Struggling to Read? How to Help Your Child Succeed at Literacy With Daniela Feldhausen

Welcome to the Faith and Family Trailblazer Podcast. Part of the Digital Trailblazer Podcast family. This podcast is dedicated to bringing you experts and trailblazers who can help you and your family grow closer together, closer to God, and thrive in a challenging world. Hey, Trailblazers, it's Leah Regatson. In this episode, we're going to walk you through how to help your kids and their journey to learn, and to learn to read and spell with Adeniana Daniela, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you. Once you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience and let them know what you're all about. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Yes, so I'm Daniela Feldhausen. I'm the founder of Kids Up Reading Tutors, and that's exactly what we do. We work with kids who are having a hard time with reading and spelling. And we get them reading fluently. We get them spelling and we increase their confidence because once kids can read and spell well, it affects all aspects of their lives. Yes, so true. So how did he get into this? I got into it, actually, almost by accident, honestly. I was volunteering in a local neighborhood public school. I tried to check out the school because I was wondering if I should send my son there. And they said, "Oh, yeah, if you want to volunteer, yes, please help with these kids." They need just someone to read too. And that's how it all started 20, maybe 30 years ago at this point. When I kept doing it and doing it, and I realized over time just how much I was loving it. And so when I decided to retire from my first career, so I used to be a lawyer in DC. And when I retired from that, I was like, "You know what, this is what I really want to do." And so I went back to school. I got a master's degree in special education. I did a whole bunch of specialized training in teaching kids with dyslexia to read and spell. And I started tutoring. And eventually it was more kids than I could handle on my own. And so I started training other people to do this work with me. And that's how we were born, kids of reading tutors. I love that. That is so cool. So what? I guess what are some warning signs that your kid maybe is a little extra help, or maybe isn't kind of on track or pace where they need to be? Sure. So a lot of times what parents will notice that their child's having trouble sounding words out. Can't quite figure out what a word is. Or maybe you tell them what the word is. You help them with the word. And then you're helping them with the same word over and over and over again. It feels like it's never actually sticking. A lot of times it shows up as spelling issues. So for example, kids who were right was as saw, S-A-W. And then you tell them, "No, actually you wrote this other word." And they look at you like, "What do you want?" I remembered it was three letters. I remembered what the three letters were. I put them down in the wrong order, but who cares? So they literally don't understand it. You know, their brains are just wired a little bit differently. So they literally don't understand, in many cases, that words are made up of individual sounds. And that we string those sounds together in different combinations to get different words. And if you write the letters down in a different order, well, then you're going to get a different word. That's not obvious to everyone. Other signs are, we know, when kids have trouble with rhyming, for example, lots of other signs. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so if we recognize that something's a little, wires might be crossed, or it's not quite working as it should be, what should we do? Like, what are ways that we can actually help these kiddos? Sure. Couple different things you can do. One thing you might want to talk to your child's teacher. Teachers hopefully have at least a little bit of sense of what's going on. If it's a large classroom, that might be difficult. But if you specifically ask the school to evaluate your child for dyslexia, they're legally recognized to be it. So you can, if you do it orally, it might take a little bit longer. So the best thing to do is literally send an email in addition to having the verbal conversation with your school's teacher or principal or whoever you're talking to. But also send them an email and say, I would like you to please evaluate my child for dyslexia. And then they're legally required to do it. That starts a clock ticking and things will start. Okay. Interesting. So what are some tools that we can have in our tool belt when we're working with our little ones who are at those beginning stages of reading to make sure that they're actually getting the different pieces of this puzzle in the right order and learning this the right way? Sure. Sure. It's really important for kids to have strong phonological skills. And that's something that's maybe not as well known as it should be. So that's really about how your brain is wired. And do you understand that words are made up of sounds? And sounds can be put together in different words. So there's some fun games that you can play with your children to help them develop those skills. So for example, you could play rhyming games. Can they take, say the word cat? Can they, if you ask them to give you words that rhyme with cat, can they come up with words that rhyme with cat? Or do they maybe start telling you other words that start with a sound? For example, like comb. That's something that kids will will sometimes do. If you've got a child who's not understanding rhyming, you might want to play a game where you say, but what are all the things you can think of that start with the sound and then cat and comb and car and, you know, whatever else comes up? Car, by the way, is a great place to play this game. Once they can consistently pull off, recognize that first sound in a word, you could do the same thing with the ending sound. What are all the words you can think of that end with it? And see what they can come up with. And those are games and other kinds of games that will help children realize that a word isn't just the static object that you have