RAR #191: Helping your ADHD or Dyslexic Child Love Reading

Intro (00:00): Hi, Sarah. (00:01): Hi, Sarah. My name is Holly. (00:03): Hi, Sarah. My name is April. (00:04): I'm in Melbourne, Australia. (00:07): I have a question about ... (00:09): My name's Julianne, and we live in India. (00:11): I am wondering ... (00:12): Hi, Sarah. This is Crystal from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (00:15): Can you give me a suggestion for an especially fabulous book? Sarah Mackenzie (00:23): Hey, there. I'm Sarah Mackenzie. This is the Read Aloud Revival, and in this short episode, I'm answering one of your question.s Marissa (00:32): Hi, Sarah. My name is Marissa. I've got an almost 12 year old daughter who has dyslexia and ADHD. She is getting tutoring for dyslexia. She doesn't read much on her own. She has done audio books while following along with the hard copy, but she hasn't chosen to do that or any other reading as far as I know for a long time. So I'm trying to figure out how to help her with her reading life when reading is really hard for her. Thanks, bye. Sarah Mackenzie (01:06): Hey, Marissa. Okay. Well, I love that you are asking this question because it means obviously that you're invested in her becoming somebody who loves to read and wanting to invite her into that experience instead of just dictating it for her and hoping that she finally lands on loving it. You're already doing a lot of right things, I can tell. Having her listened to an audio book while she's reading the words on the page is an excellent way to do that, and it's okay if she's not choosing to do that for fun. One thing that's really important to remember is that human nature is just that. We don't usually choose to do things that are really hard for us and for dyslexic kids and for ADHD kids, sitting and reading a book is harder than it is for kids who aren't dyslexic and who aren't dealing with ADHD. (01:54): That's just how it is. So it's going to be harder for her. So the fact that she's not choosing to do it with her free time, I wouldn't worry about that too much. I would, however, carve out space and you're probably already doing this, but I'm going to suggest it just in case it slipped off your radar, carving out a space maybe twice a day, if you can, even, maybe 30 minutes at a time to do that audio book and reading with her eyes at the same time. So listening to an audio book and reading the book with her eyes. If she only wants to do one of the reading times looking at the book with her eyes while she's listening, and the other time she wants to, I don't know, watercolor, build, draw, sketch, whatever she likes to do with her hands. (02:39): But I would enforce a couple of different times a day that are just audio book time, that there's no option to do anything else. I think on a recent episode, we talked about watermelon versus ice cream and the idea that sometimes we need to clear the path for our kids and just give them the option that right now ... Or, I'm sorry, not give them the option, just give them the time and say, "Right now it's reading time, so that's what you get to do." Then I wouldn't worry too much. If she's doing one or two of those a day, I wouldn't worry too much about her not choosing to read in her other free time. She may or may not, as she gets older, want to read, especially with her eyes if she's dyslexic. As she gets older, it may just not be a relaxing thing for her to do. (03:25): I'm not dyslexic, but I will say that I prefer to get my stories through my ears if I can. So I'll read a book. I love reading books, too. Adore reading books, actually. But even more than that, I adore listening to them. So she may be someone who ends up listening to audio books and that's how she does her reading as an adult, and that's perfectly fine. It's not subpar in any way whatsoever. So I wouldn't worry about it too much if she's not choosing them. I mean, I would make sure that you have books around that you think she's very likely to enjoy, and we can help you with that as well. If you're part of RAR Premium, mention what she's enjoyed in the forum and we'll give you some more recommendations because the women there are amazing at giving good book recommendations. (04:07): I oftentimes for 12 year olds recommend books by Laura Martin. The Edge of Extinction books are big hits. Glitch, I think, is Laura Martin's best so far. I haven't read her newest one. Her newest one is called The Monster Missions. I can't wait to read it. Hoax for Hirer, Float. She's written a whole bunch of books. She is a former middle school teacher who wanted to write books that were impossible for middle schoolers to put down and she's nailing it. So I would highly recommend books by Laura Martin and see if any of those might catch. Some of this might just be getting her hooked on something that she really loves. But for a lot of it, I just think it's an awareness that reading is hard and it's just not going to be something she chooses to do for relaxation while it's still hard for her. (04:52): Also, one of the things that really worked for one of my kids who is dyslexic was too basically reward him for reading with a hamburger. Really what I did is I would assign a book to him or give him a choice like, "Which one of these three books do you want to read?" And he'd pick one and I'd say, "Okay, when you're done, let me know and we're going to go out for a hamburger," because hamburgers were his love language. It could be something else. It could be a milkshake, it could be a tea, it could be an ice cream cone. Right? It could be whatever. And we'll talk about it. It wasn't a quiz or anything. We would just chat about the book and the parts he liked best. We used open-ended questions. We have a guide of open-ended questions that you can use with any book at any age level to have a conversation with your kids about books. (05:35): If you haven't grabbed it yet, go to the show notes, readaloudrevival.com/191, and we'll put those in the show notes. So you can grab that guide because that's free and it's a super great resource. See if you can't get her one of those Laura Martin books, for example, or something else that you think she might like, and then offer that at the end when she's done reading it, you guys can go get ice cream and chat about it, or whatever. That ended up being a real, nice, natural motivator for him to want to finish the books that he was supposed to be reading. It didn't feel the same as bribing him with a prize because what I was really rewarding him with was time with me. That's a win. I'm just going to say. So that's another idea for you. See if that something like that might help. (06:23): We had another question about ADHD that was related to ADHD, so let's go listen to that one. Holly (06:29): Hi, Sarah. My name is Holly. I'm looking for some tips, some help, some resources of some kind to help us out with our son who is ADHD. We know it's okay for him to be busy during read aloud