If you’ve been around this website for any length of time you’ve probably heard me refer to dyslexia as a learning difference rather than a learning disability. Kids with dyslexia are not disabled, they learn differently.
Research on the causes of dyslexia published by Dr. Sally Shaywitz back in the early 1990s discovered that people with dyslexia process language differently than people without dyslexia. That is why it is often said that dyslexia is a language processing issue. You can read more about this groundbreaking research in her best-selling book, Overcoming Dyslexia.
Today I am sharing from my nearly 30 years parenting and homeschooling my 7 kids with dyslexia on how kids with dyslexia learn differently and how we can teach them differently to accommodate this different way of learning.
Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below.
Transcript: How kids with dyslexia learn differently
Hello, and welcome to the Beyond the Box Learning podcast my name is Marianne Sunderland, your host. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about how our kids with dyslexia and ADHD learn differently. You may have heard me writing on the blog, Homeschooling With Dyslexia, or on the podcast talking about how I don’t consider things like dyslexia and ADHD disabilities.
Dyslexia: A learning difference, not a learning disability
Now, I know that they can appear to be a disability, especially in the younger years when you’re trying to teach them to read, and they’re struggling, and it seems like a disability, especially when you compare them to traditional learners. But if you dive into even the most basic understanding that we have now of dyslexia and ADHD, these things are really not caused by any kind of intellectual disability. They’re really just a wiring of the brain, a different wiring of the brain. And so in the past 10 years or so of my 30 years of understanding dyslexia. I have come to look at these things as differences.
Okay. So today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of the ways that our kids do learn differently. It’s the middle of the year. I’m recording this on December 30th We’re in between semesters, and it’s a natural time to kind of think back on the previous semester and think about how things are going. A lot of us are starting to think about what we’re going to do next semester, what things we might change.
Homeschool Assessments
And so one of those a good way to start that process is to look back and make some assessments, and if you want some, I’m including some free assessment pages to the show notes of this podcast episode. If you want a little guidance to go through that process. But the reason I created the worksheets is because homeschooling is actually a lot more than academics.
Academics certainly are a big part of homeschooling. But there’s also the running of the household. You know. How is the laundry and the cleaning and the cooking and those kinds of things? How are those things going? What can we troubleshoot there? What areas are we struggling in, and what kinds of things can we do to improve them so that our overall homeschool experience is better.
Same thing with scheduling. Are we too busy at home? Are we too busy like going out and over committed? Or are we home too much, right? Are we having time for self care and doing social things and filling our own tanks as homeschool parents, so that we can pour out, right?
What about relationships? Relationships have a huge impact on how we’re enjoying our time at home. And so it’s a good time of year to kind of look back and assess these different areas of how our homes are running before we move ahead with planning for the next semester. And so, like, I said, you can download the free assessment pages in the show notes below.
I know for me that every time there was a break in the school year, whether it was the middle of the year, like it is now or the summer. I always had this hope that the coming semester would be different. You know that my kids would learn differently, that they would maybe crack the code of reading, that they would learn how to sit still. You know that we’d find just the right curriculum.
And the reality is is that most years were, you know, we just continued to struggle until I learned a couple of things about how our kids learn differently than traditional learners. And now that I’ve been homeschooling for so long, 6 of my 8 kids have graduated, I can look back with this sort of unique perspective and see what was important and what wasn’t. And so I want to share a little bit of that with you guys today.
Kids who learn differently need to be taught differently.
One thing that I learned about how our kids learn differently is that we really need to change the way that we’re teaching. You’ve often heard me say that kids who learn differently need to be taught differently.
Instead of trying to pound our square pegs (kids) into round holes or hoping that our kids will change or this supplement, or this treatment, or this program is going to change the way our kids are experiencing learning.
Repetition or over-exposure to gain mastery
We can change the way we teach. This is a simple concept, but it really makes will make a huge difference in your homeschool. So some common ways that our kids learn differently and can be taught differently are one, they need a lot more repetition, especially with reading.
Dyslexia is considered a language-based learning difficulty, which is basically just means that they have difficulty acquiring language. Their brains are wired kind of for different things. So you may have noticed, if you’ve been teaching them for any more than a day that they forget what you taught them the day before. Right? They just don’t have a natural capacity for remembering things like language or any kind of rote learning, really.
Kids with dyslexia or any language-based learning difficulty need a lot more repetition.
Multi-sensory learning
Another way that we can change the way we teach to better meet their needs is to add more multi-sensory learning or hands-on learning. You may have heard that term, and that is things like with an Orton Gillingham reading program. They will have letter tiles, and they’ll have flashcards, and they’ll have things that you can touch, and we’re incorporating as many of the senses as we can at one time.
So we’re seeing the letter. We’re saying the sound. We’re hearing the sound all at the same time. And we’re accessing different areas of the brain which causes the information to stick better. This is why traditional reading programs aren’t as effective as, say, an Orin-gillingham reading program that is multi-sensory.
