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Many boys who struggle to read are bright, curious, and deeply engaged in their interests—yet dyslexia often goes unnoticed or misunderstood in school. In this episode of Mothers of Boys Survival Guide, Suzy Shaw dives into the early signs of dyslexia in boys and why traditional classroom approaches frequently fail neurodiverse learners.
Suzy is joined by dyslexia expert Russell Van Brocklen, founder of dyslexiaclasses.com, who explains how dyslexic brains are wired differently, why passion and strengths accelerate learning, and what parents can do at home and with schools to support real progress. This practical, hopeful conversation is for moms who trust their instincts and are looking for clear next steps beyond “wait and see.”
Russell Van Brocklen is the founder of dyslexiaclasses.com and a nationally recognized expert in dyslexia education. For more than two decades, he has worked with children and families to help them understand how dyslexic brains learn differently—and how to unlock rapid progress by teaching to strengths rather than weaknesses. Drawing on neuroscience, real-world case studies, and his own lived experience with dyslexia, Russell focuses on practical, parent-friendly strategies that can be used at home and supported in school settings.
Russell’s work challenges the traditional “wait and see” approach and offers a clear, hopeful path forward for families navigating reading and writing struggles. His methods emphasize organization, motivation, and the power of a child’s special interests, helping many students make dramatic gains in confidence and academic performance.
The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Consult with a qualified professional for specific guidance.
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Dyslexia in Boys: Early Signs, School Support & What Parents Can Do
Hi everyone, I’m Suzy Shaw, author of the Mothers of Boys Survival Guide, and here to support the MOB, Mothers of Boys, as we navigate the wild, wonderful world of raising sons. Today, we’re taking a deeper dive into a topic so many of you have written to me about, which is boys who struggle to read.
A few weeks ago we shared an episode called Raising Readers, Encouraging Boys Who Struggle to Read, and the response was huge. We also shared a companion resource page, Tips to Encourage Boys to Read. You can find both on the MOB website, which is mothersofboys.life. It’s packed with simple, doable strategies you can start using right away.
Today, we’re zooming in on one of the biggest reading challenges boys face, which is dyslexia. Dyslexia touches as many as 15 to 20% of all learners, yet so many parents are still left confused, overwhelmed, or blamed for their child’s reading struggles.
My guest is Russell Van Brocklen, founder of dyslexiaclasses.com, who has spent decades helping kids and families finally understand what’s going on in that incredibly differently wired brain. Welcome, Russell.
Russell Van Brocklen: Thanks for having me.
Suzy Shaw: So, how is dyslexia distinguished from other learning disabilities? And for moms who are listening and who suspect something, what are the earliest signs of dyslexia?
Russell Van Brocklen: Well, for boys, it’s much easier than girls, because boys act out. So typically, really, what it is is there’s a book called Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz. I use the second edition. Parents are going to want to get a copy of that. Again, it’s Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz. I use the second edition.
If you go to page 78, figure 23, page 78, figure 23, it shows you exactly what’s going on. The back part of my brain has almost zero neuroactivity. The back part of a typical brain is massive. The front part of my brain is two and a half times overactive. So I shift things from the back part of the brain to the front part of the brain. And I’ll tell you briefly later how we do that, but generally, how do you tell if your kid’s dyslexic?
If they’re old enough, find out what their speciality is, their area of extreme interest and ability, and ask them this question: In your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed? Key question, but with little to no organization.
If they’re ADD, ADHD, or dyslexic, they’re going to answer yes. The treatment is the same for all three.
Suzy Shaw: You know, digging a little bit more into understanding the brain, right, what is unique about dyslexia? And is it often compounded with autism or other sorts of learning disabilities?
Russell Van Brocklen: There is some connection with autism. It’s very much more connected with ADHD and ADD. And what you will find is there’s a pattern, and I’m just going to give you the pattern of very successful dyslectics.
So what happens is kindergarten through college, we’re not good. Once we walk into grad school, day one, we own the place. We’re at the top of our class immediately, or soon thereafter.
Let me give you an example. One of my clients, I’m just going to call him John, he’s 13, he absolutely loves chemistry. His favorite video, he said, “oh, this is made for kids like my age.” It’s about how to take, not joking, how to take paint thinner and turn it into cherry soda. He’s fascinated by it. Well, I looked it up. It’s for advanced college kids. He’s 13. He thinks it’s for him.
Okay. So what’s going on is K through college, do you remember going through all your education? They would start off at the big picture and then eventually get to the details, and they try to make you well-rounded before you specialize. Make sense?
