Supporting Dyslexia with Casey Harrison

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In today's episode, Supporting Dyslexia with Casey Harrison, we name dyslexia as a different way the brain processes language and talk about how misunderstanding it can create shame, anxiety, and nightly homework blowups. We share practical ways to spot early signs, use tech without letting it replace learning, and support kids with accommodations while protecting their sense of self. 

• dyslexia as a language-based learning difference that is common and often misunderstood 
• early indicators in speech and language plus why early intervention helps 
• the brain circuitry of reading and why structured literacy builds a faster pathway 
• tech pros and cons, including handwriting, audiobooks, and cognitive offloading with AI 
• day-to-day impacts beyond reading class, including word retrieval and social confidence 
• what to look for at school, screeners, and why dyslexia varies by person 
• home strategies for homework fatigue, smaller chunks, reading questions aloud, and more grace 
• trauma-informed “iceberg” view of dyslexia, anxiety, negative self-talk, and identity 
• “glows and grows” to balance strengths with skill-building 
• adults recognizing dyslexia later and the way it can run in families 
• Casey’s framework from Teaching Beyond the Diagnosis, including metacognition and self-advocacy 

Show Guest:

Casey Harrison is recognized both nationally and internationally as a dyslexia specialist and literacy educator, with more than 28 years of experience supporting individuals with language-based learning differences. She holds credentials as a Licensed Dyslexia Therapist (TX), Certified Academic Language Therapist (ALTA), and Certified Structured Literacy Dyslexia Specialist (IDA). Harrison currently serves as Vice President of Outreach on the Executive Board of the Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA).

Harrison received the Aylett R. Cox Educator Award from ALTA in recognition of her significant contributions to academic language therapy. She is the founder of The Dyslexia Classroom® and Wimberley Dyslexia & Learning Center, where her work is based on evidence-based, multisensory structured language education and informed by extensive clinical experience.

Harrison is the author of Teaching Beyond the Diagnosis: Empowering Students with Dyslexia, and her work has been published in various professional magazines and educational websites focused on dyslexia, literacy development, and inclusive instructional design. She shares across social media under @thedyslexiaclassroom as the number 2 global dyslexia influencer, raising awareness of dyslexia and supporting the whole child. She also co-hosts the Together in Literacy podcast, which was ranked third among the Best 60 Literacy Podcasts of 2025.

Casey is known for integrating research, practice, and purpose by employing a student-centered, diagnostic, and emotionally supportive approach that reflects the scientific, technical, and creative aspects of academic language therapy.

You can connect with Casey on:

Instagram - www.instagram.com/thedyslexiaclassroom

FB - www.facebook.com/thedyslexiaclassroom

YouTube - www.youtube.com/@thedyslexiaclassroom

And find her book, Teaching Beyond the Diagnosis and listen to her podcast, Together in Literacy

Transcript

The Kitchen Table Breakdown

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Catch 10 with Cat, mental wellness with a friendly voice. I'm Cat, your friendly neighborhood married to family therapist, assuming up there, and TEDx speaker. But most of all, I'm a proud wife and mama, endurance athlete, and wholehearted coffee lover. And I'm truly delighted to be your host. Each week we gather for thoughtful conversations about relationships, resilience, healing, and yes, sometimes we laugh along the way. Let's begin. And today we're talking about dyslexia, the kids we love, and how we can support their learning in their emotional world with Casey Harrison. I want to start with a scene many of you may might recognize. A mom is sitting at the kitchen table with her eight-year-old. It's after dinner. The math worksheet is maybe going okay, but maybe not so much. But then comes the reading. The child starts to get really fidgety, and maybe the pencil accidentally snaps in half, and maybe kind of it starts like the energy in the room starts to get really, really stressful. Maybe your kiddo's really down on themselves. Oh, stupid, I'll never get this. And what am I doing wrong? And you just don't know how to help your kiddo. If that's you or someone you love, you're not alone. Dyslexia impacts an estimated one in five people. So that's not rare. That's every classroom, every family, every friend group. And yet so many parents are still confused, dismissed, or left to figure it out on their own. And maybe it's not even the kiddo that has dyslexia. Maybe it's the parent is the one in five. Today we're gonna name what's really happening. Pull shame out of the shadows and look at dyslexia through a trauma-informed, heart-centered lens, because this is not a story about broken brains, it's a story about different brains and about what happens emotionally when those differences are misunderstood.

