they're
(13:15):
actually.
It's actually a brain-basedthing and they're actually brain
differences between kids withdyslexia and kids who don't have
dyslexia.
The good news is that most ofthat can get resolved, yeah,
yeah.
So the kids with dyslexiagenerally have a really hard
time with something we callphonological awareness or
phonological skills orphonological processing or
(13:38):
phonemic awareness.
I mean, there are differentterms around it.
But basically what all of thatis about is whether the child
really understands how ourreading and writing system work.
Do they understand that wordsare made up of individual sounds
and if you put sounds togetherin different combinations, you
get different words?
(13:58):
To somebody who's a good readerand a good speller, it's like
yeah, of course words are soundsand sounds are words.
Of course.
That's not obvious to thesekids, and so you have to
literally teach them in a funway that words can be broken
down Like you start.
So there you know.
We do a whole series ofexercises with our students and
(14:21):
we'll start, for example, with acompound word like baseball.
Okay, can you say baseball?
How can you say baseball butdon't say base?
So they have to break that wordinto two pieces and then remove
one of those pieces.
And that is kind of thebeginning.
That's sort of the entry pointinto some of these exercises.
(14:43):
You do it with two syllablewords silver without the
umbrella, without the um andthen you start breaking down
individual syllables into thefirst sound and then the rest of
the word and you basicallybreak it down more and more and
more until by the end the kidscan take a word and tell you
each individual sound in thatword.
(15:03):
And that's of course superimportant for spelling, for
example.
Right, if you want to spell aword, you need to be able to
hear those sounds in first grade.
Then when you get to secondgrade, then you also have to
start knowing more about theword and about you know, is it a
past tense word?
You have to, you know.
So there's more morphology.
(15:23):
There are things that getinvolved, but certainly at the
first grade level it's primarilyabout do you hear all those
sounds.
Can you separate that word andall those different sounds and
then write down the letter orletters that go with each of
those sounds?
And some kids and it might bethat your daughter was one of
these some kids actually seem tobe reading quite well and
(15:47):
nobody really notices the issueuntil they start looking at the
spelling.
So I'm kind of curious how washer spelling?
Was her spelling good or not somuch?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
No, not at all.
No, not so much, and that wasdefinitely a struggle point too.
And I think, the ability she's13 now, so she's far past that
and now she has the ability todo voice text and all of these
other accommodations that shecan have to help her.
(16:18):
And but also in that, I thinkthat she did a lot of writing
down um or watching music lyrics.
She loves music and I think itreally, really helped in the
practice of things you know, andlike and, like you said,
finding making it fun.
What are you interested in?
What do you want to?
What would you be wanting tolearn?
(16:40):
What do you have a desire tofind out more information about,
to put them and how to showthem that this can be fun and
you can use this and theseskills are very important for
your life and you know, when yougo to the grocery store when
you're older, you need to readthe grocery labels, you need to
(17:02):
know what you're buying and youknow and things like that.
So I there's like practical,real life things that it's, you
know, necessary to show them,it's there for, but then it's
also it's fun and and there's somuch you can get creatively out
of it as well.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Absolutely, absolutely, um.
And there there is anotheroption for kids who are
struggling with with reading thewords on the page, um, which is
audio books.
Audio books are a wonderfulthing, um, kids don't get the
practice decoding or soundingout the words, but they're
getting all of those otherwonderful benefits of reading.
They're learning about ourlanguage, they're increasing
(17:42):
their vocabulary, they'relearning about the sentence
structure, grammar and syntaxand they're learning about the
world around them and they havethings they can talk to their
friends about.
I mean, there's so, so, so muchthat you get out of a book in
addition to the practicedecoding, which is absolutely
important.
But you know, when we're workingwith a student, we'll often
tell the parents.
(18:02):
You know what it might not be.
Your child might not be readyto be sounding words out and to
be reading on their own rightnow.
But until we get them to thatpoint where they can read on
their own, how about you havethem listen to a bunch of audio
books and maybe even have themlisten to series and get them
hooked on a series?
And once they're hooked on aseries on the audio book version
(18:24):
, then you know, as soon astheir skills are up to par, then
maybe we can have a nice smoothtransition over to reading the
book that you know, with thehard copy piece of paper in
front of you, we're on thescreen or whatever, but you know
sounding out and decoding thosewords I reading as opposed to
you reading.
I love that.
Yeah, all of your books are awonderful, wonderful thing.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
What about I'm going to?
I'm going to kind of see howdeep we can go with this.
What about for our reallychallenged readers, possibly
vision impaired readers?
How do we help with thosestudents?
