ADHDifference

S2E30: ADHD, Dyslexia & Literacy Turnaround + guest Russell Van Brocklen

• Julie Legg

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Julie Legg speaks with Russell Van Brocklen — dyslexia researcher, educator, keynote speaker. Known as The Dyslexic Professor, Russell shares his extraordinary journey from being a severely dyslexic student with ADHD to a New York State Senate-funded researcher reshaping literacy education.

Through lived experience, practical strategies, and powerful case studies, Russell reveals how identifying a child’s “speciality” can unlock motivation and transform learning outcomes. He breaks down how ADHD and dyslexia often co-occur and provides a step-by-step methodology for parents and educators to help kids improve reading and writing at any level, no diagnosis required.

Key Points in the Episode

  • Russell's journey from failing student to pioneering dyslexia researcher
  • The importance of identifying a child’s “speciality” to unlock motivation
  • Why ADHD and dyslexia are more similar than many realise
  • Step-by-step writing strategies for kids with ADHD and dyslexia
  • How a 10-year-old jumped 8 reading grade levels in 6 months
  • Why early testing and intervention is crucial and affordable
  • The problem with waiting for a diagnosis to start support
  • How Russell’s approach helps kids outperform even AP-level students
  • The neuroscience behind moving writing skills from chaos to clarity
  • A new model for training teachers in under three hours
  • Practical advice for overwhelmed parents on where to start

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RUSSELL: By the time they're 12, at the end of seventh grade, they can write structurally more advanced paragraphs than high school advanced placement English kids. Drives them crazy when these dyslexic middle schools outperform them. So, that's just another way. And when we're talking to ADHD kids about what they really focus on, this gets them ready because what I tell them is "Just wait until you get to grad school."

JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece, A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I'm joined by Russell Van Brocklen, widely known as the Dyslexic Professor. Russell is a New York State Senate funded dyslexia researcher, educator, and keynote speaker who has spent more than a decade helping students with dyslexia recognize the strengths that are often hidden underneath years of frustration. Russell was a severely dyslexic student himself and has ADHD, a combination that's far more common than most people realize. Russell, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. [Thanks for having me.] How did you get into all of this? 

RUSSELL: Well, this was the exact last thing I was supposed to do with my life. I was supposed to be a bureaucrat for the state government. So, what happened is it was the late '90s. I was finishing up college and I wanted to know how laws are created, not some course I wanted to know. So, I signed up for the New York State Assembly Internship Program and I was accepted. And I show up and I say, "Here's my neuro-psychological evaluation. I have a first grade reading and writing level." And the director of the program looked at that and said, "This isn't going to work." So, he went up to the speaker's office and they, the speaker of the assembly said, "You have to accommodate him. This has to work. Figure it out." So they got a committee together of their senior people and they came to me and said, "We are pulling you out of the legislative office building. We're moving you to the capital to be in the majority leaders program and council's office." And I think they were a bit concerned because I would be nowhere near my peers all day long. Now it's a big part of the internship. Well, I just went yes because the majority leaders program and council's office ran the assembly day today and they had no idea what to do with an undergrad intern. That's a graduate post and that's a real internship, not go get the coffee. So, I went in there and I found out why they put me there. There were three administrative assistants and I had to write things and submit things each week, you know, page or two. So, I went up with my first one. I said, "I'm so sorry. It's horrible." They looked at it and go, "Wow, that's bad." And they he said, "Don't worry. The director has an Ivy League education. We do this for him all the time. Yours was just going to be a bit more work." And they were able to make it work. So then the academic portion, I gave a hour, I mean hours long presentation and Q&A session instead of the standard research paper. Very uncommon accommodation for me back then. So then all this goes they looked at and said "We're recommending 15 credits of A minus." Remember this is the New York State government that made these accommodations. So then it goes back to our flagship state university, the State University or New York Center of Buffalo political science department. They looked at the accommodations that the New York State government itself created said "We don't like these accommodations. So here's your 15 credits of F." So, I got sick of the discrimination and then I went over to my, the professors I still liked and I said, "How do I learn to read and write in grad school so I can teach other dyslexics have to go through this?" And they said, "Well, you go to law school because you read and write there more than any place." I said, "Okay." They were kind of joking. I audited. Look, I signed up for two audits. I went to see a dyslexic professor named Professor Warner. Second day in contracts he calls on me. What they do is they use the Socratic method. They literally ask you questions you don't know the answer to and then just break you until you adapt. Well, that didn't happen to me. I learned afterwards that when dyslexics go to grad school, we own the place day one or soon thereafter. We dominate it because what's going on is... this is the top book on dyslexia. ADD is very similar. That's the dyslectic brain. Do you see how the back part of the typical brain has this massive neuro activity and I got next to nothing going on in the back? Mhm. Now, do you see how in the front part of the brain it's about two and a half times overactive? According to Yale, that's articulation followed by word analysis. So now I was about ready to articulate. Professor Warner called on me. I answered. Everything's just collapsed and got organized for the first time in my life and I responded as his equal. Goes on for a couple of questions. I'm responding as his equal. Then he starts getting, he really goes after me and he starts he starts going after me. I yell at him. He yells back 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, he raises his hands. "Russell, you couldn't be any more correct. In the interest of time I have to move on to the next case." I solved law school reasoning in that 15 minutes. I learned to read within a month. I learned to write within a couple of years. Then I went back to the New York State Senate. I said, "I want you to cover my research cost. I want you to pay for my research." And they don't do that. But they said, "If you get a local school district and you get the support from the Sunni Research Foundation, the education department, senior professors, we'll consider it." Few years later, they paid for it. I went to Averil Park Central School District right outside of Albany, where I went to high school before. We increased the dyslexic... we took the most motivated, the most intelligent juniors and seniors they had that were dyslexic or other learning disabilities, including ADD, ADHD. They were writing at the middle school level. One class period a day for the school year, they increased to the average range of entering graduate school students. They by-passed high school. They by-passed college. They went right into graduate level writing ability. They all went out of college. They all graduated GPA of 2.5 to 3.6. Cost of New York State taxpayers of under three, under $900 a piece. What happened? You look at the front part of the brain again. That's two and a half times overactive. That's articulation followed by word analysis. The GRE is the gradual records exam, analytical writing assessment or analytical articulation. Same thing in my book. That was the breakthrough. That's how I got started. 