Suzy Shaw: Yep.
Russell Van Brocklen: Let me just give you an example, the model that I created. Number one, you have to work with a kid in their specialty. Just so your listeners understand, I’m giving you an example of Kimberly, who I started working with last December 27th. She’s a homeschooling mom. She spent 700 bucks to have the state of Ohio test her kids. Reed, at the time I spoke to him, two weeks before, he was evaluated reading at the 11th percentile, writing at the 4th percentile. Six months later, she followed this process an hour and a half a week. He was reading at the 65th percentile and writing at the 64th percentile. His friends wanted him in public school for social reasons. He’s now in public school, mainstreamed in everything, A’s and B’s.
Suzy Shaw: Wow.
Russell Van Brocklen: She solved this in six months. What is the model? Number one, you have to focus on the kid’s specialty. The exact opposite of what the school’s doing. The school is not trying to be hard on these kids, but 80+ percent of their population is not neurodiverse. If you go to a typical kid, and if they do two things, if they plan properly and then work really hard, they’re going to do very well. If they don’t, they don’t do well. It really comes down to those two variables, generally.
But with dyslectics, the school wants to make us well-rounded. We want to specialize. To give you an example of how powerful that is, there’s a book that I use a lot. Her name is Casey, the most successful kid I ever worked with. This was the book I assigned her. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, all 900 pages. She was 10 years old, second-grade reading level, and I gave her a very simple process to read. She locked herself in her room for two to three hours a night for six months.
Suzy Shaw: But she did that of her own accord?
Russell Van Brocklen: Her own volition. Mom had no idea. That’s just Casey.
Suzy Shaw: Yeah, passion for the topic.
Russell Van Brocklen: Yeah, but I never saw this before. I’ll never see this again. But just to give you an example about the motivation.
So she goes through that, and six months later, she’s reading at the 10th grade level. Eight grade levels in six months, I worked with her for 15 minutes a week. This was all Casey.
Why am I spending so much time on this? Because then her mom wanted to know, did this transfer over? I gave her my most popular book, Walt Disney’s Triumph of the American Imagination. Why? Because kids go to Disney, they want to know about the Disney magic. It’s two universal themes in there.
Normally, it takes two to three years. Casey did it in three months. I asked her later, her mom’s there because I knew she’d get a kick out of this. I said, “Casey, what did you think of that book?” “I hated it.” Mom’s having a good laugh over this, but here’s the key. Casey did then go and literally destroyed the book because she hated it so much.
Key point. I asked the most motivated kid I ever worked with, how much did your motivation drop from the Theodore Roosevelt books you like? She said 50%. Further research found the typical drop outside of the speciality is 75- 80%. You’re starting off outside the speciality, you’re essentially shooting yourself in the foot during the intervention period.
Next thing, you have to ask, you can’t ask a dyslexic student while they’re years behind, a general to a specific question. If you ask them, what effect did Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech have on the 1960 Civil Rights Movement? It’s like asking us to grab fog. There’s nothing to grab onto. If you ask them a specific to a general question, “What personally compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech?” Then we can find the answer. That answer gives us a question, gives us an answer. It forces the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.
If you ask your dyslexic child in your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head with little to no organization? They’re going to say, yes. We force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output.
The third thing is, we use the front part of the brain, which is word analysis followed by articulation. That’s the model. You use that and you get those huge increases like Kimberly got with her son.
Suzy Shaw: So, what do you think is the biggest misconception that you hear from moms and parents about dyslexia?
Russell Van Brocklen: Well, it’s the first two things I mentioned to that model, that these kids are academic specialists. That’s number one. Number two, during the intervention period, until they’re at grade level, you really have to focus on their speciality. I get them a book and an audiobook in something that they like. Then you have to teach from the specific to the general.
Then what really confuses them is how do we move to word analysis followed by articulation to move things back from nothing’s going on to where they have two and a half times the neural activity. Would you like me to show you what that process looks like?
Suzy Shaw: Absolutely. Yes.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. The number one thing parents come to me is, my son is writing a bunch of randomly placed misspelled words. Nobody has any clue how to fix this. We’re going to focus on the front part of the brain.
The first thing we do is, do you know any elementary school dyslexic boys ever?
Suzy Shaw: Oh, sure. We’ve done other podcasts on similar issues in elementary school, but they don’t sit still. They’re not interested. They would prefer to be outside doing something else.
