Ep. 88 I don’t teach kids to love reading, but sometimes it happens!

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Hello and welcome to dyslexia devoted the podcast dedicated to building awareness, understanding and strategies to help those with dyslexia. I'm your host, Lisa Parnello, dyslexia therapist and founder of Parnello education services. Join me as we dive into today's episode of dyslexia devoted. Hello there, and welcome to another episode of dyslexia devoted. I'm so happy you're joining me today I am in very good spirits because I'm only five days away from vacation hip hip, hooray. So I thought this week would be a share the love kind of week for a couple of different reasons. If you're listening to this in real time, it is Valentine's Day week, which I'm actually not super Valentine's Day. I'm just used to celebrating it every year anyway, because I teach kids and they love it. My Valentine's Day will actually be spent packing my suitcase for my solo vacation that starts on Friday that I'm also excited about. And when I get there, one of the days I'm there, I will get to visit a friend of mine. I'll tell you more about it when I return. And in the spirit of love this week, the episode of today, episode number 88 is I don't teach kids to love to read. But sometimes it happens. So let's go with the theme of spreading the love. And one other announcement before we jump into the full details of the episode is that all of my online courses are on sale from now until February 15 2024. All you have to do is enter in the promo code love 24. And you will get 25% off any of my online courses. So whether it's the parent course, the educator course, the writing booster workshop, the spelling booster workshop, any of those ones, there's also a morphology course that would make more sense to educators than to parents, but anybody's Welcome to learn from it, jump on over to Parnello education.com for slash courses, and see if any of those are of interest to you while they're on sale just for this week until Thursday. And as always, those of you on my dyslexia devoted newsletter got to hear about it first. So that actually already went into the inbox on Sunday morning for all of you who are on the newsletter now jumping into our theme of today's episode, which is I don't teach kids to love reading. But sometimes it happens anyway, this one was inspired by a very nerdy Facebook group that I'm in, that is based on the curriculum that I teach, as well as another Facebook group all about the science of reading. And one of the things I've seen a lot is that teaching with phonics and the science of reading is boring. And usually I found that's a teacher problem, not actually a curriculum problem. There are so many people who think it's really boring. But the thing is, if you give enough emphasis to something and you show that you believe in it, and that it's important, kids will usually pay attention to it anyway, it may not be their most like thrilling subject in the world, but they can come to appreciate it. And I cannot tell you a single time any of the kids who have come into my office and said this is boring, or I'm bored. And then once you have, it's usually a false cover. It is a kid who says it's boring, because they don't like it. And it's hard. And they don't really want to keep pursuing it because it is something that's really challenging for them. And they don't really feel very good about it. And usually that only happens in their first few sessions with me. And before they start to realize they can make progress, and they start to feel pretty good about themselves. One of my favorite things is that some of my kids who started with me when they couldn't read at all, or could hardly read anything, now will intentionally choose to read at the start or end of my sessions. So I'm supposed to have a five minute buffer window where like one kid ends, and then another one won't show up for five more minutes. That basically never happens. Somebody has always a minute or two late or a minute or two early or five minutes later, five minutes early. So that buffer window is more of like a hey, at least I'm not late for the next session, even if it doesn't actually give me a full five minute break. Like I intend for it to some days. Anyway, during that five minute buffer window. I have several of my kids who love to come in and read a book, either one that they brought with them or one off my shelf. And that's how they love to start their day in reading tutoring is reading a book. And they absolutely love reading now I teach the same boring curriculum that a bunch of other people don't like to teach. But why do these kids love to read because they feel successful? Usually kids with dyslexia hate to read because it's challenging and they don't feel very successful. But with the right interventions, then they can feel amazing because they can actually do it. I've seen a lot of educators who think their job is to make kids love reading. That's actually not our job. Our job in no way whatsoever as an educator or as a parent is to entertain children. That is not actually our job. Our job is to provide the right level of support and instruction and encouragement that they become successful adults, that they become able to take care of themselves to have a good job to be able to succeed in life. If our job is not actually to provide them amusement, sometimes it happens. And sometimes it's really fun to have fun with the kids. And it's really fun to teach them to love something and enjoy something. But that's not actually my job in life. And I never make it my job. I never tried to play a whole bunch of games with the kids. And in fact, I realized one day when I had a little itty bitty kinder, first grader kind of aged kiddo that wanted to play some sort of reading game, and I was like, Oh, yes, we could play a game. I so rarely play games. In my office with my kids, we're more like a get down to business. But I keep it at a quick pace. We talk about it a lot. We have good discussions, we have good bonding connections with each other, not just about, you know, the books, stuff that we're reading. But other things too. And being able to develop that relationship is really important. But very rarely do we actually play any games in my office, or if we do play a game, it's like math, X Games, or typing games. And it's all very, very educational in my office. And then I see comments or hear comments from people saying, well, it's boring to do blah, blah, blah, I don't care if it's boring. My job is not to make you entertained, my job is to make it so you can read. My job is to make it so you can have a job in life one day, my job is to make it so that you understand what you're reading. And then sometimes when you could do all of those things, you do love to read, and not everybody has to love to read. I don't always love everything. For example, there's about to be a 49 or football game. Today, a very big one called the Super Bowl. And I live approximately, oh, I don't know 400 yards away from the major stadium where the 40 Niners typically play their games and have their practices. And I really don't care less, that there is a major game today. In fact, I'm recording a podcast right now in the morning before all of my neighbors are cheering for the four news. Now there's plenty of people in the world who absolutely love sports. But that doesn't have to be everybody. And in fact, I actually absolutely do love sports. I've played many of them over the years, I've done more sports than I can ever dream of counting. I've done soccer, track diving, Olympic weightlifting, I've done all sorts of things. But I don't make other people try to love what I love. And that's okay. And we need to remember the same is true for kids. And what they like to do or don't like to do. Our job is to make them successful readers who can fluently read and comprehend so that they can survive their life in their classes, they do not actually have to love reading, they don't actually have to love books, we do have to make them practice their skills so that once they can read, they don't lose those skills. We need to make them practice these things so that they continue to learn them and get better and better at them. But we don't actually have to make them love them. Everybody has different interests. And that's totally okay. That's what makes the world an amazing, exciting place is that we all have different things that we're passionate about. And when we can invest our time and our energy and our passions, then we can develop new ideas and create new things. And that's what makes the world a wonderful place. But we don't actually have to make them love reading just because we love reading. But with that said, when we teach a kid how to read and how to read well, and how to be successful at it and how to pick books that interest them, then sometimes they absolutely do love reading one of my favorite memories. And in fact, I have a sneaky little picture of it that I can't share because there's children in it is of this one day where I had a third grader and an eighth grader peacefully reading a book side by side, both of them completely engrossed in their book, one kiddo had just finished his session. And then the older girl had just walked in early for her session. And their favorite way to start and their sessions was to sit and read a book, side by side. Not even talking. Just being fully engrossed in a book, and I absolutely love it. I've had a few families send me pictures or videos of their kids reading on a couch, unprompted, just because I have one little boy who told me he was being really naughty last night, because you know what he did? He got a flashlight and was reading under his blankets after bedtime because he really wanted to read his book. Aren't stories like that? Just the best. Now how did I do that? I taught them with a really boring curriculum. It has no pictures. Everything's in black and white. Everything is in typewriter font. Nothing is cutesy. There's nothing flashy, there is nothing overly exciting about anybody, except I teach them how to understand it, and make it so they actually can do it. And sometimes that's all it takes. And there's other times where I have kids who can perfectly read well, but they will always choose an audiobook over a regular book.

