Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / What is Dyslexia and can it be Cured? w/special guest Tammy Kennington

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What is Dyslexia and can it be Cured? w/special guest Tammy Kennington · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Parenting Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Karen Ferguson, wife, mom, grandmom, and children's book author with a background in K-8 education and a passion for equipping parents to raise confident and God-confident kids.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, we'll cover parenting practices for both a practical view and a biblical view.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to help you raise kids with a positive, godly self-image so they can become all they were created to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're busy, so we'll keep it short.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take just five minutes and dive in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to Five Minute Parenting, tips to help you raise competent and God-confident kids.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Today's guest is Tammy Kennington, author, podcaster, duly certified life and mental coach, and prayer practitioner familiar with the impact of trauma, mental health issues, and parenting in the hard places.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: A preschool director and reading therapist, Tammy is the author of five children's nonfiction books.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Her work has been featured in various publications, including Focus on the Family, Crosswalk.com, and Starlight Magazine.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I am so grateful she is with us today to talk on the topic of dyslexia.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Tammy, welcome to the show.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Karen.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to talk with you and share with your listeners.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's great to have you here.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to jump right in with my first question.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, Tammy, how did your career take a turn from the preschool world to reading remediation?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had been in the preschool world for about 14 years as a teacher and then as a preschool director.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when I started noticing my two youngest children struggling with some of the basic components of early reading skills, I knew something was going on and I wasn't getting the answers I needed.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I did a lot of research and discovered that they have dyslexia and both of them were actually diagnosed.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point, I was able to see walk them through reading remediation and saw what an impact it made in their lives.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, just made that change career-wise from and love seeing that happen in other children's lives.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, share with us what is dyslexia and how prevalent is it?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Dyslexia is a brain-based or neurological disorder.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is something that is unexpected and it impacts the phonological component of early literacy skills like decoding words and spelling.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So key parts of that are that it's neurologically based, that it has nothing to do with how smart a child is, because most of these children are incredibly bright children.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a genetic sort of sort of disorder that occurs in an unexpected way.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't expect most of these children to have dyslexia.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the prevalence is about one in five children and adults have dyslexia.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize it was so prevalent.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And is part of that where, if I'm understanding correctly, where um the words get or the letters get mixed up within words, or how they they don't get mixed up so much as um children will memorize the shape of a word rather than being able to distinguish, um distinguish the letters themselves.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we look at letters like P, B, Q, and D, they're very similar in that way.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: No matter which way they turn, they're still they still have a similar form.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So some of the actually some of the things that really set dyslexia and apart is that it has to do with um struggles with directionality, struggles with um just even speech impairments.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might oh that speech impairments are very common with children who um later struggle with decoding and spelling.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And often spelling is more impacted than reading itself.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: But both of those, uh decoding and writing, will often also have um components of struggle with reading comprehension as a result of just having to work so hard because they process reading in a different part of the brain that is not as efficient.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, very interesting.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what are the some of the common myths about dyslexia?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Many of those, I some of those myths are that um kids see letter letters backwards, they don't, they don't, um, or that they're not bright because they are.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it those are things that people and people will often assume.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So um also, as we mentioned, another myth is that it's not common, or that children who struggle with dyslexia are lazy, which is also very untrue.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most children with dyslexia work far harder than their peers in school.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, interesting.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, can it be cured?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot be cured, however, it can be remediated.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So when a child receives early intervention in particular, but intervention at any stage of life is possible.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when someone receives reading remediation using a systematic, explicit, multisensory program, then they're going to develop that alphabetic principle, those really key components that support early reading.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it will actually build, it will build uh and create changes in the neurological pathways so that reading becomes easier and more fluent for them.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that well, that's good that there are things that can be done.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not such a struggle.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were talking before the show, one of my favorite authors had shared that she was dyslexic as a child, and now she's a best-selling author, you know, so there's there's there's hope, there's resources, and that's good news.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Tammy, before we close, is there anything else you would like to share with parents who may be seeing their kids struggle with dyslexia or may have an an eye a thought that this could be an issue for them?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: What do you recommend?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend that if you're noticing perhaps with your preschoolers, that they're struggling to memorize the letters of the alphabet, even though you practice them and read to them, or they're confusing those letters with numbers, or you're noticing those things with your younger elementary all the way through high school and college students, you'll you can go to the International Dyslexia Association website, it's ida.org.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you can look at a series uh of pamphlets and other other flyers that provide a lot of great information and may give you a little bit of clarity.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do find that your child ticks off a lot of those symptoms, then I would recommend reaching out to a professional who can talk to you about screening the or evaluating them for the possibility of having dyslexia.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the first place to start, sounds good, is Ida.org.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we will link to that in the show notes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Tammy, for being here today.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to mention um for listeners that you have some fun freebies.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have a free podcast series called Words and Wonder, where you invite children and their parents to a private faith-focused podcast series that features classic stories, finger plays, nursery rhymes, sing-along songs, and Bible verses for littles, as well as a quick tip for the grown-ups in their lives.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds fantastic.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: You also have a free downloadable e-book, Big Prayers for Little People, a heartwarming Christian children's book that gently guides young readers through the ups and downs of emotions with gentle rhymes and sweet illustrations.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: These sound fantastic, and I just want to encourage our listeners to check these out.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: We will have links to them in the show notes.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll also have a link to Tammy's website so you can connect with her online.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, listeners, thank you for joining us and be sure to check that out and then come back next week for another episode of Five Minute Parenting.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Until then, have a blessed week.