JULIE: Wow. Wow. What a journey you went on. Gosh. So, wow. So, you described yourself as formerly severely dyslexic student who eventually became a researcher, as you said, an educator and an advocate. What did learning look and feel like for you as a child if you take us back to those early years? 

RUSSELL: Oh, I'll give you an example. I finally went to a school board member across the street. Their son and me got a eagle scout badge at the same time. So before that, they forced me out for eighth grade history. I was told I was going to flunk. I was going to do horrible. I ended up getting 100 on every test and quiz except one where I mistook a B for a D. So, I got one question wrong.  I won the history award for the best history student. What happened? A teacher actually made us think. He made us work and I just remembered everything he said and recalled it on a test day. And that's kind of how I got through everything. I just remembered everything that was taught about because I had to. I literally couldn't take notes until after I got some used to it in law school. So, that's how I just developed things. And a lot of other compensatory techniques. A lot of people with dyslexia and ADHD do that and I just, you know, I have ADHD as well. 

JULIE: As dyslexia and ADHD often do co-occur, what happens with students who are trying to navigate both in your experience? How does dyslexia and ADHD intersect and how can one condition almost hide or maybe exaggerate the other? 

RUSSELL: Well, to me from a treatment perspective, ADHD is simply mild form of dyslexia. Now, you said you have ADHD yourself. What I'd like to do is use you as an example and ask you a couple of questions so that your audience could do this themselves. And see this doesn't mean clinically you have anything or don't have anything but I find that they're extremely accurate before you go and drop a lot of money on qualified testing. Is that okay? Yes. Okay. So, because you asked a good question, but it's kind of a complicated answer, and I want to show you so your audience can actually get something out of this applicable. So, first thing we have to do is find out what your specialty is. That's the first thing you always do with a suspected ADD, ADHD, or dyslexia. What's your area of extreme interest and ability? 

JULIE: It's actually growing vegetables from seeds. I have this massive fascination. Yeah. Yeah. 