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I'm okay with that. As long as they get their knowledge from somewhere, and not every kid's gonna love to read, but you can be darn sure that every kid that walks out of my office can do it. And I'm okay with the fact that not all of them love to read, even though I taught them how to do it pretty good. But that's okay. I gave my all they learned what they needed to do to have happy, successful lives. And that's what's really important. So this is your little reminder that sometimes spreading the love of reading doesn't always happen the way we wish it would. But sometimes it just does. We have to remember that all we can do is give them all the tools they need to be successful, and cross our fingers that they love the things that we love, but knowing that that's not always the most important thing. The important thing is Is that they have the tools to use when they need them. And they're ready to go to be successful in whatever it is they choose to do in love. All right. That's it for today. My mini recap is that there is a share the love sale of all of my online courses with just the promo code, love 24, no spaces or anything like that. And if you go to Parnello education.com Ford slash courses, you can see all of the courses that are available, that promo code will work for any of them up until February 15 2024. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week, spread some love and kindness around. And I am going to try my best to record one more episode before I get out of town and cross your fingers. If not, I will post a new episode whenever I return. Because you know, in a dream world, I would record all of these things in advance of the podcast but that's not what world I live in. Right now. I'm working 12 hour days. And so yes, I'm not actually going to get ahead of schedule anytime soon, but I can dream right. Alright, that's all for this week. I will see you next time.

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Thanks for tuning into today's episode. If you want to learn even more about dyslexia, check out Parnello education.com forward slash courses. See you next time.