What if there was a way you could make learning easy for your child?
What would life be like if those hours of homework were reduced to minutes?
So as my gift to you I promised you a video of an easy exercise you can do with your child. Let's get to that. It's at the end of this page. But don't scroll down there yet. I think I can give you a lot more help if you simply read and understand this. There is some really important things to know and I would really hate for you to miss out on them.
So let's get started.
Have you ever heard of the street light effect?
A drunk man is crawling around on his hands and knees on the street. A policeman arrives and asks what he is doing. The drunkard informs him that he is looking for his keys. So the policeman helps him look.
The area is well lit and the policeman realizes that if there were keys they would have found them. So after about five minutes he asks the drunk, "Are you sure you lost your keys here?"
"Oh no", says the drunk, "I lost them over in the park".
Angered, now the policeman asks, "Why in the world then are we looking here?"
"Well this is where the light is", says the drunk, "It's too dark in the park."
The story illustrates a human behavior we all have. We look for solutions where it's easiest to look. Not necessarily where the answers are.
My goal today is to help you decide to look in the park.
I want to tell you a story of two boys.
On this day these boys were getting close to graduating high school. (Well, we hope they both are anyway). Lets go back a few years to understand a little better where their paths split. How two such similar boys, with similar aptitudes, and similar families, ended up in such different situations.
At a young age, both boys were exceptionally bright in many ways.
Johnny was exceptional at building things. He loved the erector set his grandfather gave him and came up with the most amazing contraptions. Machines with motors and pulleys. He constantly assembled and reassembled them. making them more amazing each time. His father, John, worked at a machine shop and fully expected Johnny to become an engineer. John very much encouraged Johnny's building of things. He knew for sure that one day Johnny would have a successful engineering degree from these talents. Johnny did also like to take things apart. Things like the family computer. But John didn't get too mad at these things. He knew this curiousity would lead to great places.
Blake was also creative. He loved solving problems. He also loved building things. But he focussed his creativity on the virtual world. He loved minecraft. A game where he built up virtual worlds. Minecraft gave him an outlet for his creative expression. Amazed at the complexity of his worlds, Blake's parents also encouraged this creativity. He must be a super genius they thought. Certainly he will become a successful architect or deigner of great things, they thought.
Blake and Johnny went to school together and they were great friends. In first and second grade they both did pretty well. But in third grade they both started to have a little trouble. For both of them the trouble showed up first with multiplication word problems. There had probably been smaller problems earlier but no one had really noticed.
Unsure if the problem was reading or math both of ther parents decided more homework and tutoring was in order. So they stayed after school and their teachers gave them extra homework so they could practice more.
Johnny and Blake were both pretty hard workers generally. So at first they didn't complain.
But soon they started procrastinating. Homework didn't get done until later and later in the day. It started cutting into other things. They both started find excuses to put it off.
They both seemed to be lacking discipline. Their parents became frustrated. They just couldn't understand how the boys could put it off so long. There were many late nights. Avoided and skipped homework became late night projects.
In both cases, at first, both Johnny's parents and Blake's parents assumed it was laziness. It was the lackadasical attitude. And the parents got frustrated. "Why won't you just do your homework?". "Why won't you just try?"
But it wasn't laziness at all. It just came across that way. What was really happening is that both boys were starting to have anxiety over their schoolwork. The avoidance had nothing to do with laziness. But the boys played it off. It was better to be thought of as lazy than stupid.
Grades started slipping. They stopped participating in class as much. Never raising their hand. They acted up to avoid having to read in class or take a math test. It was better to be thought of as a goof of than a dummy.
And this is where their stories diverge.
Johnny's parents decided to attack it head on. They would use everything they could to fix the problem. Johnny would just have to work harder and that's all there is to it. They heard an ad on the radio for a learning center. So they went there. It was expensive. But they signed Johnny up anyway. John could take on some overtime at work.