RUSSELL: Okay. So your specialty is growing vegetables from seeds. Okay. Now when you're thinking about that, do you ever have ideas or now or in the past where the ideas are flying around your head at light speed? But key question, little or no organization? [Oh, all the time.] Okay. So just so everything that you need. So if we're because your show is about ADD, ADHD, this is what we call our speciality. So the first thing we have to do in order to correct our reading and writing concerns is to find that speciality because I'm going to give you an example. This is kind of a long answer, but it illustrates a key point. Years ago, I was contacted by a mom. Her daughter's name is Casey. Casey was in fifth grade, 10 years old, turned 11 over the summer, reading at a second grade level. And Casey said, "I want to do reading first." I said, "Casey, I do writing first because if you can write it, you can read it." Casey said, "No, I want to do reading first." I said, "Okay, here's how you do it. 10, 20 minute sessions. Have your mom tell you how many. It's up to her." I didn't know. Casey, just again, so everyone knows, I never saw this before. I will never see this again. And this is a one-off just to illustrate a point about speciality. I gave this book to Casey for her book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This is what she was interested in. All 900 pages. This is for 10th grade to first year college level. Let's just call it 10th grade. So Casey started going through it. She didn't do what I told her. She locked herself in her room 2 to three hours a night for 6 months, most of the days during the summertime. And then she goes off. I get a... I'm working with her for 15 minutes a week because that's what her parents could afford. And she's just diligently doing this. So then she gets called for a silent reading episode. Her mom got called. Somebody the kids went over, took her book, they couldn't get past the first paragraph. She read anything they asked her to. The teacher said, "We thought your daughter was severely dyslexic. We thought that she had a severe reading problem. She's the best reader in the class by grade level. What's going on?" She, her mom, called me and I said, "What do you think she's been doing in her bedroom every night?" So, she jumped eight grade levels in six months essentially mostly on her own. So, why am I spending all this time on this? Because now we get to the next point. Her mom asked, "What is this just that book or what about something else?" So, I signed her this book, my most popular Walt Disney's book, all thousand pages, because the kids who like this want to know what the Disney magic is. It's two universal things. Typically at her age takes about 2 years to figure it out. She took 3 months. It transferred over. So then I asked Casey with her mom listening because I knew she'd get a kick out of this. "Casey, what did you think of Walt Disney's book?" I hated it. I said, "Okay, you're done with it. You can do whatever you want." She literally destroyed it. And I said, "Casey, here's the key question why I'm spending all this time on this. When we asked you to do something you hate, what happened to your motivation?" She said it got cut down by half. Typical students at 75-80%. So if you step outside of that speciality until the ADD or ADHD/dyslexic kid is at grade level, when you step outside that speciality, you're down 75- 80% for most of them. And you wonder why this is having such a hard time. Next, remember when I asked you in your speciality, you had ideas flying around your head at light speed, but with little to no organization. Mhm. Okay. Well, here's what's going on. If I... what's going on is we have to fix that by using writing as a measurable output. So, let me explain. When I ask you that question, do you have ideas in your speciality flying around your head at little to no organization? It's just chaos. That's our biggest problem. So, how do we fix that? Do you remember in school they would ask you, they would teach you these big picture thing and that they would eventually get to something specific over the course of a long time. Do you remember that? Mhm. Did you find it really confusing?

JULIE: Perhaps maybe frustrating because I like to get to the point straight away. 

RUSSELL: You want to get to the point. Yeah. Yeah. So, so for people like us, it's like grabbing fog. So, just to use the United States, that's what I'm familiar with. If you we can't ask the kids like us, I'm just going to call it neurodiverse, a general to a specific question until the inter until we're at grade level. So, we can't ask what effect did Martin Luther King's famous I have a dream speech have on the American civil rights movement in the 1960s? Grabbing fog. We need to start off with a very specific point and then go outward. What personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech? We look up the... we look it up. We find the answer. That answer gives us a question which gives us an answer which gives us a question gives us an answer. So for you, for your speciality of how to grow vegetables, you pick your favourite one and then we ask a very specific question. Given my climate in New Zealand, given this seed, what is the best way to grow this, to grow this vegetable? And then you research that and you find the answer and that answer gives you another question which gives you an answer, gives you another question. And you naturally go out and as you practice this, this forces your brain to organize itself. And we just use your written response of how you think we should do this as measurable output of how you're doing. Does that make sense? Mhm. Here's the other main thing people will tell us. Do you remember in, when you were in school, that if you were in a class that you really liked, you could focus like a laser, but the moment you did something you didn't like, it's like good luck. You can't do anything. Sound familiar? [Yes, it certainly does.] Okay. So, the question is, when you were going through school, did you find that your reading and writing was a bit behind of where it was supposed to be? 

