Dyslexia Isn’t a Reading Problem: What Every Parent Should Know with Russell Van Brocklen

People think dyslexia is a reading issue. It's not. I can show dyslexics to read better than half the kids at Harvard, and I'm not joking about that.What you're going to find is, and this is what I found in law school, is that we will always read slower, we will always write slower, but once we organize our thinking, we can think in orders of magnitude faster than our classmates.

It's the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. I'm your host, Rachel Fulgenetti.Russell Van Broecklin is a New York State Senate funded dyslexia researcher and he's here today to talk to us about all things dyslexia. Welcome Russell.

Thanks for having me.

Very happy to talk about this. It's something that I personally don't know a lot about and I know it affects a lot of kids.So I wanted to have you on the show to talk about what dyslexia actually is and how you can detect it and kind of the ins and outs of how to navigate it should you find that your child does have dyslexia. So let's start out just with how you got to be a New York State Senate funded dyslexia researcher.

Well, it all started when I, it was the late 90s and I wanted to know how government worked. Not some class I wanted to know. So I signed up for the New York State assembly internship program. It's a full time, 40 hour week position.So I walked in, I said, here's my neuropsychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing level. And they looked and said this isn't going to work.So they got a committee together of their top people and they decided I'm not going to have the traditional internship experience. They're going to give me something much better. They're going to treat me like a grad student.So they put me in the Majority Leader Programs and Counselor's office that ran the assembly day to day. Why is that important? They had three administrative assistants that could deal with my horrendous writing.For the academic portion, I had to do a major research project. Very standard accommodation for me back then was giving a oral presentation.And when I did that, at the end, they recommended 15 credits of a minus, sent it back to the State University of New York center at Buffalo, Department of Political Science.They looked at it and for the only time in the history of the program, and this is still there from 27 years ago, they Said, we don't like your accommodations. So here's 15 credits of F. Yeah. Any idea what that does to a transcript?I had enough of the discrimination, so I went to my professors and I said, how do I force myself to learn to read and write at the highest possible level so I can show other dyslexics? And they kind of laughed and said, law school. I said, okay, great. So I signed up to audit loss classes, which they weren't expecting.So I go in, it's the second day of class and I went to see Professor Warren, who's a dyslexic professor. He called on me. What they do in law schools, if you don't know the answer, they keep asking questions to embarrass you.It's called the Socratic Method. If you want to know more about it, there's a movie called the Paper chase from the 70s that didn't happen to me.What I found out later is as a dyslexic, when we go to grad school, day one, we own the place. If not shortly thereafter, everything lined up. My thoughts were organized for the first time ever.That's an important thing for your audience to understand. My thoughts lined up, everything was organized. Professor Warner started getting really snippet with me and I fired back being snippet with him.Before I know it, I'm leaning forward, literally shouting at him. He's leaning forward, shouting at me. This happens in law school.The thing is these, these things are almost always very short lived because the professor just trounces you. I'm going back and forth. We're going as fast as we can. I know where he's going multiple steps ahead of time.He knows where I'm going for 15 minutes, which is an eternity. And he finally said, russell, in the interest of time, I have to move on to the next case. You couldn't be any more correct.He was trying to get my goat and I was trying to get his. He said that's the only time in his career he ever had a student in a first year contracts class battle him like that.He said, it doesn't, it doesn't. It rarely happens, even in the third year and then only a few times in his career.So then I solved reading within a month, writing within three, within a couple of years. At that point I wanted to share what I did with everybody else.So I went back and it ended up being a New York state senator called Senator Bruno, who was the majority leader of the Senate at the time, and my senator. They were very Interested in what I was talking about, I was sent over to the New York State Education Department.It took many years for everything to work out before they're willing to fund the research. So when they did, it was at the Averill Park Central School District right outside of Albany, New York.I wanted to see what I could do with the ideal people who were like me, highly intelligent, extraordinarily motivated. So that's what we picked for juniors and seniors. They all had writing skills. At the middle school level, we had their best teacher, Susan Ford, for.For special ed in the district. One class period a day for the school year. They went from middle school to average range of entering graduate school students.They all went to college. They all graduated GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6. The best selected college at the time was Landmark College. They took two to three years.My process cost New York state taxpayers less than 900 a kid. We were 2 to 3x as successful as Landmark College. We were less than 1% of the cost and less than 1 25th of the effort.

Wow.

That's how I got started.

Okay, let's back up just a bit. So you grew up knowing that you were dyslexic? Yes.

Yes.

Okay. From the time you were how old?

I was put in special ed when I was in third grade. I was held back in first grade.