They took Johnny out of sports. He loved playing soccer but his parents decided no extra curricular activities until the grades came up. There wasn't time for it anymore anyway.
There were small improvements but they didn't seem to stick. johnny would show improvement. They would get their hopes up. But the next week he seemed to backslide. He would lose what he had gained. It was always one step forward and two steps back.
Johnny began to develop more and more anxiety. He didn't say he was anxious but he acted out more and more. One day he said out loud what he had been thinking all along. "I'm just dumb".
His parents were horrified. They encouraged him to work harder but they were losing steam also.
Have you ever heard Einstiens definition of insanity? Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. Can you see that that is exactly what Johnny's parents were doing. Each time Johnny had trouble with academics they piled on more and more academics.
What they eventually found out was - More academics does not fix poor academics.
You see Johnny was having trouble in math and reading. On top of that his handwriting was pretty poor also. But those weren't the real problems. Those were only symptoms of the problems. What were the real problems? Well would you believe me if I told you they were actually minor skills that would have been easy to fix? Read on and I'll show you what I mean.
So after Johnny's outburst, his parents, John and Irene decided it would be easier on him if they considered the IEP the school was strongly pushing them towards. They went to the IEP meeting and with the experts they worked out a plan. Johnny would be pulled out of class for the subjects he was having trouble in. He was to go to a class where he would get special help.
When the teacher came each day to get Johnny for his special class the kids all knew where he was going. And Johnny knew they knew. We don't know if he was teased about it or not but it certainly didn't help his confidence.
So today Johnny is struggling to graduate. He's in a special continuation school where he can make up his credits. He'll probably make it. But it certainly isn't the best education he could have recieved. In a lot of the classes he was warehoused. He was taught just enough to get by. The goal was to get him graduated. Not necessarily to learn.
And you know, none of this is the teachers fault. Most teachers I know really care about their students. They got into teaching to make a difference. But teachers are trained in teaching academics. Problems like these are not problems in academics. They just show up as problems in academics. The trouble in academics is only a symptom.
Even if teachers were trained in dealing with the real problem they probably wouldn't be able to. Here in the US schools are mandated to focus on preparing students for standardized testing. So the practice for the tests. They really can't attack the core problem.
So they make students practice harder for the tests. Just like the drunk looking for his keys under the light.
And parents look to teachers as the experts. Anyone in a stressful situation dearly wants the advice of an expert. Even if that experts expertise is in the wrong field. We are hard wired to seek out and take advice. It makes us feel better. Even if it's wrong.
Another case of looking under the street light.
And then there is the high priced learning centers. I'm not going to say I don't blame them at all. What I will say is that every one I have seen operates their program on outdated ideas. Ideas that were formulated in the 1930's. It's called Orton-Gillingham. There are other programs but they are all variations on Orton-Gillingham.
Why are they so popular?
Because in their day they were the best there was. But that was over 80 years ago. Even 10 years ago science didn't know what it now knows about the brain and learning. Back when I went to school I was taught that the brain didn't develop after a certain age. An idea that is very obviously wrong. Stroke victims can recover right? If a stroke victim can recover isn't there something going on in the brain.
But no one thought about that. They just blindly followed the science and accepted the "truth".
It was only a year ago that science figured out that dyslexia had an auditory component. Before that people just thought it was just flipping letters around. It's not. It's much more than that. Same thing with dyscalculia (Math dyslexia).
Bad handwriting (dysgraphia) was thought of as just laziness. It's not. It's a motor skill that just needs a little more development. You just need to connect the eyes to the hand a little better. Easily done.
ADD and ADHD is thought of as just lack of concentration or hyperactivity. It's not that at all. Think of it more as a super powerful right brain (creative side) that just won't let the left side work. Not a weakness in concentration, a strength in creativity. This can be handled too. With easy techniques.
So these learning centers have been around a very long time. They've had time to perfect their marketing and maximize profits. But they really haven't taken advantage of the new findings in science. The schools still recomend them. Because they've been recommending them for 80 years. So they keep sending people to look under the street light.