JULIE: I think I did pretty good. Although I do remember on like a book review, I spent more time drawing the front cover artwork than I did actually in the review because I didn't find the book very interesting. I worked very hard to achieve but it certainly if something was more of interest I'd sail through it. It would be an absolute breeze. Yeah. 

RUSSELL: Right. So you were a highly intelligent student performing more average than exceptional where you should have been. Was that about right? Okay. Yeah. So how do we fix that? Did you ever know that many elementary school kids who had ADHD? 

JULIE: No. In my youth growing up really wasn't a thing. So I retrospectively there probably were a few but at the time I was pretty much oblivious to what that was. 

RUSSELL: So what I want to do is just give you a quick solution of how you can apply this research to kids who have ADHD, ADD, so that they can actually improve their reading and writing, that you can just... parents can use tonight. The solution is the same thing for dyslexia. Dyslexia is just a from a practical view a much more severe problem. Okay. So let me first ask you the question about dyslexia. Okay. So I want you to think about you want to write about how to plant seeds. So it's the ideas in your head. Fingers keyboard. Fingers keyboard. The ideas in your head. You take your fingers put them on the keyboard. Does the idea fly out of your head, leading you with an empty brain? Is that you or not really? 

JULIE: I type as fast as I think. So, I pretty much brain dump everything pretty quickly. 

RUSSELL: So that's not you. That's not me. Okay. If you did say yes to that, that would be severe dyslexia. So, that's the difference. We both share ideas flying around our head at light speed, but with little to no organization. Severe dyslexia is that the fingers on the keyboard, the ideas fly out of your head, empty brain. Do you know any kids now who are in elementary school who are ADD or ADHD? Anybody? Any example? [Yes, I do. I do.] Okay. So, we need to change their name to protect their identity. Make up a new name for this student. [Lucy. Lucy.] How old is Lucy? [Lucy is nine.] Okay. And is she... how is her writing? [Acceptable?] Okay. So, I'm just going to assume it's not. Okay. So, what I'm going to show you is a process. This is the starting process just to get the kid to write a basic three reason sentence with decent grammar and correct spelling. All right. Because that's the biggest thing that I get from parents with ADHD kids. How do I do this? All right. So, what is Lucy's speciality? What's her area of extreme interest and ability? 

JULIE: Very, very creative. Anything to do with crafts. [What type of creativity? What's something very specific?] I'm going to say crochet. 

RUSSELL: Crochet. Okay. So, what we're going to do is you're going to write 10 things that Lucy really, really likes and then 10 things she really, really hates. All right. And then the first thing we're going to do is we're going to show her how to force her brain to organize itself. And we're going to use writing to do that. So, you're going to type out Hero + what are we talking about. On a laptop with a real keyboard, not an iPad, not an iPhone, and certainly not handwriting. So, you type that out. She's going to copy that. Copying is fine. Professor James Collins, strategies for struggling writers, default strategy of copying. All right. Then, what we're going to do is we're going to swap out Hero, what do we + what are we talking about. We're going to swap out hero for Lucy. Lucy + what are we talking about. And we're going to go to her list and find the first thing that she really, really likes, which is crocheting. Lucy + crocheting. See how we got there? Mhm. Now, I'm going to ask you a very specific question, and these are going to be the easiest questions you have ever been asked. If you follow them exactly, this will work. If you don't, it doesn't work. Most people then have an epiphany on what ADD ADHD is all about. Do you think I'll be able to fool you with the simplest questions ever? [Go on. Go on.] Okay, so we have Lucy + crocheting. We need to replace the plus sign with a word. Here's my question. Does Lucy like or dislike crocheting? [Like.] Okay, replace that word with the plus sign. What's this? What's the three-word sentence? 

JULIE: Lucy likes crocheting. 