Okay.

So they finally told me, beginning of third grade, you know, I'm. I'm in with the special kids, which I completely hated.

Right? Yep. And did you have other diagnoses as well, or was it just dyslexia?

Oh, it was also attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

And do you find that those things are usually. Do they coexist a lot or. Not necessarily.

They're very closely linked. The solution, the actual solution to correct this is actually the same for both.

That's interesting. Okay, let's start out with what is dyslexia? Just let's define that for our listeners so that we know what we're talking about.

I'm gonna refer to a book called Overcoming Dyslex, second edition from Yale by Dr. Sally Shaywitz, medical doctor. This is the book in my field.

Okay.

Okay.

So again, link to that in the. In the show notes for sure.

Okay, so that's dyslexia for your listeners. What I want you to notice is the back part of the. Of your brain has this massive neural activity. You see that?

Yes, I do.

Now, if you look at the dyslectic brain in the back part, there's almost no neural activity. Do you see that?

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Okay. Now, do you notice the front part of the dyslexic brain is about two and a half times overactive?According to Yale, the front part of the dyslexic brain deals with two areas. Articulation followed by word analysis.When I did the original program, I used the Graduate Records Exam, Analytical writing test, analytical articulation, same thing in my book. That's why it was so successful. But translating this to typical dyslexic students does not work.So what I found is I had to flip it to word analysis followed by articulation. Now, let me explain, just to get into. How do we actually do something that matters to your audience?A lot of them are going to have kids in elementary school, and this could be the same for dyslexia or ADHD or add. They're essentially writing randomly placed, misspelled words. I'm gonna show you how to fix that in an overview.So do you know any dyslexic elementary school kids? Really?

Well, I always wonder if my daughter might have dyslexia. But it's funny, I wanted to get her tested, like, a long time ago. And they were always like, it's too early. It's too early. Like, we can't test.So that was another question I had for you, was like, how. When can you start testing?

Okay, so let me.

How.

How old is your daughter?

She's nine. Now, she has adhd and she is on the spectrum.

All right, so here's my question for your daughter. Would you like to use her real name or make up a name?

We can use her real name. Izzy.

Okay. For Izzy, the question I would need to ask her is what's. What is her speciality? What is her area of extreme interest and ability?

Oh, my God. She has. She has a few Therians. She loves. You probably don't even know what that word means. It's a human who identifies as an animal.

Okay.

She loves animals and nature.

So if I were to ask her about when she's thinking about animals and nature, here's the question I would ask her. Does she have ideas flying around her head at light speed but at little to no organization? And I can tell you she's going

to say almost yes.

She's going to say yes. That means add, ADHD or mild dyslexia. All right, question number two. Which is the nine is the youngest. You can really ask this.If she's typing and she wants to write about animals, the ideas in her head, fingers, keyboard. When you take your fingers and put them on the keyboard. Does the idea fly out of your head, leading you with an empty brain?If she says yes to that, that's a pretty serious case of dyslexia. And no parents. That's not a question you want to ask them directly. It's something I need to ask them because it's so subtle. They would.A lot of kids say little, and I. I have to kind of pull out the answer to find out what that is. Those questions seem simple, but they're really quite complex. Okay, but if they say yes to the first one, it's add, ADHD or mild dyslexia.Yes to the second one, it's severe dyslexia. I just saved you $5,000 in a neuropsych. All right, now, now, how do we treat this? So let's just.What we need to do is to get these kids to bring their. Their reading and writing up to the end of second, beginning, third grade level. Show you how to do this in a few minutes.

Okay.

The key thing you need to understand is my idea on reading. I don't teach reading. My idea on writing is if they can write it correctly, they can read it. If you can write it, you can read it.Save so much time and effort. So what you want to do is we're going to take a list of 10 things the kids like and 10 things they don't like.So when we're talking about Izzy, the first thing that she likes the best is let's call it animals. Okay, here's how we do it. Not an iPad, not an iPhone, not handwriting typing on a real keyboard, typically on a laptop.You're going to type out hero plus sign. What are we talking about? And she's going to copy that. That's okay.Default writing strategy of copying Professor James Collins strategies for struggling writers. Then we're going to switch hero for Izzy. Hero plus sign. What are we talking about?Then we're going to take the first thing from her list that she really likes and replace it for what are we talking about? So we got hero plus sign. What are we talking about? Switch hero for Izzy. Izzy plus sign. What are we talking about?We're gonna replace what are we talking about? With the first thing on her list. Animals. Izzy plus sign. Animals. Do you see how we got there?

Yeah.

