Parenting Solutions for Teen & Pre-Teen Education & Behavior

16: Solve Dyslexia With Simple Educational Steps

• Ryan Kimball + Mike Tyler Educators & Behavior Modification Experts • Season 4 • Episode 3

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What if dyslexia isn’t a life sentence but a familiarity gap you can close with a simple plan? We dig into the practical side of helping kids and teens read with confidence by focusing on what actually trips them up: a small set of letter-sound patterns and the sequence they learn them in. With 26 letters and a finite group of common letter combinations, reading becomes less of a mystery and more of a map you can follow at home.

We start by flipping the script on labels and overwhelm. Instead of chasing diagnostics, we show you how to back up to text your child can read smoothly, bank quick wins, and then move forward one sound pattern at a time. Along the way, we share the Look, Learn, Practice formula that ties everything together: inspect what’s on the page, learn the precise sound and meaning, and practice out loud until accuracy turns into ease. Reading aloud, short daily reps, and clear feedback help wire sight to sound and meaning.

Hands-on tools matter, too. We explain how to use Play-Doh, tiles, or blocks to turn abstract letters into tangible chunks kids can build, swap, and blend. That tactile step slows the moment so the individual can notice what changes and why. As decoding gets easier, comprehension rises, attention frees up, and motivation grows. We talk about agency—how kids shift from being taught to choosing what to learn—and why letting them chase interests like sports or music turns reading into a habit rather than a hurdle.