Meet Dyslexia Specialist Casey Harrison

Speaker 1:48

And to help walk us through this is Casey Harrison. She's recognized both nationally and internationally as a dyslexia specialist and literacy educator with more than 28 years of experience supporting individuals with language-based learning differences. She's a licensed dyslexia therapist in Texas, a certified academic language therapist, and a certified structured literacy dyslexia specialist. Wowzers. She currently serves as vice president of outreach on the executive board of the Academic Language Therapy Association. Man, she is a boss. So when it comes to outreach and advocacy, she is truly shaping the conversation. She received the Aylett R. Cox Educator Award from ALTA, ALTA, for her significant contributions to academic language therapy. She's the founder of the Dyslexia Classroom and the Wimberley Dyslexia and Learning Center, where her work is grounded in evidence-based, multi-sensory, structured language education and informed by nearly three decades of sitting with real kids and real families. She's the author of Teaching Beyond the Diagnosis, Empowering Students with Dyslexia. And her work has been published across professional magazines and educational websites that focus on dyslexia, literacy, and inclusion. Guys, my brain is short circuiting a little bit. What I love most about Casey is that she integrates research, practice, and purpose. She doesn't just see a struggling reader, she sees the nervous system, the emotions, and the clever coping strategies. She brings a student-centered, diagnostic, and emotionally supportive approach that honors both the science and the soul of learning. Friend, how did you do all that? That is a lot of hard work, and those are a lot of accomplishments.

Speaker 1 3:43

Well, thank you. And thank you for having me. Um, you know, education has just been part of my life. It is something that I've been fairly passionate about. And as a young child, I grew up with my sister who had significant um impairments in terms of her own cognitive abilities and things like that. And so I got to witness all of these different specialties in education from a very young age. And while I knew that that was not the path that I wanted to take in education, I did um really recognize that that was something that I felt very like a kinship to to help students um in the classroom, both in general education and then our students with dyslexia who need special um assistance.

Speaker 4:33

You knew that so early on.

Speaker 1 4:35

I did, yeah. And so really that's probably why I've been teaching for so long. I went to college and I right away was in the classroom at the young age of 22. No way.

Speaker 4:46

Oh my god. They gave you a full classroom of kids.

Speaker 1 4:49

I had a full classroom, yep.

Speaker 4:51

What grade did you teach?

Speaker 1 4:53

My first teaching experience was teaching first grade in California, and I had a multilanguage learning classroom. So I had 20 first graders, and none spoke the same language. We had multiple languages, um Pakistani, Hindi, Chinese, um, English. Um I was just outside of Oakland. Oh wow, yeah.

Speaker 5:16

Wow, you really learned you had to learn on the job. Yes. Yeah. Wow, amazing. Well, we're so glad that you've dedicated your life to this. Thanks. Okay.

What Dyslexia Is And Early Signs

Speaker 5:27

What is dyslexia?

Speaker 1 5:28

Yeah, that's a great question. And dyslexia is ultimately a different brain processing system. So our students with dyslexia are individuals with dyslexia, it means that they're processing language in a little bit of a different way. Not better, not worse, but just different. Um, dyslexia is often misunderstood. And it really is, it's the most common learning difference. So you had mentioned that, you know, we say one in five. When when we're looking at research, really the research is indicating that between 7 and 20% of the population worldwide has some form of dyslexia. And when we think of dyslexia, we're often thinking of students who struggle in acquiring reading and writing. And that's because that's where dyslexia kind of shows up, is in the schools, when all of a sudden our students are learning about sounds and letters and trying to put those sounds together to be able to read the words on the page. And that's really where we start to see students kind of hit a wall and start to really feel like, gosh, this is taking me a lot longer. A lot, this is really hard for me. And it appears that my my peers are just figuring it out. And so even at that young age, we see the emotional impact for our students. They're very smart, they recognize that they're not getting it. And that's why one of the big things that we talk about in education is early intervention. And if we think about dyslexia as a language-based learning difference, there are indicators early on in language that can be characteristics that parents can pay attention to. So if you have your preschool children and you're looking at their language, are they using persistent baby talk? Are they maybe saying those cute words that we all love where they're like paschetti for spaghetti or you know, um memorizing for mesmerizing? Those are somewhat age developmentally appropriate, but if they persist, then that's an indicator that there's some language disruption going on for our students that could impact reading and writing later on. Um, young children who have a hard time like learning their alphabet or nursery rhymes, those are the students that I'm kind of looking out for for possible reading difficulties as we enter more formal education.