Okay, now, when I do this at major dyslexia conferences, I stump well over half the special ed teachers. I'm going to ask you the simplest questions you've ever been asked. Answer them exactly and it'll work if you don't do what I ask. Exactly.It's not going to work.

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Are you ready?

Yes.

Okay. Does Izzy like or dislike animals?

Izzy likes animals, but that's not what I asked you. Oh, what did you ask? What did you ask me?

Okay, this is what this. This is an epiphany moment.

Okay.

This is how your audience is going to understand what dyslexia is really like.

Okay.

All right. I asked is, does Izzy like or dislike animals? And as every educated person I practically run this through.You automatically answered it correctly, added the S to make the sentence correct. A dyslexic does not know how to add the S. Okay, so again, I want to go back. Let's look at the science. I'm showing you the brain scan again.What you're. What you just did is very much the back part of the brain. We got nothing going on back in the brain. Basically.

Okay.

I got to use the front part of the brain.

Okay.

Okay. So if you're a parent, and I'm not about to scare you if your kid is fourth grade and above, I'm going to give you an example of what it.What this takes. Windward School in the Upper east side of Manhattan. They have a 98% success rate.It is literally four to five years at 75,000 a year to correct the problem at that point. Yes. And parents tend to sue school districts to send them that.And even if you do that, if you send them to a boarding school like Gao, they now, you adopted your child, and now they're off to boarding school if you're super wealthy, which you don't want either. So here's how we fix this. We ask Izzy, do you like or dislike animals? And she's going to say, like. And then she said, replace it with a plus sign.Izzy like animals. I'm going to ask Izzy, read it out loud. Does that sound generally correct? She's going to say, no. Then I'm going to say, fix it.She writes, izzy likes animals. Okay.See how we got her to add the S. The one for the super rich families is Orton Gillingham multisensory structured language approach that you seeing, touching, hearing. And it would take you two years to learn. That process takes forever. So with my process, the older the child is, the quicker they will pick it up.But the traditional approach, the older you are, the longer it takes to pick it up.

Mm.

So now what we have is we got that correct. Let's now move on. Do you see how like and dislike is a form of word analysis.

Yes.

Now we're gonna go because. Reason one, after because is a form of articulation. Do you see that? No. I wanted to make sure you absolutely understand this.

Say it again.

Like and dislike is a form of word analysis.

Yes.

Number two. After because. And when we answer, like, Lizzy likes animals because, you give me a reason that is a form. After because is a form of articulation.

Yes.

You see that? That matches up with how the brain. Dyslectic brain actually works.

Okay.

The overact. Different part. Okay, so give me a reason, a simple reason why Izzy likes animals.

Because they're cute.

Because they're cute. Izzy likes animals because they're cute. Let me guess. She's having a hard time spelling cute.

Yeah, probably. Like, she wouldn't put the e on it. Probably.

Okay, so here's how we get her to fix that. First thing that we do is we tell Izzy before she puts the period down, she can ask any question.If she asked, did I spell cute correctly, and assuming not, you could type out cute and have her copy it. Kids don't typically do that. They drop the period. Here's how we get them to have this autocorrect.If once you drop the period, you tell her if there's a major, and I mean major, grammatical mistake or a spelling mistake, she has to retype the entire sentence, okay? And she's going to say, I'm not going to make that mistake again. And she does, usually between three and 13 times.

Okay.

Once. As you get more and more into it, the more and more deeper they're concentrating, they keep saying, I'm not going to make that mistake.And they keep making it. And then once they get up around 10 to 12 times, they're concentrating so deeply you can see sweat coming down the forehead. Sometimes.That's where the magic happens. Because eventually what you're going to do is you're going to stop copying and leave it up to them.Leave that up to the parents when they're ready for that. All right, so you have them do that, and they finally get it correct.And as they keep doing this, remember we're doing this for 20 likes and 20 dislikes until they can do this on their own, each step with no copying. All right?

Okay.

So we do that with reason one, and then reason one and reason two. We connect it with a glue word end, and then reason one, reason two, and reason three. This is 80 sentences. So Izzy at nine.It might take a month or two to go through this, but Then at that point you're looking at increasing writing to wherever she is now to the end of second beginning, third grade level. It's that simple.

Why is it on a keyboard only? Because I'm thinking of her and like, she doesn't really know even how to use a keyboard at this point.Like she can't find because they're in all different places. She's not used to it. I'm just wondering, why not use pen and paper or pencil and paper?

