Reading With Tyler

I have been wanting to share about Tyler since he finished up his class several weeks ago, but since I was unable to post pictures for a little while, it was kind of pointless because pictures really do a much better job at explaining what Tyler does now for reading.

First I want to give you a little information about our brains.  God created our brains to work with these tiny little things called neurons.  We have 80-100 billion of these little work horses in our brains.  They have long extensions branching out... like arms, that connect to other neurons.  One neuron could have 40,000 connections to other neurons.  Every time you do anything, thousands of neurons are firing off and they are connecting to thousands more.

When you learn new things, your brain is strengthening the connections that are needed for the new knowledge or skill.  As new skills are learned new neural pathways are being created.  Here is an analogy...

You drive a certain route to work every day that takes you 20 minutes, and one day you turn off by mistake on a different road but realize you have discovered a shortcut that gets you to work in only 12 minutes.  It's not that the road wasn't there before, it's that you didn't know about it.  But now that you discovered it, you probably will start using it all the times.  Pretty soon you are driving that route without even thinking about it, and it seems strange to drive the old way.

That is kind of like what it is for Tyler.  He has been using the same way to read and it takes him a really long time to get to the end of a sentence.  Now we use different activities to train his neurons to take a new path, a faster path, a path that makes it easier to read.

One of these activities is using koosh balls.  It usually takes about 10-15 minutes a day working with the koosh balls.  We go through a sequence of brain exercises, then Ty has to stand on one leg, when he is ready he looks up and I throw him 2 koosh balls at the same time to the middle of his body. We keep this up until he can catch both balls without dropping them.  Then we do it all again, but this time, I throw them to the right side of his body, then the left and then back to the middle again.  This trains the neurons to start new paths.  I have to say that this little exercise really helps Tyler.

There was a day that he really didn't want to do the koosh balls.  So I said that we could skip it for that day if he was able to read.  We went through another orientation process before we opened his book to start reading.  When we opened the book, he looked at the first word, struggled with it, looked up and said... "I need to do the koosh balls Mom."  The best way I can describe what it does for Tyler, when he is disorientated, it's like he is trying to read in a fog.  Some letters are there, some are not and he needs to concentrate really hard to find all the letters and then make them into words.  When he is orientated he can see all the letters perfectly and the words come much easier.  After we worked with the koosh balls that day, we sat back down, he looked at the first word again, saw it immediately and took off reading.

Another part to his reading program is building words.  Ty is a picture thinker.  When he hears or reads a word his mind sees a picture.  There are so many words in the English language that just doesn't  really have a picture to go with them.  Like.... the, is, and, where, when, what, with, like, that, there.... the list is over 240 words.  Usually called Dolch words.

Definition... to live or exist in the past.

What Ty has to do is make pictures in his head for all those words.  So we pick two words a day, Tyler needs to look them up in his dictionary.  I read him the definition and then he needs to build with clay the definition.  He has a set of alphabet letters already built, so he needs to spell out the word with his clay letters.  After all that, he needs to tell me the word, close his eyes, spell it forward and backward and forward again, then tell me the definition of the word.  He takes a mental picture with his brain and then we take a picture for future reference.

Definition... the person who is speaking.

We also do two 10 minute reading sessions daily.  Usually one before he builds his words and then one after.    Before every time he reads we need to orientate him.  All of this takes about 1.5 - 2hrs every day.  Micah and Jilli need to be absolutely silent during this time, because voices distract (disorientate) him and makes reading almost impossible.  Interestingly enough pictures also disorientate him, so we have to cover them up while we read (this is very common for dyslexics).

This program also gave me the tools to help Tyler with Math.  Many dyslexics have problems with math.  Tyler doesn't seem to be one of them.  But in the future, if we come across something that doesn't make sense to him, I have all I need to help make new neural pathways.

So that about sums it up.  I can't tell you the difference this program has made for Tyler.  It was worth every penny!  My son can now see all the letters when he reads.  We have the tools he needs to continue building words and "de-trigger"the words that stump him.  He is no longer stuck in a rut, unable to move forward.  So often dyslexics use "crutches" to make it through life.  It is actually really sad, when you hear stories about adults who never received the help they needed.  Ty no longer needs to figure out "crutches" he has his tools.... His future just opened up to endless possibilities without the shame and anxiety that so many dyslexics feel!!!

From the beginning we have called Dyslexia a gift, I won't lie, we have had our struggles with this gift.   Tyler gets frustrated some days and tells me that he doesn't want the gift God gave him.  But then there are other days when he is proud of the fact his brain works 2 times faster than mine (I think it's more like 10 times faster, but I'm not going to tell him that!)  There are days that he amazes himself at how much easier reading is becoming for him and how good he is getting at it.  I know that God is going to use this gift in an amazing way.  And you know what.... because of this program, Tyler now has a better understanding how to control his gift and put it to work to accomplish great things!