How The Reading Brain Gets Wired

Speaker 8:11

So how the brain processes things, does that mean this may be two in the weeds, does that mean different parts of the brain are talking to each other differently? Yeah. Does that mean anything else?

Speaker 1 8:24

Yeah, so that's a great question. Um if we think about the brain and we think about language, language is something that's very natural, right? We our brains really were developed for language. We have these different areas of the brain for vision, for language, for thinking, um, and for speaking. But reading and writing is a man-made construct. And in the evolution of human history, it's fairly recent. And so we don't have a specific region of the brain that's dedicated to reading and writing. What we have done is we've created a new circuitry system to make reading and writing accessible. And that's done through this formal education. So, what happens for our students with dyslexia, we really the way I explain it to my students and their families is that our students are kind of taking the country road to reading, which is lovely. And we we might get there eventually. We're gonna hit some potholes and things like that, but it's a very slow road. And for reading, what we really need to do is to get on a super highway. When your typical readers are looking at a word, they are instantly able to access that word when they're reading. So our students with dyslexia, they're kind of taking that long, roundabout way to get there. So the work that I do is helping the students build that super highway for their reading brain.

Tech Help Versus Cognitive Offloading

Speaker 9:55

How do you feel like tech? Does tech help or hurt our kiddos with dyslexia?

Speaker 1 10:05

That's a great question.

Speaker 10:06

Because it feels like the other day I was looking at my kiddos were were um, they were writing a list of some things they needed to pack, and there were so much these letters, these were, I mean, I could tell it said toiletries, but you know, it was not spelled properly. But they don't have dictionaries anymore. They don't have books that they are constantly using that tell them this is how you spell the word. You know, they don't have, you know, they have autocorrect on a word doc or on a phone. And so things are autocorrected, so their brain doesn't have to learn exactly. So as I'm as I'm hearing you say about our brains are haven't been wired, like reading is new relative to history. Does tech help or hurt, or a little of both?

Speaker 1 11:02

I think it's probably a little bit of both, and how we're using tech. So there's a lot of research about brain activation and the instruction that we're doing that's firing up the areas of the brain that are necessary to build that super highway for reading and writing. One of the things that research has shown is that when our students are writing by hand, they have much more brain engagement than when they are typing or using any kind of computer output. So handwriting, even in the in this tech age, is not dead. It really is helping create these neural pathways to solidify the sounds of our language to the written representation of our language. So it is really important. And when our students are over-reliant on tech, that could create a hindrance for them in terms of acquiring proficient spelling, proficient reading, and proficient writing. So I think we need to find a balance. The ways in which I use tech for my students with dyslexia, I love audiobooks. So as our students are acquiring reading and writing, their what they can read themselves may not be at grade level or at their intellectual level. Our students with dyslexia are incredibly smart. And I want to say that dyslexia has no impact on intellect. It is not related to intellect at all. Um, people, individuals with dyslexia are incredibly smart. Um, and in fact, 35% of entrepreneurs in the United States identify as dyslexic. They have fantastic abilities to see really big pictures, like big picture thinkers. They are great at interpersonal skills. Um, and so there's so many talents. I think, and I know I kind of digressed here, but but I do want to make a point here that we're all human beings, and as humans, we all have things that come really naturally to us or that we're really good at, and then we all have things that we're working on still growing. And so for our students with dyslexia, we want to make sure that the things that they're growing, those struggles, don't overshadow their strengths.

Speaker 13:24

Yeah, beautifully said. You're listening to Couch Time with Cat. I'm Cat, and today we're talking about dyslexia, how it affects learning in our kiddos, and how we can support them with dyslexia specialist Casey Harrison. So back to the tech. I thought about asking Chat GBT to print a packing list. And then I thought, no, if I ask it to print a packing list, my kids won't know how to make a packing list, nor will they XYZ. So I guess what you're saying is help it in the support, but not necessarily in the complete skill.