Okay, because. Let me go back to my original study. We took the two most motivated students one year. They scored in the 70th percentile of entering grad students.And then I said, I'm going to give you a much easier prompt. And I said, handwrite it. The person evaluating it was Dr. Holitzko, a SUNY distinguished professor in psychology.The best the SUNY system had, State University of New York system had. She came back and said, it's a hard stretch for me to make this the 30th percentile.I think I should not get back to the six because the grammar sucks. Because when you're handwriting it, instead of hitting the letter W, you're doing this.It's so much mental energy taken away from what I'm trying to show them how to do, which is already maxed out. The kid has to learn to type. Okay. I don't care if they're doing this.I've had parents come back with the same thing and say, you know, my kid's taking 30 minutes to type out a three word sentence. I said, okay, they'll get fast, faster, eventually. Mm. Okay. It's just something they gotta learn. And handwriting is out.You can't do this on an iPad or an iPhone. It has to be literally touching the keyboards. I've tried every variation for the past 20 years. That's what it is.

Interesting. Okay. It's interesting because she is actually a really wonderful reader.She can read really, really well, but she does struggle still with writing and spelling.And I always think it's interesting because, like, she can read these words, but then when she goes to write them, what she sees when she's reading doesn't carry over to what she does when she's trying to like, write. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yeah. We call that dysgraphia. So that is quite common with. If you ever got her IQ tested, you'd probably find that it's quite high.

Yeah, I could imagine.

So when you're dealing with ADHD or addiction, it's kind of like dealing it with Dyslexia. Dyslexia is by far the most, the worst ones. It's just they pick it up a lot faster and it's just a lot easier thing process to fix.But essentially what's going on so you understand what's. How we do this is number one for an intervention period. We have to focus on the kid's speciality. Let me give you an example. Just had this completed.I have full permission to tell a story. Her name is Kimberly. She's homeschooling. Her son Reid, who's dyslexic. Last December 27th, I spoke to her around that time.She spent 700 bucks to have the state of Ohio test her kids. She's a homeschooling mom. Reed, 10 years old, fifth grade, scored a 190 on his test. That placed him at the beginning, third grade level.When he's halfway through fifth grade. So he's about a year and a half behind.

Okay.

He was, if he was in public school and special ed, he was supposed to increase by about 1.86 points for the rest of the school year. He didn't do that. He increased by 20 points. Depending on how you look at it, you're looking at 7 to 11 times the increase expected.He scored a 210, which was actually a little bit above average for end of fifth grade. So then his friends came to him and said, reid, we want you in public school to be with us socially.If that was December, him going in January, he would have been placed in special ed, away from his friends, frustrated like crazy because of what his mom did. I worked with her for half an hour a week. She worked with Reed about three half hour sessions a week. He's now in normal classes, doing just fine.He did what parents have been dreaming about, and his mom did it in a little under six months.

So what exactly are you doing? Are you like reprogramming the brain or like, how do you explain, like, what it is that you're exactly doing to help these kids so much?

Here's what's going on. The first part is I just showed you the process. But number one, we have to deal with the kids speciality, their area of extreme interest and ability.Parents freak out. They're like, they won't go through all this work. I said, in their speciality, they will. So let me give you an example.This is the most popular book when I do this privately, by far, Walt Disney's biography, all thousand pages of it. It's called the Triumph of the American Imagination. Here's why? Have you ever been to Disneyland or Magic Kingdom and Disney World?

Disneyland.

Okay. You walked through the door, it's Main street, usa. Do you feel the Disney magic?

Sure. Yeah.

Okay. That Disney magic is two universal themes. The first one is so easy to find. The second one, I've never had a parent find it.So what the kids will do is they'll come to me and they'll say they really, really want to know what the Disney magic is. What are these two universal things? I said, okay, but the work you're going to have to go through and they don't care. They want to know.So I said, when you enter Main Street USA, that's Marceline, Missouri. That's where it came from. What was there between 5 and 10?And I give them that section which is about 3,600 words written at the 9th or 10th grade level. I typically work with kids. A lot of them are 10, 10 years old.In fifth grade when I start this, I tell them, you're going to listen to your audiobook while following along with your finger trying to answer a specific question. What is Walt like? What does he dislike? What does he want to do?As they're going through that, they're going to find words, they don't know absolutely what it means. So then they're going to type out the word.Then they're going to Merriam Webster's online dictionary and they're going to find their definition and they're going to type it out. Okay. How many times for you do you need to type out a word in a definition until you know it permanently?

Three or four maybe.