But I digress. Back to our story.
If Johnny graduates he plans on taking some time off from school. He wants to work for awhile and figure things out. We really hope he does. It's not the best situation but I can certainly understand why he might not be looking forward to more school.
Can't blame him.
And then there is Blake.
Blake had started down a similar course. He started to develop anxiety and avoided all things school. His father,Tim, would get angry and tell him how hard he had worked in school. He told him if he wanted to get ahead in life he had to do well in school. So try harder.
At first Blake's mom, Glenda, went along with this. She supported her husband always. But she also knew her son very well. Deep inside she knew he wasn't lazy. And she also knew he was smart. A mother's intuition always knows. She went along with the lazy theory. But deep inside she knew that wasn't really it.
But Glenda started researching. Blake was such a smart kid and could do incredible things. When he was 9 he even produced his own movie. It was a stop frame claymation movie. It took incredible planning and intelligence.
With that much intelligence it just didn't make sense that he should be having so much trouble.
Then she hit upon it. It wasn't intelligence at all. Blake was very intelligent but there was something else holding him back.
Glenda learned about some very basic skills which are the building blocks of learning. She learned that when even a couple of these minor skills are under developed learning becomes incredibly difficult.
These skills are the building blocks of learning.
So what are they?
Well there are 16 of them so I can't really cover them all in infinite detail in just one email. Let alone how to develop them. But we can talk about a few.
Blake had a problem with visual tracking. This doesn't mean he had bad vision. He had perfect 20/20 vision. What it means is that his eye muscles were simply a little under developed. So he had a hard time following a line with his eyes. And of course that is an absolute necessity for reading.
So if muscles are weak what do you do? You strengthen them of course.
He also had a little trouble with visual memory. This is just a matter of how many things can you hold in your mind. Most people can hold seven. This is why phone numbers are seven digits. The more the better. And yes, it's just a skill. A skill that can be developed.
Blake was also right brain dominant. This is almost always the case. Dealing with right brain dominance is not a skill building exercise. Instead you use little tricks. Tricks to busy the right brain and get it out of the left brain's way. Simple tricks like using color. The right brain likes color. So you use a little color to distract it and this allows the left brain to do what it needs to do.
There are other tricks for right brain dominance. But it's a lot to cover here.
Then there is one more thing. The secret weapon. A technique that combines with the skill building exercises and amplifies their effect. A technique that works with all the other drills to make them work so much faster and so much better. It's not hard and it's actually been sitting there right in front of the scientists eyes for a very long time. Thankfully they finally figured it out.
We're going to get to that. It is simple but it's a lot to cover in one email. I have put it together in an email course. But let's wait on that.
For now let's just get to what I originally promised you. A simple exercise you can do at home with your child.
This exercise is not the end all and be all of the program. But it does work on some of the skills we talked about. It is a little bit of a visual discrimination drill. It uses color to occupy the right brain. It uses a little bit of the magical trick. And it's super easy.
So why don't we jump on over and watch the video. After that you will want to check your email again. I'll send you the download so you can do the exercise at home.
Don't be fooled by it's simplicity. We're looking in the park now.
I'm so glad you read this whole thing. It shows that you are serious about helping your child. If you hadn't read all this you probably would have looked at the video and not understood how that sort of exercise will help your child become a successful learner.
Great job reading the whole thing.
Now you can click here to go to the video
Oh, and I almost forgot. What happened to Blake? Well he's deciding which of his top three university picks he will be attending. He was accepted at all three. So He'll be traveling with Glenda and Tim soon to take a look and make a decision.
Glenda is so incredibly proud of him. And she's pretty proud of herself too. That mother's intuition changed everything.
We'll see you on that video.
Enjoy!
Phil
Learning Success
P.S. That's not actually me in the video. I'm more of a face made for radio kinda guy. So Liz does the in front of the camera stuff. It's just easier on your eyes that way. And she's pretty smart about this stuff too!