And do you tutor and have youhad those students to work with?
Speaker 3 (19:07):
We have not worked with any students with visual
impairments.
We've absolutely worked withstudents with ADHD, on the
spectrum, who've had cochlearimplants.
I mean, we've worked with lotsof kids but no one with vision
issues.
But yeah, I mean, like I said,the audio books are a wonderful,
(19:28):
wonderful thing.
There's no.
A lot of parents are like, oh,but I'm not supposed to let them
listen.
No, no, no, absolutely,absolutely, absolutely, have
them listen to audio books.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And you know, I asked thatquestion because I've, in the
past maybe month or so, had someguests who came on who were
vision impaired, and I learnedso much.
I learned so so much and I justI didn't realize the lack of
access that is out there and dueto those types of things.
(19:58):
So it really got me in mycreative mind wanting what can I
do?
How can we, you know, how canwe help the help this?
But I learned a lot aboutscreen readers and, um, the
glasses, the meta glasses andhow they can help.
So those are just some theglasses, the meta glasses and
how they can help.
So those are just some sidenotes that I thought were really
(20:18):
interesting to kind of wonderabout Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I was going to say, what if kids have the diagnosis
of dyslexia, then they can getaccess.
There are a couple of servicesout there that will give you
access to audio books.
So there's Bookshare andLearning Ally I think is what
the two of them are called and Ithink one of them is completely
free for kids who have thediagnosis and I think the other
(20:44):
one is like, I'm going to say,150 bucks a year or something
like that, and you can get booksthat have been read by a you
know, a real life human being,and when that's not available,
then you can get books that will, that are read with a computer
generated voice.
But, for example, you canchoose the voice that you want
(21:05):
and you can increase or decreasethe speed.
So there are a lot of thingsthat you can do there.
You know, if you're listeningto audiobooks as well.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I love that.
What are some tips we can giveto parents to maybe, if they're
not, they don't know that theirchild is struggling in reading?
How could they identify thosestruggles?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Sure, there's a.
We actually have a checklist onour website called the Red
Flags for Dyslexia.
So if you go to our website youcan get a big, long checklist
of different things to look for.
But just briefly, just a couple.
One, for example, would be ifyour child is having a hard time
with a particular word, likeyou've sounded the word out with
(21:50):
them over and over and overagain and every time they get to
that word it's like they'restarting from scratch.
They're starting all over again.
It's just not sticking at all.
That would be something thatmight make you wonder.
Something else might be they'rehaving trouble with rhyming.
So if you ask your child, youknow, give me some words that
(22:11):
rhyme with bat, and obviouslythis is age dependent, but at
some point they should be ableto say oh, you know other words
that rhyme with bat are hat andcat and sat and and so on and so
forth.
If you ask them, you know whatrhymes with bat and they say
ball, or they give you the bigbrown eyes.
They have no idea what you'retalking about.
(22:33):
I would say that's another flag,because rhyming really is
breaking that word down into thebeginning part and then the
vowel and everything that comesafter it, and then you're
swapping out that beginning part, what we call the onset.
And if a kid can't break itapart, those are those
phonological skills I wastalking about a few minutes ago.
(22:54):
If you don't have thephonological skills to break
that word apart into the firstsound and then the rest of the
word and then swap that firstsound out, you're not going to
be able to rhyme.
Yeah is if your child's havingtrouble with articulation, like
if they're having troublepronouncing an L or pronouncing
(23:14):
the S or the R or some of theother letters, that's not
directlya sign of dyslexia.
But there's a large overlapbetween kids who have trouble
with language issues so eitherarticulation or other kinds of
language issues and kids whohave trouble with reading and
writing, reading and spelling.
(23:34):
So if there's a family historyof dyslexia, or if the child
themselves has an issue of beingwith a speech language
pathologist or speech languagetherapist for you know
articulation issues, for exampleor if they're having trouble
expressing their thoughts orunderstanding what other people
(23:56):
are saying, those are all signsof a language-based disorder.
And kids with those languageissues, many of them, also have
then trouble with reading andspelling.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
So I think that was like four or five or something.
Like I said, there's a big,long list on our website,
kidsupreadingtutorscom.
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So I'm going to write that down too and let's talk
about, because some peopledyslexia is more widely known, I
think, than dysgraphia, andpeople might not even know what
that means.
So let's talk about that, givethat a definition and dive into
that a little deeper.
Absolutely, yeah, so dysgraphiais.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I'm sorry I'm going to start with dyslexia.