Okay. Dyslexic, might be 5, 10, 20, who knows? It's some number. Yeah. Okay.They're going to do that for the entire 3,600 words and then they're going to repeat the process until they can just read it. Okay. And I hear parents all the time, my kid won't do it. Yeah, my kid won't do this. They can't. This is crazy. But it's in their speciality.They want to know. I show them how with this particular girl, which is about common now what she's at age 12, same thousand page book which is written for 17 year olds.Her mom, who has a master's degree said because now her daughter found the second universal thing, asked her mom to find it. She can't. That parents never have. Then her, her 12 year old daughter, as 12 year old daughters will do in this situation. Mom, it's right there.And the mom is dumbfounded. She said, I read that so many times. How did I miss that? And I said, you have a master's degree in this situation.Your 12 year old daughter, your dyslexic daughter can comprehend better than you can. The daughter is now five grade levels ahead of where she's supposed to be.I've had students do that in as little as six months and as late as, you know, sometimes it takes an extra year. Parents don't really care because the kid's doing this mostly on their own. They're doing the start and stop times.So we have to focus on their speciality during that intervention period. That's number one.Number two is what I learned from dyslexic professors, the ones who made it full professors, that you cannot ask a dyslexic this question. And schools do it all the time. Okay, what effect did Martin Luther King's famous I have a dream speech have on the 1960 civil rights movement?That's a general to a specific question. You can't do that with a dyslexic who's way behind. It's like grabbing fog, nothing to latch onto.So what we need to do is we need to ask a specific to a general question. What personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech? So you do that.We go to the biography, we find an answer, that answer gives us another question, which we find an answer, we keep going. That forces the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.Because the front part of our brain is so active with little to no organization, this fixes that. As that happens over time, our spelling and grammar self correct in huge ways.

So let me stop you there and just ask.A lot of my listeners will be taking in children that they have no sort of history or background for the children in terms of their medical background or family history or anything. What are some of the signs that a child might be dyslexic or maybe should be tested?

What you're looking at is writing is an issue. Typically in the early ages, you're going to find it showing up more in reading.Boys will act out more, so they tend to draw more attention to the problem. Girls tend to just suffer and take it.Okay, so what you need to focus on is if you see a real disparity in reading and writing, you need to do that as quickly as possible. Because here's the statistics. If you want to know how to get this tested in kindergarten. It's really simple.Again, here's the book again from Yale if you Google Yale dyslexia, you get to the International center for Dyslexia and Creative Studies and you just click on that, contact them. They can tell you how in kindergarten a teacher can inexpensively test for dyslexia and it's really accurate.Okay, okay, this is, I'm going to tell you the ideal. If you do that in kindergarten, then they will tell you that they have all these programs that are proven very successful.You're going to want to have the schools implement those research based programs because K through 3 we learn to read. Fourth and above, we read to learn. The entire goal is to get the child at grade level by the end, end of third grade.If you do that, they're going to be fine. If you don't, it's a 911 emergency. If you do what? If you do that under the ideal situation, you might be a little behind by the end of third grade.Your school district can catch you up with that. If you don't, if you wait until fourth grade, I'm going to. Because New York State's trying to completely DO K through 5 education.If you go to Dyslexia Task Force, New York State Education Department, you can download the report. Why? Senator Brad Hoyleman Segal is a Rhodes scholar and a Harvard grad for law school. One of the nicest, most intelligent guys I've ever met.This is his story with, with his adopted daughter. Her name is Sylvia and this is all public record. I'm not betraying confidences. He found out in fourth grade that she was probably dyslectic.He spent $8,000 on a neuropsych. His family can afford that. And came back, she's dyslexic. He said, how do I fix it?They said, well, if you came to us in kindergarten, beginning of first grade, you know, it takes some effort, but it's not that hard to fix. Now in fourth grade, she's in a $70,000 a year private school for probably four or five years. He can afford that. His family can support that.He said, why can't other people? So they went and they created a task force. And then they said, how do we implement this? And then we're New York State, we're higher tax than anybody.Sorry. California, we spend more, we spend more per kid than anybody. And we can't afford the intervention they came up with.They took the 100 best people said, here's how we do it with modern, the best current technology. We can't afford it. And the teachers rebelled because they can't take weeks of additional training after what they've already been asked to do.So my process, I work with Evelyn Whitebay on that. She was on the dyslexia task force three to four times as successful as a typical special ed teacher.We can go into a high, into a school district, and kindergarten through high school. So here's how you generally solve reading and writing issues. And we can do it in under six hours.

Okay. As a training with the teachers?