Meaningful learning
Another way that we can teach our kids differently that meets their needs better is using meaningful learning. So this is, we want to step away from rote learning. This is why textbooks don’t really work with kids. I mean, some kids have good capacity for memorization, and so they can appear to be successful with textbooks. But most of the time there’s just so much information crammed in that you usually forget most of what you’ve learned through a textbook. So any kind of meaningful learning will make your kids learning more meaningful, more engaging, and more effective. In fact, one of the strengths of dyslexia that is unique to people with dyslexia is an amazing ability to make connections between different ideas.
They see connections that other people don’t see. Learn more about the unique strengths of dyslexia here.
So when we’re using interest led learning, we’re using interests to propel our kids learning. Our kids are generally very curious, unless their love of learning has been squashed out, you know, maybe by a difficult school experience or something like that. But if we can use their interests to encourage them to want to learn, want to read, want to satisfy that natural curiosity. We are cultivating that sort of lifestyle of learning that you often hear homeschoolers talk about.
This is a great way to capture the natural curiosity of a dyslexic child without having them have to read and write and spell.
Accommodations
Another way to support our kids is by the use of accommodations. Accommodations are things that help our kids operate at their intellectual ability, despite the fact that maybe their reading, writing, and spelling skills are not at their intellectual ability. So, for example, audio books, 99% of you are probably already using audio resources.
Right? This is a great way to support our kids access to language and language that is at their intellectual ability to understand. Yet they couldn’t read the book, yet.
Same with, say, a speech-to-text app that converts your words into text on a page. This is a great way to support our kids, being able to express their ideas at their intellectual ability without having to spell words that they don’t know how to spell. Because what do you do when you can’t spell a word right? When you’re writing, you choose a different word. So accommodations are super duper, important. Learn more about the best accommodations for kids with dyslexia here.
Relax and accept the way your kids learn
One of the most important things that I’ve learned over my many years of homeschooling is that kids with dyslexia just learn on a different timetable. They learn to read and write later. They often have trouble mastering their math facts. So that comes later. Forcing kids with dyslexia to read at where a traditional learner would read, say, maybe 6 or7 years old, really just leads to frustration for you and for your child.
It leads to a lot of stress and a lot of lowered confidence in kids. And so I think one of the biggest takeaways that I have from homeschooling my kids with dyslexia for so long is that I need to relax and accept the way that they learn.
We’re also using research-based methods. Right? We’re using multi-sensory. We’re using interests. Right? We’re providing accommodations. These are all research-based methods to help kids with language-based learning difficulties to continue learning and stimulating their brains, and so forth.
And the beautiful thing about homeschooling is that it allows us to modify their learning to meet their unique needs.
And so I hope that this has been helpful.
I will link on the website with this podcast some other resources that may be of interest to you as far as teaching kids the way that they really learn, including my newest book, No More School: Meeting the Educational Needs of Kids With Dyslexia and Language-based Learning Difficulties. There’s a lot to unpack for families who have like most of us gone to traditional schools. And so we really do want our children, or we feel like to be successful we have to be learning like the traditional schools. And I’m here to tell you, if you haven’t heard it before, that that’s not necessarily the case.
Six of my kids have graduated as of this recording and our homeschool looked very different than traditional school. All of my kids are doing really well. They’re completely functional. They’ve gone to college graduating with honors. So I’m here to tell you that you can modify how you teach your kids. You can teach them the way they learn on the timeframe that they’re learning and be confident that you’re doing enough.
And if you are looking for help to make some changes to your own homeschool that maybe better meet the unique learning needs of your kids, I have a program starting next Monday, January 6th called the Semester Reboot.
And essentially what that is is an interactive course where I’m going to walk you step-by-step through first, a detailed assessment of how your homeschool’s been going, what’s working and what’s not, where your goals are and how they might need to be switched up.
And then we’re going to pair all those things up with the unique learning needs of your kids, their ages, and their diagnoses. And we’re going to put a plan in place to move forward that really meets the needs of both your child and where they’re at with learning and meets your needs as a parent to feel confident like you’re doing enough of the right things.
Parents who’ve gone through the Semester Reboot say that it’s made a tremendous difference in their homeschools. Their kids are feeling smart and successful. They’re feeling confident. And so their homeschools are just running much more smoothly. So if you want to learn more about the Homeschool Reboot, there’s a link in the show notes and I’ve also got a link to those free assessment pages as well if that’s what you’re looking for.
Thanks for joining me today, and happy homeschooling.
Join the Homeschool Reboot here.
Additional Resources
Free Downloadable Homeschool Assessments Pages
What is the Orton-Gillingham Approach to Teaching Reading?
The Top 4 Orton-Gillingham Reading Programs to Use at Home
The Unique Strengths of Dyslexia
Best Accommodations for Kids With Dyslexia
My Books
What is Dyslexia? A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Kids About Dyslexia
Dyslexia 101: Truths, Myths, and What Really Works
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