True personal growth ultimately will lead to fulfillment, and it's my intention with these podcasts to connect more deeply with you. Thank you for joining me, Anne Corbin, and my guests, and welcome to this episode. Well, hello again, and welcome back. Got something a little bit unusual this week. I'm very delighted to welcome my guest, Kimberly Parra. Hi, Kimberly. Hey, Anne. And we have not known each other very long, but Kim has a really interesting system, which she designed herself.
Kim is an educator, and she deals with children and has also personally had issues with ADHD and dyslexia. And, well, I'll I'll let Kim tell you the story, but she has designed a really interesting and useful system which helps people of any age get to grips with those problems because, of course, if you can't read, you really are held back on all fronts. So, Kim, over to you. Where would you like to start?
Well, people usually ask me, like, how did you develop and what problems did you have growing up with dyslexia and ADHD? So if you want, we can start with the history of, like, how it got developed over time. But growing up with dyslexia, I used to see words, transpose themselves. That means, like, if you had the word boat, I would see it backwards. So I'd see t a o b, and they would, represent themselves, you know, backwards, and they would flip.
So another way that, another layer of that, a different type of dyslexia, because there's over 12 different types, is that, the words would swirl around the page, which was a kind of induced stress. And so if you are really stressed as a student, you might have stress induced dyslexia like I did. And to get the words to go back to being on the page without swirling around and without getting disorientated, it takes some practice.
It takes, I had a really smart second grade, teacher who realized I was struggling. Of course, we didn't really know what dyslexia was, but they recognized patterns. And so she gave me a ruler to kinda help steady the words on the page and to help keep me focused on one sentence at a time. And through rereading that sentence over and over again, I was kind of, in essence, flashing the words in front of me over and over again until I memorized them.
That slowed down my reading progress quite a lot. I got behind, and I was basically a c student, and I was struggling, you know, to keep those c's. But I was grateful that I had a 2nd grade teacher that recognized, you know, the patterns in me and what to do to help, with my stress so that I could, at least perform as, you know, as a c level. Well, yes. I agree.
Because it's fairly unusual or was more unusual, I suppose, for teachers to pick up these issues that children are suffering with, far less have a method of working through it and actually being helpful. Yeah. And she was very encouraging, and I remember her, working 1 on 1 with me and telling me that it was gonna be okay and that we were gonna work through it. But I also remember being very frustrated knowing that I wasn't on level and I was never gonna be at the top of the class.
And that, you know, and at home, I didn't have a very, supportive home, and it and it wasn't really their fault. They just didn't have enough information, at the time. You know, it's 1977, 78. So there wasn't enough information out there to help my parents, and or very many educators to figure out, you know, how to help me even more and how to get on top.
Every student wants to succeed, but if you don't have that, available to you and you don't have the toolset or the skill set, then it causes a lot of friction. It causes a lot of, self confidence to go down. So, I recognize that in my students. Even some gifted students have trouble with reading. And so I'm able to help those students through my method, through my flash method, overcome those obstacles. And it's a delight to know that everything I went through wasn't for nothing.
It was to help develop this, method so that I could help, bring about change for these, kids. Right. So you mentioned that it was kind of, you related it to hieroglyphics, because this is how the brain actually learns. Would you like to go into some detail on that? Sure. So 4000 years ago, we weren't reading. We were using, pictures.
And the first, picture, that was basically written down in, I guess, you would say a letter format, but a picture format that we can recall in history, would have been the a that was actually, upside down. So if you can, you know, take make a v with your hand and then cross it over upside down, the horns on a bull were the were the first word, and it actually meant the word, not a sound like like a. It meant an actual, animal.
And so over time, over 1000 of years, different peoples and cultures would pick apart that, those vocabulary words, and they would make them into sounds. And those sounds would be represented by those symbols, and they would be changed over time depending on who was doing what, when, where, and who was conquering that land. So, I've noticed that, you know, we're not born raiders. We this is something that's evolved we've evolved into.
We used to communicate through pictures, through writing on cables, and, you know, writing in the sand and communicating, you know, even in numbers and also, with, ideas about where things are by literally drawing in the sand or writing on, you know, like, through charcoal on a on a cable or something. So, knowing that, you know, this isn't a natural ability, you know, we're having to make sense of it all.
But the thing that we can rely on and the the thing that I can bring to the table that we probably forgotten about is that we used to rely on pictures in order to communicate. And the way that that I use them is I flash a flashcard 10 to 15 times in front of a child, and I'm able to help the brain center in on the picture of the word and then, take in the information, all at once and be able to recall it, you know, at a short term memory and then through practice in the long term memory.