If you’re a busy parent, you’ll leave with a weekend-by-weekend plan: validate what’s known, target one or two new letter combos, mix in read-aloud practice, and end with an easy win. Over time, small steps compound into fluent, confident reading and stronger study skills. Ready to turn mystery into method and help your child love books again? Follow the show, share this episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review to help more families find these tools.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Parenting Solutions for Teen and Pre-Ten Education and Behavior. Today we are going to tackle a subject that is probably pretty formidable to most people who experience it and parents who have children. What we're going to talk about is dyslexia and understanding and how there really is a very simple solution that will probably solve the vast majority, maybe all of the people who are listening to this podcast and have children who have dyslexia, or maybe have it themselves. So let's dive right into that. You are here today with Mike and Ryan, and we're going to cover this and give you some solutions right now. Okay, Mike, over to you.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Well, yeah, this uh this comes up all the time. In fact, um I I just met a young mom uh a few weekends ago when I was visiting with my brother out of town. We got together, I went to a comedy club, and I just happened to be up really early uh downstairs in the lobby getting some coffee, and I asked this young lady if she had kids. Oh, she's got one daughter. How old? 11 years old. How's she doing in school? Well, she has dyslexia and comprehension problems. Boom. I can't let something like that go. It's the simplest thing. What does that really mean? I mean, these are the these are these are terms, probably medical terms. I don't even know. But it uh um it doesn't matter what uh the medical terminology is or the diagnosis is or whatever, because all it really means from an educational point of view is the fact that they're mixing up the letters. Okay. They're mixing up the letters, they're they're reading things backwards, or it's just it's just their familiarity, the child, even the adult. I've I've I've met adults who have told me that they have uh dyslexia, and you go, okay, well, that just means that they haven't learned all of the letters and letter combinations and the sounds that they make, and how those letter combinations and sounds add up to the words that we use every day. And there's not like a billion of them. I mean I had asked this one girl, um can you count from 100 backwards to zero? She goes, Yeah, of course. I go, okay. Well, can you count from Z backwards to A? She goes, no. I go, there's only 26 letters. You know, like why how could we not know that? Well, they don't emphasize that that's important in school. Why would you need to learn the alphabet forwards and backwards? Well, just familiarity. You can count backwards from 100 to 1 because you understand what those numbers are. And if if you are really familiar with the 26 letters and the, oh, I don't know how many there are, 50, 60, 75 letter combinations like CH, which starts out the word chew, but also starts out the word chord, like a musical chord. Two different sounds, and these have to be learned. And they have to be learned well, and they have to be learned in a certain sequence, certain, uh, just like my background back here, you know, row by row, brick by brick, you have to build, you have to build the understanding of these simple words, and they get into more and more complex words. But there's not there's not a hundred thousand combinations of letters. There's just a certain number. And that you can look them up, you can Google this sort of thing, or whatever search you want to do. There are books that list them, list them out. I have gobs of books, and we have books available for the parents, uh, free downloads, all that sort of thing. But what do you do with this? What do you do with these um lists of words and letter combinations? Well, let's back it up to something that the child can read. Okay, find out where where they are in this sequence of learning these uh letter combinations and words, and uh we we back it up to something they absolutely have mastered and walk them forward. And we can walk them forward both by looking at text, but you can add a little bit of interest and participation by getting some play-doh and having them start to make letters and words out of Plato. Let them let them wrestle around with how to make uh the word cat, C-A-T, right? And you could even have them write out on a little piece of paper or uh construction paper or something like that, art paper, the C, the A, and the T, and have them stick it into their version of a Plato, C, A, and T. And then they have to be able to recognize that that's the word cat. And then boom, forward from there until they are looking at and understanding large words. They know the letters that go to make up the sounds, and they understand what the word means. Dyslexia and comprehension problems solved. It's as simple as that. One step at a time.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. Yeah, and for me it's so interesting because I've had people I know um with kids that have dyslexia or have been diagnosed with that, and it's such a nightmare. I mean, some they get there's so much upset around it, and there's so much um, well, this child is being held back because of dyslexia and lack of comprehension, and you know, they have to go into a different class sometimes. And this for the solution to be as simple as take the words they don't know yet and put them into play-doh or some sort of clay and make sure they know, have an understanding and comprehension of that, and that's it, and boom, poof, it's gone. It's it's just I think it's really such a service for parents to realize that and just start that simplicity going forward. Now, you say it's it's handled that simply and they have to understand, but let's dive a little more into how we create that level of comprehension so as they get the dyslexia portion of the situation handled, they actually develop the level of comprehension they need to use this information they're studying.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, sure. So um in uh one of our books, actually, a couple of our books, there's this magic formula that's given for uh becoming competent. Uh one of our favorite subjects at the competence institute, right? And teens and preteens can be brought into a level of ability um simply by looking at things, actually looking, inspecting, and there has to be something there for them to look at. Right? So that when we're talking about reading and understanding, we're talking about the the words, the letters, um but there's associated with that there's there's uh the sounds, okay. So so you can't look at sounds exactly, but you can hear the sounds. And that's where the reading out loud comes in and practicing saying those words, and it takes and that's the second part of the formula. It's look, learn, and practice. Or that's the the the third part of it. It's lots and lots of practice. They have they have to be brought about uh an understanding by looking at the words, looking at in in some cases the expanded, you know, the play-doh or the you can use wooden blocks, right? Anything to give a little bit more hands-on something that they can actually see and look at, something that's that's got some physical mass there, right? And uh so then it's learning that this is the word, this is the word cat, this is the word, you know, when they get into bigger words. Uh we're not gonna go into a terminology or a vocabulary lesson here, but you know, big long words. But vocabulary itself, wow, that's a that's a a mouthful and and quite a lot to look at. And uh and then what does that mean? And what's the difference between vocabulary and nomenclature? I mean, this is like high school level stuff, or maybe it's only junior high, right? I probably didn't get into differentiating between those things until probably high school, but um but I didn't really learn how to study until in in my twenties, and and hence the passion for addressing the teens and preteens who can just be taught so easily to decipher the English language, right? By looking, learning, practicing, practicing reading out loud, practicing pronouncing these things correctly, clarifying what exactly does that mean and why does it mean that? Where where did this word come from? Or who who came up with the idea to call this thing that or this action that, or uh describing something that way. That's where we get into derivations, and there are different levels of uh address, different books that start very simple and get very complex, and you have to go simple. So that understanding is 100% at all times.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um one thing that I I love seeing is when somebody gets these simple basics in, all of a sudden, complex topics they couldn't understand or weren't smart enough to figure out kind of fall in their lap, and they're able to move towards that higher education that a lot of people are interested in for their children, or just an ability to be competent in life and achieve what you want to and learn how to think and all of that. Can you speak a little bit to how solving dyslexia and comprehension at an early age allows a person to really come into their own and become who they want to be as a young adult?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Um a young child going to school is usually just at the receiving end of being taught certain things. But when you teach a child at that early age, preteen, early teens, how to study, how to attack things that they want to learn, how to look up information and clarify and gain the knowledge and go scattering through books, searching for things. You've put them in control of what they can learn. And so if they're interested in sports, they can pursue that. If they're interested in music, they can pursue that. But they're doing it from the perspective of they're gonna go out and study that thing. Okay, it's it's a totally different thing than just being walked into a classroom and we're now gonna teach you this stuff. Oh, and there's gonna be an exam, and it's very important, and it's like right, this is how it goes from about third grade on. Um no, you can you can put the child in in charge of their own reading, make it so that they're comfortable with raising their hand either in class or at home or asking questions, clarifying what things mean, they're adding to their vocabulary, and they're plowing through books, hopefully lots and lots of books. And we're creating someone who loves reading, loves finding out new information, and then their own natural interests will just guide them through. They'll guide them through the library or the bookstore or wherever, and um they'll choose their own books, and they should be allowed to choose their own books and read what they want to read, and always just coaxed or encouraged. Uh what is it about that that's interesting? And you you can guide their interests and and help just feed their interests so that they um are falling in love with learning. And that's how it's done.