Speaker 1 14:04

Yes. In fact, there's a thing called cognitive offloading, which I think as parents and educators, we have to be really mindful of so that we ourselves aren't asking AI to do the thinking for us. And then especially not letting AI do the thinking for our students. Our students are still novices in learning about the world, learning about how to read, how to write, how to spell. If they're passing off that thinking to AI, they actually they're not creating this pathway. They, their, their superhighway will not be formed. So we have to be really mindful of that.

Speaker 14:45

That's terrifying. I had a conversation with someone the other day, and they said, I don't know, I have to ask Chat GBT. And I said, No, you don't. You can actually give me an answer. That is something your brain can think of. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a fact, it wasn't a date or something like that. And I thought, oh my gosh, this was a kind of a younger person in college. And I thought, oh no, oh no. Yeah. What if the servers go down?

Speaker 1 15:16

Well, and I think, you know, we have to be mindful of how we're using AI. It we're in a really exciting time where AI can really help us in a lot of ways. Um, but we need to make sure we're using it as a tool and not as a crutch because that cognitive offloading really will impact um our thinking processes and our ability to have critical thinking and our ability to gain that background knowledge. There's been a lot of different studies out recently about brain imaging showing the difference between people who used AI to generate essays or even emails versus people who didn't. And that firing up of the brain, there's a clear distinction. So I do think just being mindful, in terms of using tech for support for our students, if you have a student or child with dyslexia, what we call those are accommodations. And an accommodation is basically a bridge to the curriculum. So as our students are learning to read, their reading ability may not match their grade level or their intellect level. So what we can use is audiobooks so that they can access higher level literature than what they're able to independently read. Now, accommodations should not replace instruction for our students. We still have to be working to close the gap between the two. I see. But they should be they should make it so that those accommodations are available so that they are accessing grade level material while we're still working on those foundational skills for reading and writing.

How Dyslexia Shows Up All Day

Speaker 17:00

Can you share a little bit about how dyslexia shows up day to day in life for kids, maybe in school or outside of school? Absolutely. What are they experiencing that we don't know that they're experiencing?

Speaker 1 17:13

Yeah. One of the big misunderstandings, I think, about dyslexia, number one, is that um it only exists in reading and writing. But if we understand dyslexia as a language-based learning disability, think about how often you are required to read in our society. Our society is expected to read. Literacy is the the um avenue for for success and for opportunity really in our society. And when our students don't have that, it can create ceilings for our kids and limit their potential. So if we think about how often we have to read, we have to read in biology, we have to read in math. Math has its own language, but we have to those word problems we have to look at. We have to read in world history, we have to read across the curriculum every single day. You they can't escape reading. It doesn't just exist in English language arts class. So for that reason, our students really can just all day long feel like this heavy weight of, oh my gosh, I'm behind. This is hard. Even when students are asked to um perhaps share their ideas, some of our students may need additional thinking time to process that language and get it out. Um, other students may end up with re word retrieval difficulties. And sometimes that will lead to perhaps like mispronunciation of words. So I had a third grader who was so excited, and they were just learned about government, and they were like, Yeah, we learned about the declements of independency. And I knew what the child was saying, but they saw my pause and they're like, You know, George Washington? And I was like, Oh, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. But they weren't able to retrieve those exact words. Now imagine that child saying that in their classroom.

unknown 19:16

Right.

Speaker 1 19:17

There would have been a lot of giggles, perhaps the teacher may have misinterpreted as them like being a class clown. When in reality, it was actually the dyslexia creating this little hiccup and the ability to retrieve the sounds and sequence of those words. Oh my gosh, that breaks my heart for kiddos. That is so tough. And so we see that across all aspects. So that's why everyone needs to know about dyslexia and not just your English language arts teachers, because it's going to impact everything, even on the football field. Let's say that you know we have a a student who is struggling with understanding the language of the football. They may be able to naturally have this ability to do the plays and to see it on the field. But when they're handed perhaps like the playbook to look at, or the or the coaches going over right and left really fast, that can that language can impact our students as well.