RUSSELL: But that's not what I asked. Let me go through it again. Does Lucy like or dislike crocheting? [Like.] Okay. Do you see the mistake you made? [I put an S on the end of it.] Exactly. Because as an educated person, you naturally do that to make it grammatically correct. But with ADHD, dyslexia, ADD, those students who have it in a severe form don't know how to add the S. Right. Right. This... so then we have to go if we're millionaires. Okay. Imagine you had $10 million in the bank and your granddaughter was having this problem. Yes. Okay. And there's a school that says we can fix everything. We've been doing it for 40 years. We're 98% successful. We're 75,000 a year. 4:1 student to teacher ratio. You going to pay the 75,000. If I had 10 million in the bank. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Here's how they would do that. We're talking about the Westward School in Manhattan or Gow outside of Buffalo, New York. They're going to teach her to see, touch, hear and use that to overcome this issue. Takes 2 years to become trained after a master's degree. Okay? $11,000 and it's just takes forever because it hasn't changed a lot since the 1950s. Here's a better way based on modern neuroscience. We're going to ask Lucy to read what she wrote out loud and she's going to write, "Lucy like crocheting." And I'm going to... and then we ask Lucy, here's the key point. "Lucy, does that sound generally correct? No. Lucy, fix it. Lucy likes crocheting." We practice that with 10 likes and 10 dislikes and keep redoing that until it's all done correctly. Now, do you see how like and dislike is a very simple form of word analysis? Yes. So, here's the key point back to the science. We're moving things from the back part of the brain where we got essentially nothing going on to the front part where we have two and a half times the neural activity. Next point, then we're going to go because and we're going to state a number of reasons. Do you see how reasons are a form of articulation? So now we're taking two things, back part, the front part. That's why this is so much more effective. Nothing going on, two and a half times the neuro activity. So then give me a simple reason why Lucy likes crocheting. [Because it's extremely creative.] Because it's extremely creative. Lucy likes crocheting because it's extremely creative. Do you see how we now have a mess of misspelled words? So, we have to fix that. Here's how we fix that. Number one, we tell Lucy to put a period down. Then, we tell her, "Read it out loud. Does it sound generally correct?" Because we're doing grammar now. If it sounds generally correct, we're done. If there's, if there's little or moderate grammar mistakes, we ignore those. We let the teachers deal with that. Our job is just to get the nasty stuff going. Then we look at it. If there's one misspelled word, she has to retype the entire sentence. Now, I want you to think about this. And she's going to tell herself, "I'm not going to make that mistake again." And she keeps doing it. Usually between three and 13 times. As she's doing 9 to 13 times, you might start to see sweat coming down her forehead. Mhm. She's concentrating deeper and deeper each time she makes a mistake. That's where the magic happens. That severe concentration deeper and deeper, eventually correcting until everything's correct. You do that for 20 likes and 10 likes and 10 dislikes. Then reason one and reason two for 10 likes and 10 dislikes. Reason one, reason two, and reason three. 10 likes, 10 dislikes spelled correctly. Here's a key thing. If you're the... unlike Orton Gillingham, you know, the one that you need to be a millionaire to afford because it's house money. What this the older they are, the quicker they pick it up. Orton Gillingham is the exact opposite. The older they are, the longer it takes. They have to go back and relearn everything. And then what there's still supposed to be lunch. If a fifth grader, a 10-year-old would probably take around probably about six, 2 to 6 weeks to do this. A third grader will take about 3 months. Younger it takes longer. Older quicker is a general rule. Now, what happens if they're writing randomly placed misspelled words? You're looking at a kindergarten, a first grade writing level. Once they get done with this, they're writing at the end of second or beginning third grade level. What I just showed you in just a couple of minutes. Here's the next thing. If they can write it, they can read it. They can write it. They can read it. So reading tends to follow itself with a little lag. To give you an example of how effective this is, this and where we took the student also then to what I call a half circle where we learned how to show them how to read, expand their vocabulary by hundreds of evolved words and then how to write a basic three paragraphs three body paragraphs. I met Kimberly last December, December 27th. Her son just paid, she just paid $700 for the state of Ohio to evaluate her son's reading and writing skills like two weeks before I worked I talked to her. Reading was a grade and a half level behind beginning third grade level. She worked on my process for the next 6 months. She increased his reading from the 11th percentile to the 65th, writing from the 4th percentile to 64th. She taught him seven times faster and spent half the time the public school would have. Then she wanted, his friends wanted him to go into public school with for social reasons. Now he's in sixth grade getting A's and B's doing just fine and he can go and do all those Gen E classes because he's at grade level. 