Yeah, they're teachers. They have masters teachers have master's degrees, two year master's degrees and a lot of years of work experience.And plus, in New York state and like the suburban school districts, you have 300 applicants per spot. So they're the top 1% of their profession. Parents, you know, said Kimberly learned this.I worked with her for half an hour a week and she did what parents dream about in a little under six months.

Wow.

It's that simple.

Are you training other people to teach this or is it just like you?

I have my, my assistant's name is Basma. She's about ready to go to the United Kingdom to test this. She finished all but her dissertation.She's going to be going to the United Kingdom to try to do a test for this. You know, like 100, 200 students, control groups and all that stuff for their dissertation.I train parents with this directly because it's typically what we do is we have everything online and then we have a weekly webinar where we answer questions.

So what would you recommend to parents who don't have a lot of money and they, you know, they suspect or they know that their child has dyslexia? What can they do? What's the most economically feasible thing for them to do?

Well, that's why we set up our system the way we set it up. If you go to dyslexia classes dot com, that's plural with an ask dyslexiaclasses dot com it says download free report. All right?You just click on that, answer a few questions. You get a report that says the three reasons your child's having trouble in school, due dyslexia, and how to get tested.And then you set up a time to speak with me and your child for about a half an hour. Where I go over all this. Okay, at the end, I need to ask the child about that, you know, the ideas flying around their head.Question, maybe another question. They say, yes. And I say, is this how you'd like to overcome your concerns? And then what we do is we work with families on a yearly basis.Why can we do this? For an affordable rate. It's very simple. All the information's online. You get it, you follow it. We have a weekly webinar day.We ask you to submit your questions by Saturday and then we answer them the following week in the webinar. And then we work with you on a yearly basis and you see big increases. And we just do that until you're at grade level or above.

This is maybe a dumb question, but I just want to put it out there because in my mind, dyslexia always had something to do with letters being flipped.

Yeah. But I want you to understand it's like a symptom for some kids.

Okay.

So I want you to imagine like a cold, if you have a stuffy nose that we treat with medication, that's a symptom, but it's really in your chest. The real issue with dyslexia is its lack of organization in the front part of the brain.

Got it.

That's the problem. We have to force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.And people will say, why should I trust you over everybody else? Well, I've been training New York State, New York City public school teachers in the surrounding areas for the past 10 years in this.People have just had wild success. Because I went through this myself. I doubt you're going to find somebody who's an adult who has a first grade reading and writing level.I generally have the worst case people have ever seen. And I've consistently shown parents, teachers to get results for thousands of students over the last, over the last 20 years.

Amazing. And what does that do to a child's self esteem? Talk about that for a minute. How does that affect their self esteem?

Oh, two things. One of two things happens. They become the most motivated, fiercely independent students you'll ever meet. Or they become crushed as a person.There's not much in the middle. The kids in the middle are just resigned to going through things and they muddle through until they essentially get into grad school.But generally you become hyper motivated or you become crushed. Yeah, just, you know, the school district is not trying to crush your dyslexic kid. But I'm going to go back to the science again.Showing the, the brains. You see that massive overactivity in the back part of the brain.Schools are designed for the 80 plus percentage of the kids who aren't dyslexic or ADD or ADHD.

Right.

But let me give you an example of how effective this is, for me, the worst sport in the world I'm at. I'm just horrible at is basketball. How about for you? Is there a sport you're just horrible at?

Oh, God, I'm bad at dribbling. Basketball.

Okay.

Not good at dribbling.

Now, I want you to imagine if we said your ability to dribble is how we're going. That's going to be the. We're going to make your monetary. How much money you make based on that skill, Right? But we're going to accommodate you.We're going to get you $500 Jordan sneakers. We're going to get you $1,000 basketball. And we're going to make the people you're competing against have used Walmart equipment.

Okay?

But it doesn't matter. Do you see how they will still beat you every time?

Of course.

Yeah. Okay. That's what it's select most saying, we're going to accommodate you in school. It doesn't work.So what I'm telling you is for the intervention period, you need to focus on their speciality, specific to the general word analysis, followed by articulation. Once they're at grade level and you put them back in, like with Reid, Kimberly said, well, he really doesn't like writing for math.So she talked to him, talked to the teacher. They worked it out and basically had to say, reed, you can do this. You are going to do this.They're testing because they really don't like doing things outside their speciality. We really don't. Once they understand that, they have to. There's some quirks along the way, but they're fine.They're going to stay in gen ed and they're going to be okay.

These are measures that will help the brain, the dyslexic brain, to function more fluidly. But it's not like it's going to fail. Fix, dislike, like you'll always have dyslexia. Correct.