Speaker 20:16

So Casey, you've worked with both my kiddos, and they both have dyslexia tendencies, we would say. And we were lucky enough, you were in our world. We didn't have to go seek you out. You were like a just an angel living among us. So you told us, hey, your kiddos have dyslexic tendencies, and okay, and we as parents followed that route. So but you flagged it for us. We had no, I had no clue what to look for, what not to look for. And that was, you know, I don't really know, very, very early on. They were both I don't I don't know, six, seven, they were both young, probably even younger than that.

Screening, Continuums, And Red Flags

Speaker 21:04

What in in regular school? How there's so many kids, so much is happening. Who should be looking out for it? A combo, teachers, parents, how do we recognize this characteristic in our kiddos so that we can get them support, so that there are no giggles or so that people can support them instead of maybe um get frustrated with them?

Speaker 1 21:32

Yeah. So one of the one of the good things that's happening in our society is that we are saying the word dyslexia. And with that, we're releasing a lot of the shame that perhaps um surrounded that word. And in terms of the educational system, we now have dyslexia laws on the books in almost every single state. Where educators and schools are doing screeners of some kind to try to flag kids early to see who perhaps has early characteristics of dyslexia and how we can provide intervention early on. Individual school districts and things like that in different states may implement that differently, but there is starting to be more and more conversation about dyslexia, which is really hopeful because really the early intervention is best, but I will say that it is never too late. It is never too late. There are adults that are learning how to read. There are, you know, all ages. And when we think about dyslexia too, you know, a lot of times people think, oh, well, dyslexia means that you can't read at all. But we have to understand that dyslexia exists on a continuum and the impact of dyslexia will vary from person to person in severity. So we have some individuals with dyslexia who may really struggle to read three-letter words. And then we have other individuals who maybe they are just kind of you notice that they're stumbling over some words when they're reading out loud.

Speaker 23:14

Kind of like I did on the intro.

Speaker 1 23:19

So and so we just have to have this knowledge that, you know, if you've met one person with dyslexia, you've met one person with dyslexia, right? It is it is going to impact individuals differently. And so we have these common characteristics of dyslexia being that um difficulty acquiring proficient word reading and or spelling. Um, but again, that's going to look different from individual to individual. And so then the the things that we may be looking for in our students, we have to have a really big understanding of dyslexia. So we kind of see, okay, I see that they're consistently struggling to sound out words. That's that's a bit of a red flag. Or I see consistently that we're reading at a at a rate that's that's really a little bit slower than what's expected. Perhaps they're tripping over words, or maybe you're even noticing that consistently their spelling is just almost unreadable, or they're they're adding in sounds or omitting sounds. So those are some things to look at. Um I have a whole list of of characteristics kind of by preschool, early elementary, and then even later on.

Speaker 24:32

But oh awesome. So like on a website? Okay, great. Yes. Yeah. We'll include that, all those in the show notes.

Homework Meltdowns And Home Strategies

Speaker 24:40

Listener, there's an emotional cost to being misunderstood in years of feeling behind or lazy, and that can be just as impactful or detrimental. And I know as a parent, when I started to kind of butt up on this, I was a pretty I had ADD, but I was I learned systems very, very young. And so I didn't have a ton of difficulty in school. Like school was where I shined. I mean, I was horrible athletically, but you know, in school that was I was kind of easy breezy sailing. And so when I became a parent and my kids started having homework, I thought they will it would also be easy breezy for them. This is my naivete. So when I started to feel difficulty sitting with my kid and doing homework, I mean, it was so hard as a parent. Definitely since I didn't have any personal experience with having difficulty doing homework. And so it was, it created a lot of stress in the home. I pretty immediately, you know, with your help and with other people's help, realized oh, this is beyond my scope. Like this is not a willpower or a power struggle or a, you know, it's not that, it's a learning difference. Um but I think for so long, we were lucky in terms of nipping that in the bud pretty quickly. But I I don't do homework with my kids, I just really don't because they learn differently than I can teach. I'm not a teacher, you know, I didn't go to school for that, so that's very difficult. What would you share with parents who have maybe had that similar experience, or maybe they're realizing, oh my gosh, maybe all these years of difficulty have been something else, and maybe I've been putting this label on my child, and maybe they're not difficult, and maybe they're just dyslexic. What would you say to that parent?