So I'm relying on that, you know, those 1000 of years that we've communicated through making pictures, through through helping me help kids by being able to tangibly grab that information off that flashcard. Okay. So, Kim, you just held up a a a flashcard, a word rather than a picture, and it said Africa. Yes. Are you, training your students to see words as pictures in some sort of way? It's that's in essence what is happening.
So as I'm holding up the word Africa in front of you, you notice that it's capitalized. It's got a big a, small f, r I c a. Right? So to a person who understands lettering, phonetics, and sounds, that's Africa. Okay? And that's through phonetics. There's blends in there. There's patterns. But to someone who is dyslexic, it it just looks like a bunch of letters.
There's no rhyme or reason why it's there, and they don't understand, sometimes the sounds or why you put those letters together in that particular order. So what I'm trying to help them do is develop their frontal lobe of their brain to capture the picture as I'm flashing. So as we're talking, I'm flashing the card Africa in front of me.
So, we're going 1, 2, 3, and we're going we're saying it Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa. And about 10th between 10th 15th time I flash it, the brain relaxes. And in some children, they actually sigh or they cue me by looking relaxed. Their their jaw drops a little bit, and it cues me into the brain actually, resonating with capturing the whole entire word.
And then I cover it up, and then they write the word in its entirety, usually, as they're developing this frontal lobe, you know, memory system that's already in their brain. This is really interesting. So I presume with adults, it works the same way even though they might have to forget a lot of other learnings? No. They don't. What's so brilliant about it is you don't have to forget any learnings.
All I'm doing is I'm building a bridge from from everything that you've learned and and everything maybe you didn't learn and building a bridge from point a to point b so that you can cross it and you can make sense of all the all the rest of the information that you have learned in the past. And it's building new neural networks. So imagine it like a train station. Okay? So the main train station takes you from, let's say, London to, I don't know, another city, in England. Help me out here.
What's another one? Huntington. Okay. So we're building, a train station in in a railway from Huntington to London and vice versa. Right? So, instead of saying, you know, we have to throw that out, we're just gonna add some more places, okay, to make it faster. So you might have one from Huntington to another city. Beaver. Yeah. Absolutely. So all we're doing is making it stronger, making it faster, and making you able to go more places. It's interesting.
And how long would it take a person to get the hang of this, you know, to grasp the process? So we've seen growth. I have one gentleman that tried it 7 days ago, and he has already, mastered the 1st week. And he had the ability to read zero words when he started. So imagine not being able to read at all and just barely knowing his letters.
He couldn't always remember the sounds of each of the letters, but now that he's practicing the flashing, it's we're starting to build those neuron networks so that the sounds actually make sense of where they go along with the lettering. And now that he's able to picture it in his brain, he's able to give assignment to those blends and, zone in more on, how they all work together. So when a person begins this to learn this method, is it necessary to practice every day?
Yes. So I suggest that anyone doing this at the commitment level isn't very much, but it is something that needs to be practiced out of the 7 days, 5 days a week. 2 times a day is optimal, but I've seen some students just do it 1. It just delays the, you know, the progress. But I would say that it doesn't really matter what you do. As long as you do it 5 days back to back, then the brain will assimilate and, build those neuro pathways so that, everything kinda speeds up.
And the goal is is to learn the words, the patterns go in, to play, the spelling goes into play, the sounds go into play automatically by themselves. There's really nothing to do because the brain is so magnificent and so awesome and infinite that it really doesn't need any other thing except to do, you know, the flashing and practice. And then, the hope is to graduate. So we've seen graduation happen with 6th grade words.
After 6 months, they progress where they no longer need, to flash words anymore. We've seen it happen at 3 months. So it just depends on the child, how voracious they are, how the neural network works form in their brains, and then the hope is to no longer need the method. This is great because it's something to look forward to. It it's a real goal. Right. That, you know, this path of learning is not forever.
It's just a case of getting you from your starting point to well, it's like launching a rocket, isn't it? Once the thing's off the ground, it's got its own momentum. Absolutely. And then it'll be a distant memory about how they learn to read. And then, if they ever need it again, then I can help them reiterate and help them study, chunks of information and retain those things.
Because the way that the ADHD brain works and the dyslexic, and if they have both, then it's, you know, it's multilayered. But there's not really a disability. It's more that they're neurodiverse, and it just works in a different way. So once I show them how their brain actually works, it no longer is hindering them. It's not holding them back anymore, and they just take off, on a trajectory of their own accord. So, I work, with certain students that have maybe some obstacles in their way.
Maybe we need to change the color up. Maybe they don't work so well in black, but they work better in blue. Maybe their favorite color is purple. I don't really know. But, we try different things, and I tweak it in different ways for, the children. But, normally, they're able to follow along on my website, and they really don't need me, which is kinda weird. When you think about it as an educator, you're like, well, when are they gonna need me?