to memorize, but instead the word is made up of individual sounds. And so you want to help kids learn to understand that words are made up of individual sounds, and then you can pull those words apart into their sounds. So cat is cat, for example. There are books out there also that will help promote these kinds of skills. Something like, I think, "Bindergarten goes to kindergarten." Wow, that is, you know, you probably heard in the title. It's swapping out that first sound in the word. You can find some books like that. Again, that help the child recognize what's the first sound in the word, and then pull that word apart. Nursery rhymes are also super good for this, because there are lots and lots of rhyming situations. And you can talk to your child about rhyming and what is rhyming. And oh, it turns out that if you're trying to explain to a child what rhyming is all about, if they're not sort of naturally picking up on it, the rhyme is actually the vowel, and then everything else that comes after it in the word. And so if you're taking a word like cat, for example, the first sound is "k," and the rest of the word is "at." And if you're rhyming, what you're doing is you're taking away that "k," that beginning sound, and you're swapping in a different beginning sound. And so that's how you get to "bat" and "rat" and "mat" and "fat" and "sat" and so on and so forth. So games like that that you can play that help kids understand that words are made up of individual sounds. You can pull them out, you can pull them apart, you can delete a sound, you can add a sound, you can blend it all back together again. Those are really, really important skills for kids to have early on. And if they have those strong phonological skills, it's going to be a whole lot easier to learn all the phonics that they need to learn. It's interesting. phonics then is the relationship between the sounds and the letters. For a relatively easy one, the "t" is pronounced, there are a lot more complicated ones in English as well that kids have to learn. So, for example, if you think about the "e-a," "e-a" is usually going to be "e" like "eat." But sometimes it's "e" like "head" and sometimes it's "a" like "great." And kids have to learn all of those correspondences. And then on the other side when they're spelling, they have to learn, well, what are all the different ways I know to spell, let's say, the long "a" sound? Well, there's an "a" at the end of a syllable like "bagel." Here's an "a" magic "e," or "a" consonant, or "a" silent "e," like "name" or "lake." There's the "a" "i," like "rain." There's the "a" "y," like "play." There's that "e-a," we were talking about a minute ago, like "great." And there are more and more and more, but those are probably the five most common ones. So, you want your child to be able to rattle off, okay, all the ways I know to spell the long "a" are "a," "a," magic, "e," "a," "i," "a," "y," "a," and whichever one other ones here she might have learned. And you want them to be able to do that with all of the different sounds in English, because that's going to help them with their spelling. Absolutely. That's so cool. So, you know, I've seen, as a mom, flashcards, but not flashcards, I say for letters, but flashcards for, like, phonic sounds, like your essay, your CH's and S, all of those things. Do you like those things? Do you help, I assume? Yes, they're absolutely wonderful. They're part of a program called "Ortangillingum," and we do our tutoring with "Ortangilling." Those are "Ortangillingum" methods and materials. And I actually, I don't know if you're used to see all this, but I have an entire box here, full of different phonics patterns that you can use, and the ones that you were talking about right now, like, I've got a stack right here, of the TH and the CH, Ph, C, K, T, C, H, so on and so forth. And what we do is we use what's called the "Ortangillingum Glending Board," which is three stacks of cards. So, at the very earliest level, you have a stack with consonants, a stack of vowels, and then the third stack also has consonants, and then you have the child sound it out from left to right. So, if there's an NAP, for example, it would be, "Nap," and then because there are stacks of cards, you can swap them out. So, once they can read NAP, you swap out that N, and the next one that's showing, let's say, is an L, LAP, LAP. And then the next one might be an S, SAP, SAP. And then you can, at some point, once they've done it often enough, they'll realize, we'll give you a minute, that app at the end is staying the same. All we're doing here is swapping that first pile. And that's helping them practice their phonic skills, those correspondences between the sounds and the letters, and it's also developing their phonological skills, because it's helping them to see that, oh, yeah, this word has three different sounds. I can swap one of these sounds out, put that word back together again, and get a new word. So, by using those cards that you're talking about, especially if you use them on the blending board, you're actually helping kids develop both their phonological skills and their phonic skills. Okay, awesome. Well, I've actually seen, I think it last year, my son's classroom, they had essentially that thing up on the white board, and so they try. That's right. Yeah. That is great. Yeah, not all schools are doing it. A lot of schools are not, for example, teaching the phonological skills, maybe as well as they should. We took a little bit of a wrong turn in this country a few decades ago, and stopped teaching kids to read using phonics, and it instead moved over to a system called whole language or balance literacy or three queuing that has now been proven not to work. And we're slowly in the process as a country of moving back in the other direction, teaching kids phonics again and adding in that phonological piece. That is so, so crucial for helping kids become good readers and good spellers. That makes sense, because yeah, I don't think I've seen it in his public schools he's been in. It was a private school that actually used home school curriculum, and they were definitely using phonological stuff, for sure. That is great. What is