Speaker 1 26:52

Yeah, I would say, you know, first off, kind of look at the their learning journey and if it's kind of something that perhaps if they've they're not yet tested, maybe that's an avenue to to pursue. Um, the other thing to to note is that sometimes our students need things broken down into much smaller increments. And at the end of the day, for our students with dyslexia, they're exhausted. They have been trying to keep up all day. Yes, yes, yes. And by the time they get home, there's that emotional collapse. Um, that is a real thing. And the students have been just holding it together all day and they come home and that's our safe place. And and so unfortunately, mom and dad, you get to experience the complete meltdown. Um you know, giving them some time, also helping them with some like routines and some strategies. If your student, if your child has accommodations at school, then asking and making sure you know what those are so that you can have support them and have them have those same strategies at home. So, for example, a lot of our students with dyslexia when questions and answer choices are read out loud to them so that they can keep what they've read in their mind and not also be struggling with the questions and answer choices, whether that's in math or in reading. So as an accommodation at home, read the question and answer choices out loud to them.

Speaker 28:25

That's great. I have never thought about that.

Speaker 1 28:27

Yeah. Um also I will cut papers in half if if that sometimes that visual just it's very overwhelming to look at a whole page of text or a whole page of math. Um, and right away you're just like, I can't do that. Take make it so it's visually less and just put things into smaller pieces. So I think having communication with the teachers about what is working and what's not working, breaking things into smaller pieces, and then also offering grace, like acknowledge that it's hard, right? And um I think that that's also something we have to be really mindful of if your student, if your child has dyslexia, it is a hard journey, but it's a journey, and it's one um where what we want to do is say, hey, this is just one part of your journey, and and we have strategies and we have tools and we have people that can help you on this journey, but that doesn't define who you are as a person. You you have all these other talents, and so making sure that there's a balance between identifying students' strengths and then also what it is that they need.

Speaker 29:39

So that's really beautiful.

Speaker 1 29:40

I talk about that with my students as glows and grows.

Speaker 29:44

Oh my God, Casey.

Speaker 1 29:47

Sounds like I'm gonna cry. And we all have things that we glow at, right? Um, unfortunately, for for a lot of our students with dyslexia or learning differences, that glowing doesn't happen in school.

Speaker 29:58

Yes.

Speaker 1 29:59

And so that can feel really hard because you're in school for the majority of your day, and that's where you're looked at with your peers and your teachers, and just that that can feel so heavy. So making sure our students understand what their glows are and that their grows. And then also that as humans, we all have areas we're growing. So also being really vulnerable and real with our kids and let them know, like, hey, this this part here is one thinking like a glow that I have, but this here is something I'm really working on. It's kind of hard for me.

Speaker 30:32

Oh, I just love that. And that puts so much, yeah. I that puts so so much into perspective, I think, uh, for me as a parent and hopefully for the listener, glows and grows. And we want to, we want to give the glows their time also, not just focus on what they need to improve, but really lift them up and shine a light on what they're really good at and what they enjoy and what where their talents kind of naturally lie.

Speaker 1 31:05

Yeah. And then the grows aren't just something, oh, well, we'll just try harder. The grows then are what do we need to do? Like, let's come up with a plan. How are we going to grow that? If you think about a garden, you don't just throw out the seeds and hope for the best. You nurture it, you water it, you give it what it needs. That's how we need to have our students grow those areas as well by giving them what they need.

Speaker 31:27

Oh, Casey, I need a I need a t-shirt. I need a glow grow t-shirt. I like it. I'm thinking of the adults listening who may be wondering, hey, wait, that was me as a kid, or that's still me.

Adults, Family Patterns, And Missed Clues

Speaker 31:44

And maybe they haven't ever even considered the idea that they were dyslexic. Maybe just they just thought I'm not good at this, or they've fumbled along and they've developed coping strategies, but they haven't ever actually considered that word dyslexia. Do you see a lot of adults realizing that? I do.

Speaker 1 32:05

Um, one of the things that, you know, a lot of the families that come to see me or people that reach out, they will start to recognize in themselves or like, oh, yeah, that was really hard for me, or oh, I never read a book. I've I hate reading, or, you know, and these are successful adults in society. And one of the things that we can understand is that dyslexia does have a familiar clustering in that there is some genetic markers for dyslexia. There's other things that impact it. It is not a single deficit. It really is like a cluster of symptoms. And as I said, it exists on a continuum. So with that in mind, there does tend to be in in my world, we tend to say that dyslexia tends to run through families, in that um, you know, it might be like an uncle or a cousin or grandmother or grandfather. Um, it doesn't have to be a direct parent to child, but there does tend to be in the family someone who perhaps found school, they didn't care for school, they didn't like reading, perhaps they identify as a poor speller. Things like that are kind of clues that maybe that person as well has dyslexia.