SPEAKER_00:

So cool. Great stuff. Well, let's bring it back to uh since this is supposed to be we we're like, okay, dyslexia, yeah, that's no problem to handle, and we get off onto other things. But most people who are experiencing this is probably a major thing. Um well I know from the people I've known that it's it's pretty, it's usually pretty intense for the child and for the parents and whatnot. So to wrap up, let's summarize. Um parent has a child who has dyslexia. What is the formula? What are the kind of one, two, three steps that that parent would do with their child in order to solve this situation very simply and straightforward?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So the first thing is we have to back it up. You'll hear us in almost every uh episode, every little sound bite that we create. It's always about backing things up. Backing things up to something that the child can do. Okay, let's find out what they can read and read simply and give them some wins or successes in reading books of that level. Okay, I've had I've had adults, um eight eighteen-year-old high school graduates, uh 18 and up, of course, um, high school graduates going back and reading children's books just to get familiar with reading at that level. Right? So so many instances of like give it give them some successes, give them some wins, and then you just build it up from there. What are they having trouble with? Now, parents don't always have time. I can tell you that the uh the young lady that I met who uh single mom, she's got an 11-year-old daughter, she's sending her daughter to school thinking that they're gonna teach her child how to read and understand things, and it's not happening. The mom's working two jobs, she doesn't have unlimited hours to spend doing this sort of thing. But it's amazing how much a little bit of work pays off because we're not talking about rocket science here, okay. We're not trying to uh teach the child how to uh join Elon Musk's SpaceX program this week, right? What we're trying to do. There's there's 26 letters, and uh I think it I think if I recall it's so it is somewhere in the vicinity of about 75 different letter combinations that need to be learned. Well, uh one or two per weekend, if they're reading at all, they're already somewhere on that scale, right? They they've learned some stuff. Well, good, let's validate that. And let's let's validate the fact that they they can learn. Let's not get into these labels of like, wow, they're a slow learner, they're this or that. It's like that is that's not helpful. That's just that's just that's just an invalidation of the child. They're not a slow learner or a fast learner or anything. They're just a person who either does or does not have familiarity with what's in front of them. And let's back it up to something that they do know and walk it forward from there.

SPEAKER_00:

Simple, easy to do. Like you said, couple of weekends, and in a six months' time, you know, there's uh more than half of those letter combinations, Master.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice, nice. Great. Okay, there you go, parents, or or young adults, if you're listening. Um that is your simple solution for addressing and handling dyslexia with cutting back, where the person's at, finding out what they can do, moving forward from there. And I love the use of play-doh and putting things in some sort of uh clay form. That's always really helpful. So thank you for listening today to Mike and I go over how to address and handle dyslexia and bring up comprehension in your child. We look forward to seeing you or you listening to us in the next episode. Have a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER_01:

Keep on learning.

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Ryan Kimball

Host
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Mike Tyler

Co-host