Well, what. Let me give you an example. I use a book called the Craft of Research, okay. Which was designed for students who went to the university.It's based on context. Problem solution. What I've been describing is the context. Get everybody on the same page.At the problem level, I show students how to do body paragraphs that are so advanced they meet everything required by the New York State Regents Exam for high school students. And I pull things from the Craft of Research called. Are you familiar with what a warrant is? Okay. Most people don't. It's that advanced.It's a way of summarizing Your thinking, working with quotes. Remember, this is. This was designed for PhD students. Reid is starting to learn that process now. In 6th grade. His mom keeps working with him.So I show you how to do things that are much more advanced. People think dyslexia is a reading issue. It's not. I can show dyslexics to read better than half the kids at Harvard. And I'm not joking about that.What you're going to find is, and this is what I found in law school, is that we will always read slower, we will always write slower, but once we organize our thinking, we can think in orders of magnitude faster than our classmates.So when I was taking multiple choice questions for property, you're supposed to read the multiple choice question, and then the answer is, then think for three to five minutes. Because it's so advanced, how they're trying to trick you. I didn't think for three to five seconds instantaneously. I said, that's the answer.Click, hand it in. I'm done in less than half the time, twiddling my thumbs. Almost nobody else is finished. And I always have the highest grade.

Yeah.

So the further your education, the more important, the better it gets. Really hits in grad school. But remember, we read slower, we write slower, we can think in orders of magnitude faster.And with advanced artificial intelligence, we're so much more productive.

How so? What do you mean by that?

Well, to give you an example, if you know the craft of research, context, problem, solution. When I mean solution, I mean, let's say Romeo and Juliet.Could you write something completely original in Romeo and Juliet that nobody's ever written before? That matters.

No, probably not.

I show students how to do it every time. Every time. That's what the craft of research is all about. It's been reduced to a formula. So I would have students who graduate from college.One example, I had a student, his boss wanted him to use artificial intelligence and to come up with something, give us something that the company can use. He didn't know anything about AI didn't like it. I said, I've trained you in the craft of research. Go talk to it, type with it, figure out context.He did problem. He says, I hate this. And I said, well, welcome to the adult world. Then he went and did solution.His boss found he was about the only kid who actually came up with something that they could use, like actually used to help the division out. And within a week, he's training his peers on how to do AI when he knew nothing about it because he found out by Trial and error.What worked with context, problem solution. So that's how powerful this is. So it allows you to basically prompt engineer your brain. Why is this important?Chat GPT who came up with this expects to have their revenue increased by 15 times. They're investing like $850 billion in just computing things over the next five, eight years. You're going to see these agents start taking away.The CEO of Anthropic thinks half the college kids jobs are going to be gone in the next five years.

Yeah.

So if you know the craft of research, you can not only work with AI, you can guide it. You're going to do so much better financially if you're on the other side. It's going to be horrible.These skills are not only preparing your kid to succeed in school if you go all the way through solution, it's preparing them to be successful with whatever AI throws out.

Got it? Yeah. It seems like a lot of work up front. Like in the beginning maybe the specialty would, you know, trump that and it wouldn't be as bad.But I'm imagining working with my daughter and her just being like, oh my God, this is so arduous. Or like she, you know, it's a, it's, it's challenging, it's hard, it sounds hard. What do you say to that? It's just a muscle that you have

to work or what I say is that's the misconception I get all the time. Because we are going to be working inside her speciality.

Okay.

I just had a kid I spoke with last night. I said, john, what do you dislike? History. I said, well, I have to sign you a homework. Because he said we're going to go ahead with this.And I said, okay, I'm not, this is, I'm not going to have you do this. I'm just wanting to know what your reaction is. I want you to go and study World War II. He's like he would resigningly go ahead and muddle through it.I said, yeah, but that's not your actual homework assignment. He's like, what's my homework assignment? Well, he loved videos on chemistry and biology. I said, what's your favorite video? He perked up.He said it was this particular video. I said, your homework assignment is to go and watch it. He's like, really? Yeah. So then I said, I told his dad, send me the URL.I'm going to go to 5pro ChatGPT 5pro and I'm going to have it come up with an essay based on his grade Level, exact grade level. And then we're going to start going through the process that I described to you. And he's just incredibly enthusiastic about it.Parents are shocked when you do that when you're dealing with a kid's speciality. They are so motivated once you're in that speciality. But the school doesn't want them in the speciality.They want them to go through five books, 10 books a year or whatever. It's the exact opposite.

Yeah. Interesting. Is this hereditary or is it. Do they know? Okay.

It's absolutely hereditary.

