In our video blog this week, we talk about how fear can be such a controlling factor in life. It’s something that, for a long time, stopped one of our Reading Tricks teachers from helping struggling readers. She shares her story of never even considering the possibility of teaching because of fear that she didn’t know how or couldn’t do it well. Her story is not an uncommon one. Fear causes people to overlook or avoid possibilities and can stop them from sharing gifts they may have with others who may need them. We want to help break through some of the fear aspects of teaching people to read. Reading Tricks offers a curriculum with step-by-step instructions, accompanied by videos, on how to teach people to read. If you can follow instructions, then you can teach someone to read. Our challenge for you today is, at the very least, to take a few minutes to think about the possibilities. What if you *could* offer the gift of reading to someone who might never have a chance to do so without help? Join us on facebook, instagram, or twitter to share your thoughts!

What’s your passion? Your heartbeat? That thing that gives you purpose and is worth fighting for? Our passion at Reading Tricks is to help struggling readers and non-readers learn how to read–and we do that by teaching you how to teach them! This week we want to share our passion with you, and we’re hoping that you can take a few minutes to share it with others. If every person shares it with even just one person, think of how quickly it could spread. We long to exude contagious passion–to grow a community of people willing to fight for those who can’t read and don’t know how to fight for themselves. Join us by sharing our page with your friends… or by looking into our training at readingtricks.com so you can give someone the gift of reading! E-mail us at kathy@readingtricks.com if you have any questions!

Building trust with our kids and students is important but takes some intentionality. One way we can do this is by giving genuine compliments. Kids are able to tell when we are giving false praise or empty compliments just to make them feel better. So rather than using empty words and teaching them not to trust what we say, let’s find things we can genuinely praise them for–building trust that our words have meaning! We can compliment our students on natural abilities, strong character, personality, hard work, good choices, fun ideas, and countless other areas. Be observant and creative, and make sure that you mean what you say–building a priceless trust between you and your kids!

Join us at facebook.com/ReadingIsHard to connect with a community that is passionate about helping others learn to read!

Building self-esteem in our kids can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but one of our Reading Tricks teachers shares a simple way of intentionally doing so by purposefully letting our kids overhear our conversations. Rather than talking about our kids’ struggles and learning differences in a way that makes them feel insecure, let’s have conversations they can overhear where we are talking about their strengths and gifts. We could mention their abilities in sports, music, or art; or we could even make specific comments about growth in areas they struggle with, i.e., hard work or improvement in their reading, writing, handwriting, sound recognition, etc. Either way, we want our kids to overhear us complimenting and praising their strengths and hard work. Kids so often hear enough negative comments from peers and sometimes even adults. Let’s make it a point to let them start overhearing the good stuff!

Click here to watch our video blog on this topic, and join us at facebook to share your thoughts with our community!

If you are a parent or teacher who has experienced that sinking feeling of recognizing you have a child who learns differently than your other kids, you understand our Reading Tricks’ founder’s experience of discovering her son’s learning differences and the journey that ensued (shared in our video blog today). Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and language processing disorder are just a few of the language-based learning differences you may be experiencing–with or without knowing it. Recognizing the differences your child has is an important place to start. However, after becoming aware, knowing what next steps to take can be extremely overwhelming. You may want to begin by taking some big steps, such as pursuing educational testing, getting speech therapy, finding outside tutoring, or receiving training yourself. Or you may need to ease into this process with some smaller steps, such as reading to your student each day, playing with sounds and syllables through riddles or rhyming games, or just starting a conversation with someone who has been there. Either way, if you want to connect with other people who are on the same journey, please sign up for our e-mail updates here or join us at facebook.com/ReadingIsHard, where you can connect with a community of people passionate about this journey.

Building trust with our students and kids is something that takes time and great intentionality. In our video blog this week, our Reading Tricks founder shares a hard but life-changing tip she’s learned on how to build this trust. She talks about how her students are extremely sensitive to feeling like they are being laughed at, whether or not they actually are. This could be caused by the actual experience of being laughed at by others; or it could just be because of the insecurities that come from their learning differences. Either way, it is extremely important that we as parents or teachers don’t laugh at our kids. Whether they are using the wrong words, mispronouncing something, making mistakes, or anything else that could hit us as funny, we need to be aware that laughing at them could add to their insecurities and low self-esteem. Even when our intentions are completely kind, something that seems so harmless could turn out to be very damaging. In light of this, let’s make sure we check ourselves and our reactions around our kids, giving them the kind and encouraging support that they need. As we offer them a safe place, they will begin to have confidence that they won’t be made fun of, which will in turn build a very meaningful and life-changing level of trust. Join our e-mail list here to be part of our team learning together how we can support our kids!