Russell Van Brocklen: Right. Here, I’m going to tell you how to fix all that. Yeah. I need you to tell me a boy, change his name for his protection. Tell me his made up name, how old is he, and just generally a little bit about him.
Suzy Shaw: Let’s call him John. John is a quiet boy and a pure space cadet, if he is not interested in what’s going on in school, but gets totally overlooked by the teachers because he’s not acting out in school. He’s not a behavior problem, but he can’t get his work done in the morning.
Russell Van Brocklen: What is his age, and what grade is he in, and how far behind is he in reading and writing?
Suzy Shaw: I will say he is in third grade, and also doesn’t quite have the hand-eye coordination, the hand coordination to hold a pencil correctly, and is behind in reading and does everything else slowly.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. First thing I’m going to tell you is going forward, he doesn’t use pencils, no iPads, no iPhone. He types on a laptop with a real keyboard. That’s a big mistake people think, and teachers say, well, the kid needs to know how to write. I said, really? Here’s what I found out doing this for 25 years.
When I gave the very best student my original program, he scored in the 70th percentile. I said, here’s a simpler prompt, but you’re going to hand write. The grade came back between the 6th and the 30th percentile because he stopped typing and went to handwriting.
Why? Writing the letter W compared to just hitting a key takes up so much of our limited working memory that the whole thing goes off the rails.
Suzy Shaw: I can relate to that because I became much better when computers were invented. To me, it’s almost like playing an instrument, right? It’s an interactive thing, like maybe playing the piano or the guitar, instead of the looping letters… that they don’t even teach cursive anymore.
Russell Van Brocklen: The key thing is you type on a computer with a real laptop, a real keyboard. iPads and iPhones don’t work on the screen.
What we do is we tell John, you’re going to list 10 things that he really, really likes and then 10 things that he really, really hates. Then what you’re going to do is we’re going to go up here, the parent is going to type out: HERO + WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Then John’s going to copy that. That’s okay. Professor James Collins, strategies for struggling writers- default writing strategy of copying. He’s going to copy it. Then we’re going to swap out HERO for John. JOHN + WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Then we’re going to swap out WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT for the first thing on the list that he really likes. For John, what is the thing, what is his speciality, what does he really love to do outside of school? Just his favorite thing.
Suzy Shaw: Legos.
Russell Van Brocklen: Legos. That’s Legos. We have JOHN + WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? We swap out “what are we talking about” for Legos: JOHN + LEGOS? See how we got there?
Suzy Shaw: Yep. Got it.
Russell Van Brocklen: Now, I’m going to try to fool you by asking you the simplest questions ever. If you answer them correctly, this works. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to work. Do you think I’ll be able to fool you?
Suzy Shaw: Probably.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. All right, so here’s the question. What we have to do is we have to swap out that + for a word, John + Legos. We have to swap out the plus sign for a word. Here’s my question. Does John like or dislike Legos?
Suzy Shaw: He likes Legos.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. But that’s not what I asked.
Suzy Shaw: You said, does he like or dislike Legos?
Russell Van Brocklen: Yes, that’s exactly. And then you didn’t do what I asked. Do you see your mistake?
Suzy Shaw: Because I was supposed to swap out the plus sign for … No, I don’t … You’ve totally lost me.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. Are you totally confused now?
Suzy Shaw: I am.
Russell Van Brocklen: Are you ready to have your epiphany on dyslexia?
Suzy Shaw: Go for it.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. I asked, “Does John like or dislike Legos?” As an educated person, when you added the like, you automatically corrected it to likes to make it grammatically correct. John’s dyslexic. He doesn’t know how to do that. He doesn’t know how to add the S.
Suzy Shaw: Okay.
Russell Van Brocklen: To get him to add the S. Let’s say I want you to imagine you were John’s mother.
Suzy Shaw: Okay.
Russell Van Brocklen: You had $10 million in the bank and a private school came to you and said, we’ve been doing this for 50 years. We can absolutely guarantee you with a 98% level of certainty, we will show him how to do this in the best possible way. We’re $75,000 a year, are you going to pay it?
Suzy Shaw: That’s a lot of money and probably not.
Russell Van Brocklen: You have 10 million in the bank.
Suzy Shaw: Okay. I am.
Russell Van Brocklen: Okay. Well, most of us don’t have “house money” because it’s four to five years. Because what they’re going to use is an Orton Gillingham structured language, multi-sensory approach. They’re going to do hearing, seeing, touching. It will take you two years to become certified and $11,000. That’s what the best traditional method is. That’s what Bill Gates would do with his grandkids.