So dyslexia is considered I'mjust going to paraphrase here,
but you can go find the fullerdefinition on the website of the
International DyslexiaAssociation but basically,
dyslexia is unexpected troublelearning to read, usually
associated with or the result ofthis problem with phonological
(24:54):
processing that we were talkingabout a few minutes ago.
So that's dyslexia.
It's all about the reading.
The dysgraphia, on the otherhand, is about writing, and it's
a little bit murkier, orbroader, if you will, because if
you're having trouble writing,there are a bunch of possible
(25:16):
causes why you might be havingtrouble writing.
One of them might be thatyou've got a, you know, a poor
pencil grip.
You're holding on to yourmarker or your pencil the wrong
way and, as a result, it'sreally hard for you to form
those letters.
Or maybe you never learn toform the letters, or maybe your
(25:37):
hand gets really tired whenyou're writing.
So those are more about thephysical aspects of it, for any
of those things that could beconsidered dysgraphia, and you
would go talk to an occupationaltherapist to get help for your
student.
So that's sort of one kind ofdyslexia or dysgraphia.
Rather, who has no problem witha physical act of writing has
(26:07):
no problem with spelling oranything like that.
They're having troubleorganizing their thoughts in
order to then be able to clearlywrite an essay.
So that's a totally differentkind of dysgraphia and for that
you might go talk to someone whospecifically teaches kids to
organize their thoughts.
You might be looking at graphicorganizers and there are lots
of them out there.
You just Google graphicorganizers to help kids organize
(26:29):
their thoughts for the essaythat they're supposed to write
for school.
The other kind, or another kindof dysgraphia is the kind that
we work on, which is basicallythe flip side of dyslexia.
So if you've got dyslexia,you're having trouble with this
phonological, these phonologicalskills, and you probably
(26:51):
haven't learned the phonicspatterns.
So the phonics patterns are,for example, if you see an EA in
a word, it's probably E likeeat, but it might be E like head
, or it might be a like great,and so there are all these
correspondences between thesounds and the letters that kids
have to learn.
We call those the phonicspatterns, and if a child has
(27:16):
dyslexia, generally they'rehaving trouble on the
phonological side and generallythey haven't learned those
phonics patterns.
The same thing is true for thisparticular kind of dysgraphia.
If you're having trouble withthose phonological skills and
you don't know all of thosephonics patterns, you're likely
to have a hard time withspelling.
And so most of the kids we workwith are in fact having trouble
(27:40):
in both areas.
Makes sense, right.
But we do every once in a whilework with kids who are just fine
on the reading front.
They've figured out the phonicspatterns and they've got you
know well enough.
And then they have goodvocabularies, lots of background
knowledge and they can just useall of those other skills
(28:02):
they've got to get there on thereading front.
So the reading comprehension isactually pretty good, but the
skills aren't there in order tobe able to spell.
The memory is good enough toget them there in reading, but
they can't actually memorize allof those.
You know all of the letters andall of the words that they need
(28:22):
to be able to spell.
So for most kids, dyslexia anddysgraphia are just two sides of
the letters and all of thewords that they need to be able
to spell.
So for most kids, dyslexia anddysgraphia are just two sides of
the same coin.
If you've got dyslexia, you'vealso got dysgraphia.
But there are those handful ofexceptions and it sounds like
your daughter might be one wherereading is fine.
It's the spelling that it's aproblem, but the underlying
issue is still the phonologicalissue and the phonics issue.
(28:43):
And then you have to learn.
You know morphology, you haveto learn, you know a bunch of
other things to be a goodspeller.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And so interesting and because I mean we just, like
I said, with all the earlyeducation going on over here, I
thought we were, you know,covering all the bases, but it's
just, it's a very unique whenyou don't know what you're up
against, and so it's so helpfulto have people like you and kids
up reading tutors so that wecan get some support for our
kiddos if they are struggling.
(29:18):
What types of practices do yousend parents home with?
Homeworks and things like that?
Maybe a practice they couldstart today if they have one
they like?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
themselves as kids.
That was a long time ago, andso most adults don't remember
those phonics patterns.
And so you know you don't wantparents who don't remember the
phonics patterns trying to teachthem to children who are
struggling to remember thephonics.
That is true, not a goodcombination right there.
But parents can absolutely workon the phonological skills with
their kids and you can startthis at a really young age.
You can start this well beforeyour kids are reading, or you
(30:08):
can do it later.
That's absolutely fine and it'sstill super, super helpful and
it's all you can do, it all inthe form of games.
So, for example, you can dothose rhyming, those rhyming
exercises that we were talkingabout before.
You can read, like read lots ofDr Seuss books and nursery
rhymes, because again, that'sall about the rhyming and that's
(30:30):
helping kids understand thatwords can be broken apart.
