Question: “How do you handle a very active 7-year-old who can’t sit still and always complains about writing. Could it be that he’s just not ready? How can I encourage my 10-year-old to do independent work, even though he can’t read? Is that even possible?”

A lot of times the younger children who can’t sit still and write should just play. Just let them play. They’re never going to get those carefree days of childhood back. If you have a child who is obviously not ready for writing, just give them time. In a year or two they’ll be ready. I’d definitely say for the active 7-year-old you are going to want to just give them tools to learn about their interests. Give them Fun-Schooling Level A books that don’t have a lot of writing in them, but they have a lot of activities that can be done by kids who are not strong readers yet. Same thing for the 10-year-old who isn’t reading much yet. It’s okay for these kids to use the Level A books because they are for kids who are still struggling with reading. There is a really wide age range that can use those. Don’t be too stressed. If you are worried about their ability, definitely do Dyslexia Games because it really helps them to develop the skills they need for literacy without the stress and too much effort on your part.

Question: How did you teach your kids with Dyslexia how to read?

I did not teach them to read. I tried and tried and just could not teach them to read. I tried all the books, all the methods, all the videos and all the tutoring. It had to get to the point where they wanted to read, and they taught themselves.

What we did was create the Dyslexia Games, and they are awesome for prepping their brains for reading. By the time my kids got through Dyslexia Games Series A and Series B, they were reading. The same thing has happened for thousands of other kids as well. They understand phonics, they have gotten down a lot of sight words and they move on to the Fun-Schooling spelling journals.

For my kids who don’t have Dyslexia, I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and Reading Eggs and Time4Learning, and after four or five months with those things, they’d started reading. With the Dyslexic kids, you can try all those methods for four years, and as long as you’re pushing phonics, these kids are going to struggle. You have to deal with what’s going on in the brain, and that’s why Dyslexia Games works well.