Speaker 33:24

If you're just joining us, you're listening to Couch Time with Cat, I'm Cat, and today we're talking about dyslexia, what it is, how it affects our kiddos, and how we can support both their learning and their hearts with Dyslexia Specialist and author, Casey Harrison.

Trauma, Anxiety, And The Iceberg

Speaker 33:41

Okay, Casey. So from a trauma-informed lens, what are some ways repeated struggles with reading without the right support can affect a child's self-esteem or their nervous system inside of school?

Speaker 1 33:55

Yeah. So oftentimes when we think of dyslexia, we think of what we can see, right? Struggles with reading, struggles with spelling, um, those types of things. Think of dyslexia as an iceberg. That's what we see on the on the top. But underneath, we have a whole lot going on. We can have where comprehension is challenging. We may even start to see where, because it's language-based, students may have difficulty communicating well with their peers. We see a lot of anxiety. In fact, students with dyslexia tend to have a higher rate of anxiety because they're holding all of this kind of trauma related to school and to performance that they know they're not doing well in as one of the kind of cascading effects. And so when we talk a lot about dyslexia, I always talk to parents and educators about the cascading impacts and the emotional well-being of our students. So things that we see, as I said, anxiety, we may see a lot of negative self-talk where students start to say, I'm dumb, or I just can't get it. Um, so kind of paying attention to that negative self-talk and getting our students to understand that dyslexia doesn't define you. It is one part of how your brain processes information. And sometimes there there may be some really good things that come out of that. You you are able to perhaps see problems in a different way or have other strengths that are coming out of that as well as the struggle. So again, coming back to those glows and grows is really important. But underneath that, on that bottom part of the iceberg, there's a lot of that emotional um impact for our students. When I have students who have finally gotten an identification, it's almost like it's a hat that they can take off and hang up, and they're like, now I know why I was struggling. Right? It's not me. I'm not dumb. I just have a different way of processing information and I need it taught in a specific way, but it it doesn't define them. So sometimes having an identification, I know we may worry about a label or things like that, but really when you understand yourself as a human being and as a learner, it just makes everything much more relatable. And you're able to separate from this is my area of struggle, but now I know why. And now I can come up with a plan to help me with those challenges versus just thinking that there's internally something broken with me.

Speaker 36:45

With your work with kiddos over the years, how do you see their sense of self change as they learn more skills?

Speaker 1 36:54

It's amazing. It is one of my favorite things. Um, and I I feel just so blessed to have worked with families and students and the community here in the Wimberley Valley for 10 years now. But a lot of those kids, you know, they're in college now and they're, you know, and they they still come back. And so it is, it really is a journey. And I think that is something we have to understand as well that dyslexia is a journey. It is lifelong. It doesn't mean that you can't find success. I have students that have gotten full rides to colleges. I have students that are, you know, graduating Magna cum laude. What we have to understand though is that it's a journey, and journeys take time. Right. And so we have to understand what dyslexia is. We have to understand how it's impacting each individual. And as they're gaining success, they're also finding their own voice so that they can advocate for what they need, right? I need assistance with note-taking. I need extra time to write this essay. I need this. And when they have that voice, they've shed the shame of dyslexia, and they're really empowered of to take ownership of their own learning journey. And that is something that's just so beautiful to witness.

Teaching Beyond The Diagnosis Framework

Speaker 38:15

Can we talk about your book?

Speaker 1 38:17

Sure.

Speaker 38:17

Okay. Tell us about your book, who it's for, how can it help?

Speaker 1 38:22

The book is called Teaching Beyond the Diagnosis: Empowering Students with Dyslexia. And when I was asked to write it, I hadn't I had never thought about writing a book, and a publisher reached out to me and asked me to write a book.

Speaker 38:33

That is so cool.