Okay. Are there focusing medications that work in conjunction with this or is that unnecessary?

No, they're trying all sorts of stuff. I'm just going to let you know what the wealthy use.

Okay.

Dr. Orton, that approach, Wharton passed away in 1948.

Okay.

Hasn't changed a lot since. So are there things medication you can try? There are some things at the margin that you might try.My concern is like your daughter's Izzy's ADD or adhd. Most doctors are not trained in dealing with this. They over medicate all the time. I was over medicated so much.I was one of the few with the opposite happened. Instead of making me calm, it made me more crazy. And then they maxed out what they could legally give me.And I was on the principal's office all the time until I started flushing it. There are a few well qualified doctors who specialize in ADD or a psychologist or psychiatrist.You want them to be a specialist where they have a lot of specialized training. Only go to them for medication because otherwise doctors will prescribe pretty much anything.

Okay.

And it's not good for the kid. What I just gave you is how do we solve 80, 90% of this? All right. And then we continue on doing body paragraphs and more advanced body paragraphs.I don't give you a complete solution. I give you a solution that's strong enough so their gen ed teacher can come in and start effectively working with it.

Does this type of training help with other organizational issues? I'm just wondering, does it carry over into like life skills?

It helps out in generally everything.

Where can people, I think you gave it before, give it again. Where can they go to get more information and possibly start this training with their children?

What you do is you Simply go to dyslexiaclasses.com class with an S plural dyslexiaclasses.com this is Download free report.Just click on that, answer a few questions, get your get your documents as the three reason your child's having trouble in School due to dyslexia, how to get past it and set up a 30 minute time on my online calendar and we'll walk you through this. Talk to your kids. They will tell you, I don't want to do this because they tried everything and didn't work.I tell them I went through what they've went through. I asked them the questions, how do you know about me? I said, well, I've been through it. This is how you want to overcome your concerns? Yes.And I talk to parents in a way that they can afford and we just, we get them started.

Okay. And should they loop in the school if it's not already a part of the child's IEP or.

Yes, but what I'm. Here's the problem. School does five or ten books for English each year. As they get older, I'm going to have you on one book.

Okay.

All right. They teach from the general to the specific. It's like asking us to grab. Fuck. I'm showing you how to teach from specific to the general.They are certainly not doing word analysis followed by articulation. They're doing stuff that doesn't work like that.When I asked you about basketball and dribbling, they're going to accommodate your kid and it doesn't work.

Got it.

So until you get them as a parent till grade level, you're pretty much on your own. Once they are at grade level and the school will tell you when that's the case, then you can put them into normal classes.They will grumble, there will be some minor things and they will be fine.

Okay. All right. But you should still loop in the school and let them know.

But you can ask them to diagnose your kid. This is under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Right.

Depending on the state that you're in, some are much stronger. Like in New York State, you can. Now here's how you do it.In New York State, you go to your pediatrician and say, does this kid look like they're dyslexic? Somebody of authority. Usually it's a pediatrician. They write to the insurance company. I think this kid's dyslexic.Now the insurance company has to spend $5,000 on a neuropsych. If you choose to spend more than 5,000, it's on you. But most of them, you can get it in that amount.But just from a practical point, you go into your insurance company. I think my kids, dyslexia, spend five grand. That's the intent of the legislation. You go to a pediatrician, and they think it's dyslexia.Now you got something that they can't get away from.

Okay, that's a great tip. Doesn't actually test for it, or do they test for. For it?

A lot of them will.

Huh.

But they have people with master's degrees who do the evaluation, and they're of questionable value.

Gotcha.

And New York State spent all the time on this legislation. Neuropsych is done by a PhD psychologist with a lot of additional training. Okay. It's like two days of testing, then they got to write it up.And it's literally. It averages about $5,000 and the insurance company has to pay for it in New York State. And it's.It actually tells you what's going on in a much better time frame. When I work with kids, I'll ask them those two questions, and based on that answers, I don't. A neuropsych is nice, but I don't need it.Parents told me they would rather put the money towards solving the issue, and they would say, can we solve this for $5,000? And I would say, in a lot of instances, yes, we can. And they're like, they're shocked at that.

Right. Okay. I love that. That's a great place to end. Russell, thank you so much for your time today.

Okay, thanks for having me on.

This has been the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt, Produced by Aquarius Rising. Original music composed by Joe Fulginetti.For more information or to stay in touch, visit From Foster to Forever.com. that's from Foster the number two Forever.com. and stay connected with us on Instagram at Foster to Forever podcast.That's Foster the number two Forever podcast. We'll see you next time.

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