One of the great things that I've heard so far is that I'm sorry we haven't checked in. We're just on week 4 now, and you told us that, you know, once we, you know, mastered in the with the spelling test at the end of the week, that we could go on to the next week. So we kinda did that. So we're sorry we didn't check-in, but we kinda don't need you anymore. So it's like, wow. That's awesome. You know? That is awesome to be told that you're not needed and to You're like to be delighted about it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, okay. Great. Well, you know and then and then they feed me the information. You know? They say, well, the the child got everything right this week. So I hope you don't mind, but we skipped the day, and we're going on to the next week. And they expect me to say something, you know, contrary or hold them back, but I'm like, hey. I think that's great.
Thank you for teaching me that I need to, you know, let you go ahead because, you know, you obviously, know what your child needs best, and your child knows what they need best. So we just let them, go ahead and at their own pace. And I I think we're finding more and more that neurodiversity, is playing a big part in here. And now that we're kind of experimenting with, you know, different ways of learning, the sky's the limit for these kids.
And, you know, their confidence level is building at such a rate that, it even appears that they have a photogenic or photographic mind. So it's it's happening quite rapidly that they're able to retain that information and hold on to it for longer periods of time. And, also, the retention and being able to recall is, much greater. It's at least at 70 or 80% before they move up another level. And then when that happens, they're no longer struggling, you know, around 60 or 70%.
They're at the 90 percentile range, which is, you know, unheard of. This is just so impressive. I'm I've got your website. It's www.flashcardread.com. Yeah. And for you fantastic. Okay. Yeah. And for you listeners that are on YouTube, I did make a QR code. But like you said and you did a wonderful job telling them about, you know, flashcardread dotcom, and they can message me through the, website if they like, or they can also get on Facebook. I don't know if this helps you or not.
But, I'm Well, it's it's all different visual aids going up on the screen. But anyone who's not watching the, the visuals at the moment, you can find all the stuff at www.flashcardread.com. Thank you. And got one more question for you, Kim. Has anyone ever said, this sounds too good to be true. It's gotta be a scam or other silly things like that? Yes. It really is unbelievable.
Until you try it out, until you get a kid in front of, the screen, it really, is mind boggling, because we're skirting around, so many issues, and we're, you know, building this pathway, at a rapid pace. And a lot of people are asking me, you know, what about phonetics? What about blending? What about all of this stuff that, you know, a kid needs to learn in school? And I'm saying, I think it's great. I think all of it is wonderful and needed, and it and it all comes into effect.
But what I'm doing is just building that bridge from point a to point b and saying that I'm making it possible and easier for these kids to learn at a, at a at a better rate and some that are just, you know, having so much trouble reading, we're building a a concrete bridge for them because, you know, they're not able to learn unless this bridge is built. Wow. So, people, please, will you spread the word? This is important news. It needs to reach as many people as possible.
And thank you again, Kim, for coming to tell us all about your system. I'm really impressed, and I wish you such success with it. Thank you. It's only a question of getting the word out there, isn't it? Because it's Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And there's, much more to come. I do help with coaching, with anybody that has, ADHD problems and retaining information for, say, like, tests, ACTs, SATs, just general information.
If you're a bad test taker, I do coach, 1 on 1 and to help find out what your obstacles are and to break them down and make it easier, to retain the information. Well, there you go. And you work online naturally. We we know that. Do you take 1 on 1 interpersonal students as well? Yes. And I and I help, parents, help their kids, and and when they learn, what's involved, they're they just their mind's blown because it it doesn't take a whole lot to help your kid.
And once I teach it to you, or and and yourself, you you won't really, need me for that many coaching sessions, maybe even one. So, I'm really putting myself out of work rather quickly. You are, but I think you you probably get your reward from the universe because you certainly deserve it. I really think that you've invented something unique and so, so, so useful. Yeah. It's amazing how I've just kind of seen patterns. Really, I haven't invented anything.
Everything that you know, to evolve education is already inside of us, and all I'm doing is noticing patterns. So, that's But other people haven't done it, and that's what we need to be congratulated for. Well, I appreciate you, and I and I thank you from the my humble little heart because my goal is to go global and to, help as many kids and parents as possible that are struggling because I know what it's like, and I don't want anybody to have to suffer like I did.
Wonderful. Well, I wish you every success. It's a real mission. And talk about purpose. Wow. Yeah. You've got a purpose. So thank you again, Kim, and I I hope this little session that we've done helps. I appreciate you. You can set yourself relationship rescue, and the quantum field.