Speaker 1 38:35

That is so cool. It was it was probably the hardest thing that I've done in terms of like taking it to the to the end. Um, because I just had so much that I wanted to share. And and but I really I tried to write it so for parents, for educators, and for the general population, so that everyone can take something from it. But really, what it put into place is this integrated framework that I have used with students with great success over my career. So that, yes, we are definitely focusing on the academics, which is of course a key component, but I have found that we can't just stop there. We also need students to have knowledge of what dyslexia is. They have to have knowledge of how their own dyslexia journey looks. And that requires them to tap into some executive function skills and to develop some metacognitive skills. So the ability to kind of reflect and think about their own learning journey and what's working and what's not working and make adjustments. And that leads them into self-advocacy, to have a voice to actually speak up for themselves. Um, and that that's really what comes to light in this book. And through that, it's really looking at not just the academic of dyslexia, but the whole child.

Speaker 40:06

That's beautiful. How long did it take you to write?

Speaker 1 40:09

Well, I I think I ended up writing probably two books and then I had to condense it. So it ended up taking me like a year and a half because I was, you know, doing all things. But it was It's a labor of love. It was.

Speaker 40:21

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Each one of mine took three years, like from paper to pen to book in my hand. Wow, that is some um delayed gratification.

Speaker 1 40:35

It was definitely um a journey for me too to try to get the work that I do out in on paper in a way that other people can understand um and sort of see my own process of how I work with students.

Speaker 40:51

If people are looking for more support, they can also go to the dyslexia classroom. What's on there? What is that?

Speaker 1 40:58

Yeah. So I had this vision of opening up the center um here in Wimberley, and it's been just beautiful. As I said, I've been open for 10 years now. But I called it a learning center, even though it was just a little me when I first started. Um but I I have now have more therapists that work with me. And in that journey, I I also started to have a rather large following under the Dyslexia Classroom, which was like my my online branch of the Wimberly Dyslexia and Learning Center. And so really um the dyslexia classroom has like a YouTube channel with little videos and a blog, and that's kind of where I'm housing all of all of those things. So they're they're one in the same, but that's sort of like the online branch.

Speaker 41:45

So, listener, if you're looking for support, you can find her at the dyslexia classroom, and I'll leave all this in the show notes. But also if you're local, right here in town at Wimberly Dyslexia and Learning Center.

Where To Find Help And Resources

Speaker 41:56

And I want to share with you a story before we go. I think I've told you this before, but I don't know. Um, so several years ago, when I was in graduate school, um, I would watch you live your life. And just like Casey has um kiddos that are a few years older than mine, and so she was a little further down the mom river. And I would watch her drop her kids off at school. I guess I'll tell you, I would watch you drop your kids off at school and then go to work and have a sweet space and then pick them up from school. And I thought that's my dream. Have I ever told you this?

Speaker 1 42:38

I think maybe you mentioned it one time.

Speaker 42:40

Yeah. Yeah. So for four years while I was in graduate school, I held your life or the, you know, the vision of your life as my goal. And then um, when I was able to then rent my first office in the same building that you have your office, I was like, oh my God, I did it. I dropped my kids off. I go to work with Casey. And then I pick my kids up. So I just want to say, I just admire you so much how you mom and how you live your life and how you integrate your career and your family. I just think it's really beautiful. And you're just a gift to us all. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, you're so welcome. Thank you. Okay, if listeners want to get in touch with you, we've we've kind of like spelled it out, but where can they find you?

Speaker 1 43:34

Yeah. Um, I have Wimberly Dyslexia Center.com. Um, has all my information there. And then thedyslexiaclassroom.com is the other one. Those are probably the easiest to access me.

Speaker 43:46

Perfect. And listener, I'll leave all that in the show notes. Casey, thank you. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your time and your wisdom with us.

Closing Thanks And Staying Connected

Speaker 43:55

And listener, thank you so much for listening to the show and for your support. Every time you listen to the show, you make my dreams come true. All right, thanks, guys. Take good care of yourselves. I'll see you next time. Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated, I'd love to stay connected with you. You can follow along on Instagram and Facebook at CouchTime with Cat and sign up for my newsletter at CouchTimewithCat.com for reflections and resources delivered straight to you. Listen to Couchtime with Cat on KWVH 94.3 and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Your support means so much to me. Thank you. Until next time, take good care of yourselves.