JULIE: I love that we are specialists, not generalists, and I appreciate that that strength-based lens can really transform the way that parents and teachers can understand their child. So, thank you for that. There's so much I would like to ask you, but including what your current passions are. You're a New York State Senate funded dyslexia researcher and a keynote speaker and you spent over a decade teaching students these techniques that help them thrive. What's exciting you most about your work right now? What are you... what are you working on? 

RUSSELL: Well, New York State is trying to redo its entire K through sixth grade education. So, what they did is they spent an entire year with 100 best specialists, teachers, parents, researchers in the process. And in just here in the United States, New York is the highest tax state in the country, not California. We beat you. We spend more per kid than anybody. Over $30,000 a year per kid for Gen Ed kids. Okay, so dyslexia is much more than that. So what they found, so they had the report and they tried to implement it this past year. Two problems. We can't afford it and the teachers rebelled because they don't have weeks and weeks and weeks to learn all this because we already dumped so much other stuff on them. So I met with one of the teachers, her name is Evelyn White. She was three to four acts as successful as the typical special ed teacher dealt with a lot of ADD ADHD kids and again three four times more successful than average. They really put a lot of pressure on her to join the task force. We can go in and train teachers how to do this not in a month, month and a half, in about 3 hours. Wow. So, we're trying to we're writing a book now called Literacy and Dyslexia Reading Turnaround and we're trying... once it's about Kimberly's story, the one I told you about, and once we get that published, we're going to be going back to the state assembly and senate and say, "Listen, we can do this remotely, you know, on Zoom. We can show the entire... we can show teachers how to do this in three hours." Wow. For middle school, we can do that within about eight. So, just you know what the middle school one is. For parents who want to do really advanced stuff, this is critical for your kids who want to do well in high school and college. How far did you go in your education? 

JULIE: I went through to a New Zealand high school which is... yeah, high school. I call it college, but it's it wasn't university. Yeah. 

RUSSELL: Okay. So, I want you to think back when you did your papers because you're way above average intelligence. Have you ever heard of applying a warrant to a body paragraph? No. Nobody outside of people at the PhD level generally know what that is. So, do you remember when you used to write paragraphs for where you really try to, you know, get the A on the paper? You would have your topic sentence and then a lot of data. Mhm. You see how that felt kind of like just not good? Here's my topic sentence. Here's my data. How do I tie it together? Did you remember that being just awkward? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Okay. So, here's what a warrant is. What we do is our students at the base body paragraph know how to find a quote from a universal theme. Without that, they can't write a body paragraph at the simplistic level. So, for the advanced stuff, we show them how to come up with two quotes based on the same universal theme. One from the beginning of the book, one at the end typically. So, there's a nice spread. And then from those two quotes, we show them how to create a topic sentence, things that you already know how to do. Here's where we advance this beyond high school journal into the college level. We then connect that topic sentence to the quotes with a warrant which is a way of connecting the topic sentence with your data, in our case quotes by using a conversational analytical process which is clearly explained in a book called The Craft of Research which is designed for PhD students having trouble with their dissertations. But college professors literally want their kids to be able to do this before they even go up in college. And I can tell you, no high school in the United States does this. It's too evolved. So, we show them how to add a warrant, one warrant, because it's the same universal theme. And then after we put in the two quotes, we add some material from the New York State high school regent exam, what's expected there, and the craft of research. But we put that together and we start showing that to kids who are in sixth grade or 11. By the time they're 12, at the end of seventh grade, they can write structurally more advanced paragraphs than high school advanced placement English kids. Drives them crazy when the when these dyslexic middle schools outperform them. So, that's just another way. And when we're talking to ADHD kids about what they really focus on, this gets them ready because what I tell them is just wait until you get to grad school. Because if you go into grad school, you see how focused you are and how to grow better vegetables. Now, would you if you really spent a lot of time focusing on this, can you see how you could take the current state-of-the-art and make it better? Okay. In that area, well, that ability is what we call our innovation for a doctorate degree. And if you went on to a PhD program after a bachelor's, your idea would be you would have that the first day because on it forever and in grad school that's the currency of the realm. Let me give you an example. When my original program I had to get it approved by a local professor, the best one in Western New York for the state university of New York. He got a $ 1.5 million grant from the US education department. Supposed to take years. I got his approval in under two weeks. Wow. Because I had to. Why? Because there's a university-wide competition that I had to submit the application within a month. So, I had to get his approvals to finish it up. I ended up getting $15,000, which got me the initial data with several kids from that Averil Park School District, which then the district looked at that and said, "We did this outside of school for years." Then they went to the New York State Senate and said, "We want this." And that's what the Senate required because this was back when Republicans were traditional Republicans. They wanted to start from the base up. Democrats want to start with a bill going down. They're like, "The school district wants this. The economic development council likes it. The Sunni Research Foundation, the education department like it." Okay. And they gave me and they funded the research for years. 