time. We know it's okay for his hands to do things. He doesn't necessarily have to sit still and quietly. However, he's so busy just ping-ponging around the room during read aloud time that it's causing a distraction for the other kids. So that's my question. How do we handle reading aloud and ADHD or other behavioral issues? Sarah Mackenzie (07:13): Okay. So you already know that your kids can do things with their hands while they're listening, which is amazing. We're going to put a link in the show notes to anybody who wants ideas for what their kids can do with their hands while they're reading aloud. Because sometimes we go, "Okay, so my kids can do things with their hands while they're reading, but what should they do?" For anybody who hasn't heard it yet, we have a whole episode on why your kids may actually listen better when they're doing something with their hands, rather than sitting there and just listening. My children are 100% of the time doing things while they listen. I have mentioned, in this episode, even, that I listen to audio books more than I read even. I listen to a lot of audio books. I'm always doing something while I'm listening, and I know I listen better that way. (07:59): So I'm glad that you know what you can do. We're going to put a link in the show notes to that post of ideas on things you can have your kids do. Readaloudrevival.com/73 is also where you can go to find those. But something else occurred to me, and that is that it's possible that he might need a couple of options of what to choose. Maybe, first of all, you could read aloud for a shorter period of time and ask his body to be still but his hands can be busy. So instead of him ping-ponging all over the room, can you give him Wikki Stix or Play-Doh or something he can do with his hands but his body has to be still? So before you read aloud, you might be able to say, "Okay, in order to respect everybody else here ..." because you're showing him respect for his ADHD and his feelings and his body of needing need to move and go, right, while he's listening. (08:55): You're respecting him, but he also needs to respect everybody else who's getting distracted by his movement. So maybe just even saying something like that, like, "In order for everybody else to be here as well, we're going to need you to pick a place to sit and then which one of these three things do you want to do with your hands while you're listening?" So for example, "You could have Wikki Stix," which are those wax sticks things that you can build with. "Here's some Play-Doh or here's some watercolors," or you could do Legos or something if he can do that without making noise but I doubt that's probably possible, so you might want to do something else. But give him a few options and then just read aloud for as long as you know he can listen and bear it without moving. (09:36): But once you know he's just being tortured by having to stay relatively still, then I would wrap it up. Even if it means you need to do more frequent read aloud sessions in your home throughout your day so that you can keep them shorter. Again, before you start, I would just have a very frank but kind conversation with him about how you are respecting the fact that he gets wiggly, but he also needs to respect everybody else in the families need to hear the story, so how can we do this together and kind of troubleshoot it together. Just as a resource for anyone listening who has kids with ADHD, my go-to resource is Colleen Kessler, raisinglifelonglearners.com. She has a podcast and she has blog posts and she has a community and she's full of great ideas. So head to raisinglifelonglearners.com. She's very helpful on helping you homeschool in a way that's respectful of your child and also respectful of the whole family. So raisinglifelonglearners.com is a great resource for you. (10:35): We'll put a few of her resources in the show notes. I know she has a post called Everything You Need To Homeschool ADHD, I think is what it's called, and a couple of podcast episodes that touch on ADHD as well. So we'll make sure that we put those in the show notes too. The show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/191. (10:57): All right. I think it's time to hear from the kids about the books they're loving lately. Rose (11:01): My name is Rose. I live in Richland, Washington. My favorite book is [inaudible 00:11:14]. I like it because the pictures are beautiful. I like the mystery and adventure. Speaker 6 (11:22): My name is [inaudible 00:11:24] Jessica. My favorite book is [inaudible 00:11:31]. Sarah (11:38): Hi, my name is Sarah and I live in Tennessee and I'm eight years old, and my favorite books are called The Secret Hidden Scroll. I actually met the author named Mike Thomas, and he lives here in [inaudible 00:11:58] and I think he should be in Read Aloud Revival and I hope you have a chance to read those books. I think you'll enjoy. Sarah Mackenzie (12:08): Thanks for listening. If you've got a question for an upcoming episode, leave me a voicemail at readaloudrevival.com/message. Until next time, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books. (12:29): So many of us feel overwhelmed in our homeschool. There's a lot to do and it feels like every child needs something a little different. The good news is you are the best person on the planet to help your kids learn and grow and home is the best place to fall in love with books. I'm Sarah Mackenzie. I'm a homeschooling mother of six, the author of Teaching From Rest and The Read-Aloud Family, and I'm the host here on the Read Aloud Revival podcast. This podcast has been downloaded over eight million times and I think it's because so many of us want the same things. We want our kids to be readers, to love reading. We want our homes to be warm and happy havens of learning and connection. We know that raising our kids is the most important work of our lives. (13:33): That's kind of overwhelming, right? You are not alone. In Read Aloud Revival Premium, we offer a family book clubs, a vibrant community and Circle with Sarah coaching for you, the homeschooling mom so you can teach from rest, homeschool with confidence and raise kids who love to read. Our family book clubs are a game changer for your kids' relationship with books. We provide you with a family book club guide and an opportunity for your kids to meet the author or illustrator live on screen. So all you have to do is get the book, read it with your kids and make those meaningful and lasting connections. (14:19): They work for all ages, from your youngest kids to your teens. Every month our community also gathers online for a Circle with Sarah to get ideas and encouragement around creating the homeschooling life you crave. They're the most effective way I know to teach from rest and build a homeschool life you love. We want to help your kids fall in love with books and we want to help you fall in love with homeschooling. Join us today at rarpremium.com.