super, super important. A lot of the holes that they're doing that, that really helps, that really helps those kids. Wonderful. It actually helps everybody, but those kids in particular who are struggling with reading really need that extra dose of phonological work. Yep, absolutely. So, what I'm curious, as you're out there doing great work helping, because I know this can be an issue when they're first starting, but it obviously can rear its ugly head for many years to come if you don't get this right. So, this is super important. So, how are you getting the word out and letting people know about what you do? Sure. Most of our families find us through referrals word of mouth. So, it's parents, you know, talking to other parents on the soccer field. We're also getting a lot of students from testing psychologists. So, the psychologists who do the neuropsych or psychoeducational evaluations, and who will diagnose a student with dyslexia, were on the referral list of a whole bunch of testing psychologists. So, they send us a bunch of students. We're also on referral list at a number of private schools who are sending us their students as well. Schools generally have a very hard time teaching these kids to read. Even assuming they have a fully, you know, experienced, you know, well-educated teacher who knows how to do all this, there really aren't enough hours in the day or hours in the school week to teach a child who's struggling with reading to help this all make sense for them. So, they can absolutely make progress. For example, if they have an IEP or getting extra help either from the reading specialist or from the special education teacher, but in most cases, that's not enough. Like, for example, if you go to your child's special education teacher and ask, well, how often have you actually graduated students out of bed, out of special ed, because you taught them to read, dancers generally, yeah, not really. That only works if you find an outside a private reading tutor and get your child extra help outside of school, then they can graduate from sped or leave sped. Wow. But not the schools aren't equipped to do it. Like I said, even if you've got someone who knows exactly how to do this, there aren't enough hours in the day. They just can't do it. It's a pretty big lift to teach yeah, it's to read. Wow. So, there's just a lot going on in schools and they have a lot of competing requirements and then they go kids out even long. They have too many kids who are in this boat, they have too many things they're trying to teach. They're not enough hours in the day, you know, really hard to do it in a school setting. Yeah, I can imagine. So, what are your next steps? Where do you want to go from here? We want to help as many kids as we can. That's really what it is. You know, I've occasionally had conversations with people who are like, oh, is there what's your 10-year vision? And you know what? We can't actually come up with numbers, anything that can be quantified, but we're a team of 20 right now. We're helping 60 kids right now. I think we're at 63 as of this morning. Become good readers and spellers and we just want to grow those numbers as big as we can. We want to help as many kids as we possibly can. That's awesome. I love that. And I think the podcast testing what you're doing right now is a great addition to all of your stuff that you're doing. So, being on referral lists, huge obviously, all the word of mouth, that's wonderful. I think podcast testing makes a ton of sense. I could even see some success if you wanted to tackle it using vertical video. So like short form vertical video, like Facebook, Reels, Instagram Reels, TikToks. Just these little, there's so many little bite-sized nuggets, just like listening to you talk today that I feel like you could put into those vertical videos that could be potentially, you know, there's so many parents that don't even know, right? And the schools are so overwhelmed that the kids are sliding through and I think you could educate so much and become a pretty big voice in this space if you created that type of content that really gets parents' attention and educates them on what they should be looking for, different activities that they could be helping out for them, you know, helping their child with and obviously getting help when they're ready for that, right? Right. Great idea. Have to admit, have not gone there. I'm not just started in this whole podcast world within the past couple of weeks. So this is one of the first podcasts I've ever done. But I will definitely keep thinking about that and maybe you and I can talk about it some more afterwards. Yeah, wonderful. So if people want to learn more about you, where should they head? Websites, probably the best place. KidsUpReadingTutors.com. And you can find on there. We actually have a we have a little freebie signs. I think it's bread flags for dyslexia. So there's something there that you can pull off the website. And you can also reach out to me. You can send me an email. You can schedule a call with me or honestly just go through the website. There's a whole lot of information on our website, including a page with blogs. Talking about, well, you know, what if I have a middle school or a high school student? Is this kind of tutoring still going to work? Absolutely. Yes, even middle school and high school students can still learn to read. Just like say, isn't a life long thing for the most for the vast majority of kids? No, they can learn to read perfectly. Well, it doesn't matter how old they are. If you've got questions about phonological dyslexia, that one comes up a lot. There's a blog about that. So we've got lots of blogs about lots of different topics. So there's a lot you can find out just by reading what's on our website, including what's on our blog page. Awesome. Well, we'll have the links to all of that in the show notes description. Daniela, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, if you found this helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, share this with someone who could benefit. And if you're curious about how to be featured in one of our podcasts, head to those so show notes and apply. Have a blessed day.