JULIE: Amazing. What an exciting thing to be working on and making such massive change that you can see. You can see they're very exciting. Russell, I'd like to ask you about some myths really. Both ADHD and dyslexia are surrounded by these myths of being lazy or maybe disinterest or lack of intelligence. And from your vantage point, what's one misconception you wish we'd collectively retire for good?

RUSSELL: The most, and I'm going to call it stupid, federal judges call it gross negligence, which is like a doctor leaving, you know, an instrument in you like this big and you're, you know, and then sew you up. ... Is that you should wait to diagnose dyslexia if you or ADD or ADHD, because to me they're about the same thing. Here is, contact them: Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Get this book. Contact them. Tell them to have they can test for dyslexia and other things in kindergarten. Cost about $40-$50 bucks a kid. Teacher can do it. If you do that, you find out they're dyslexic. Then Yale says, "We have all these federally funded programs that are a million bucks a piece. They're legit. Pick what you want and then use them." Then by the end of third grade, because in the United States, K kindergarten through third grade, we learn to read. Fourth and above, we read to learn. We're given our third grade reading writing test. If we pass it, the research shows we're pretty much going to be okay. If we fail it, it's a 911 emergency. If you're fourth grade and above, I can show you how to do this without spending 75 grand a year. If it's below, I would just follow you. I would just follow Yale. 

JULIE: Perfect. Thank you. And for those listening on podcast and not seeing this on YouTube, links to the books that you've been showing on screen, I'll have in the show notes so our listeners can go and refer back to them and track them down. They sound fabulous and great words of advice there. I have one final question for you, Russell, and that is for a parent listening who's feeling overwhelmed and maybe wondering if their child will ever catch up or thrive or believe in themselves again, I guess. What would you most want them to hear? 

RUSSELL: Well, the solution is really that simple. I showed you how to do sentences. Then we have a part where we do reading. I mean, Casey used that to jump eight grade levels in six months. Most kids, it'll take two to three years to be honest with you to reach that. We show you how to do that. We show you how to do basic body paragraphs. And then we show you how to do the advanced ones. Okay? Now, you, your kids do that. They understand how to find quotes, form a topic sentence, and use warrants. It's not that hard once you practice. They are structurally writing better data paragraphs than 12th grade students who are 17-18 who are advanced placement English students because they just do topic sentences and data. They don't know how to make the connection. Their teachers with master's degrees don't know what a warrant is. It's PhD level. So we show you how to do that and then they're way ahead of the game. The teachers can show you how to do a thesis statement and concluding paragraph. We give you what you need to take your kid and give them the writing skills of a really a college student by the time they're 12. 

JULIE: Very exciting stuff, Russell. So to have the right tools in the right way at the right time and accelerate their learning. So for ADHD or dyslexia and or both, giving them a real head start in life to excel. That's very exciting stuff and I really appreciate your insights and sharing your heaps of knowledge on this. Goodness me. It's been very insightful and I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thanks. 

RUSSELL: And if anybody wants to get a hold of me, just simply go to dyslexiaclasses.com with an s plural dyslexicasses.com. There's a little button that says download free guide. Click on it. Answer a few questions. It's the three reasons your child's having trouble in school due to dyslexia. But then you need to actually set up a time to speak with me. It's a half an hour. It's no cost. I find out what your kid's speciality is and what book and audio book to give them. You think you may know what it is, but give you a quick example. One of my kids is 13. His speciality is a chemistry video at the college level about how to turn paint thinner into cherry soda, and I had to turn that into a writing assignment that he can learn to read from. And parents had no idea that's what it was. That's what I get out of, that's what I get out of kids because I went through what they went through. 

JULIE: That is brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing that. 

RUSSELL: Thanks for having me.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Russell Van Brocklen

Guest