You can also play other games,like maybe you're in the car,
you're driving around, and youplay a game with the sound b.
Tell me all the words you canthink of, or maybe everything
you see that we're driving bythat starts with a, b, and then
you want them to be able to sayyou know bat and ball and boom
(30:52):
and you know whatever else.
And then, if you know, havethem do it with an M at the
beginning or with an L at thebeginning.
Once they can do that easily,like yeah, they can tell you six
words that start with the oldsound, no problem.
Then have them do it with wordsthat end with that particular
sound.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah, and these are things you can do in the car and
they're fun and kids will enjoythem.
So, yeah, so those would besome good be some good exercises
to do.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is not what anyone needs to do, but I just
think it was fun.
The last couple trips that wewent on we told my son loves to
count and look at letters.
He's twice exceptional, totallydifferent animal right there.
But uh he.
We said okay, well, we want youto count as many um, I think it
(31:50):
was A's or T's or whatever.
As you can see while we're outon our drives that he doesn't,
when he loses internet orsomething, sometimes he has a
really hard time with thatsettling with those type of
things.
So we try to get him thinkingabout other things with those
type of things.
So we try to get him thinkingabout other things.
I think we got home and he waslike um 857.
And I was like, and I didn'teven know what he was talking
(32:11):
about, Cause it'd been hours andhours and hours and hours, you
know and he was still counting.
It's just great.
So, yeah, you can do fun thingslike that too and it really
keeps their minds active andgoing.
And, yeah, I thought you'd likethat.
That is a good one.
Yeah, funny.
So yeah, that's wonderful.
Well, I where, um, obviouslyyou offer help online so you're
(32:37):
open to everyone, um, and thendo you have kind of in-person
places where you're at?
Well, you're in Germany nowYou're not getting you don't
live there, though.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I live in Tucson, arizona, um, and all of our all
of our tutors are in Arizona, um, but we actually do everything
online.
We actually do everything overzoom.
Um, it works beautifully and itenables the kind of
high-intensity tutoring that wedo, because once a week or twice
a week just isn't going to getmost kids caught up in a
reasonable amount of time.
Our goal is always to get kidscaught up as quickly as possible
(33:16):
, and now I mean we're in thesummer right now, so we're
working with close to 70 kidsand we are doing our best to get
them caught up to grade levelby the start of the new school
year.
Yeah, and that's generally not.
You can't do that with once ortwice a week for most kids, so
we're doing it three or four oreven five times a week,
especially over the summer, andmost parents can't take their
(33:40):
child to a tutoring center fourdays a week or don't necessarily
want a tutor in their home fourdays a week while they're, you
know, making dinner or whatever.
So, yeah, so the Zoom thingactually works super, super well
and we use thoseOrton-Gillingham materials, so
it's multi-sensory education andwe can, you know, flip our
(34:00):
cameras over and then show thekids that we're you know the
manipulatives that we're workingwith, or we can send them
things you know.
So we've.
We've actually we've been doingthis for years now, and we
figured out some great ways tomake this really interactive as
well.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Oh, that's wonderful.
It's been so much fun to chatwith you today and get to know
you more, and I am just sograteful for these types of
services and I understand somuch how important it is for our
children to just have the mostsuccess that they can have.
And reading is fun and it'simportant and it is a practical
(34:38):
skill that we all should wantour children to have and to be a
part of and to enjoy.
So so, yeah, make it as fun aspossible.
I totally love that, and pleasego to kidsupreadingtutorscom so
that you can get any kind ofresources.
You can connect with Daniela if, if necessary, and um, and she
(35:00):
could probably, you know, sendyou all the other tutors or
information that is necessary.
Social medias Can people followyou on social medias as?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
well, yeah, absolutely.
We've got a LinkedIn presence,instagram, facebook, but most
information is on our website,so that's probably the best
place to go.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much for your timetoday, and it looks like we hit
that sweet spot, right when thesun's about to go down.
For you, this has been reallyreally nice and, um, I really
appreciate you taking the timeon your vacation and, um helping
us with these really wonderful,uh, valuable information for
(35:40):
families out there.
So, thank you, thank you somuch.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
I love talking about this stuff, and if we even help one family
, that is a win in my book.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, and you can tell you love it and I love that
about it.
I love that about you loving it, all kinds of love going on
around here guys.
So, oh, my gosh, this has beenso, so great.
I really look forward tostaying in touch and, um, yeah,
the I want to know all aboutGermany when you get back.
That'd be great.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Okay, you have a great rest of the day, you too.
Bye-bye.
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