How do we not do that? I’m going to use modern neuroscience. I’m going to take from the back part of his brain and we’re going to move it to the front part. Now we’re going to do word analysis. What we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and have John write out. Okay. It’s very simple. We ask, John, do you like or dislike Legos? He’s going to say like. Then I’m going to say, John, read what you wrote out loud. Does that sound generally correct? He’s going to say no. I’m going to say, John, fix it. John likes Legos until it sounds generally correct. Do you see how like and dislike is a simple form of word analysis?
Suzy Shaw: Mm-hmm. I do.
Russell Van Brocklen: We’re going to do that with 10 likes and 10 dislikes until he can get that done correctly. Then we’re going to go because reason one. Can you see how the reasons are a simple form of articulation? Give me a simple reason why John likes Legos.
Suzy Shaw: Because he likes building things.
Russell Van Brocklen: JOHN LIKES LEGOS BECAUSE HE LIKES BUILDING THINGS. Do you see when you say John, he likes Legos because he likes building things. You see that reason is a form of articulation.
Suzy Shaw: Right.
Russell Van Brocklen: We’re moving from the back part of the brain where he has nothing going on essentially to the front part that’s two and a half times overactive. We’re giving him a process to organize it because his thinking is scattered all over the place.
We’re talking about things that are very personal to him so he has his attention. That’s the model. He goes ahead and he writes that out. Do you see now how we have a bunch of probably a whole bunch of misspelled words?
Here’s how we fix that. First thing we do is we tell John to drop a period, then we tell John to read what he wrote out loud. Forget about the spelling. Does it sound generally correct? If it doesn’t, fix it until it does. We’re getting rid of that nasty stuff, that nasty grammar errors. The simple to medium ones, the teachers can deal with that. We’re trying to get it to the point where the teachers can actually start working with him, his gen ed teacher. He does that.
Then every time there’s a misspelled word, he has to retype until it’s perfect spelling wise. You’re going to do that about 3 to 13 times. As he does this, he’s going to tell himself, I’m not going to make that mistake again. He keeps doing it. The more he makes the mistake, the more he concentrates, hyper concentrates, and that’s where the magic happens. Around 9 to 13 times, you can sometimes start seeing sweat coming down his forehead. That’s how intense this gets.
Once he finally gets it right, then you move on to the next one. All the way until all 20, 10 likes, 10 dislikes, are spelled perfectly. Then you go on to reason one and reason two. Everything perfect, reason one, reason two, and reason three. Once he’s done, the reading and writing has been increased to the end of second, beginning third grade level.
How long does this take? Here’s what my stuff is the opposite. With Orton Gillingham, the older the kid is, the longer it takes as they have to go back relearn for John, kindergarten through second grade, plus all the stuff he’s supposed to be learning now. With my material, the older he is, the quicker he will pick it up. A fifth-grade student will take between two to six weeks. If you’re doing 15-minute session classes, five, six days a week. If you’re doing it, if you’re a third grader, it’s going to take the semester, okay?
Okay. But moms can do this at home, not dropping 75 grand a year.
Suzy Shaw: Right. Okay. Let’s just break this down a little bit into working with the school system. One of the things that you have said is that typing is easier for dyslexia and dyslexics than handwriting. That sounds like a 504 plan. You’ve got to make some sort of accommodation or deal with the school to let your child bring a computer into the school so that you can use that keypad. Is that how that rolls out?
Russell Van Brocklen: Yes.
Suzy Shaw: I mean, how do you work with the school, really, to make it all successful?
Russell Van Brocklen: To be honest with you, I’ve had some very progressive principals that are very open to this, that literally tell their staff this is how it’s going to be. I’ve had other parents literally, I would say there’s a company called Prepaid Legal that can help you with this, and they literally threaten a lawsuit and it goes to the school board, and then they bow to it.
From a practical thing, you don’t want to send your kid there with an Apple laptop. Most of the time, it’s a Samsung Chromebook using Google Docs. No internet, it doesn’t work, but most schools have internet. Why? Because it’s cheap. It’s a couple hundred bucks in case it gets broken or stolen, or when it gets broken or stolen. That’s just something parents are going to have to figure out.
What that does, or some kids, because they’re so small, is they will take an iPad or a Samsung thing and they’ll put on an attached keyboard. If it’s a real keyboard, that’s fine because they have such little hands. That works as well. It just makes things so much easier.
You take these kids, you put a pen in their hand, literally, the whole system collapsed because we just don’t have the working memory to deal with it.
Suzy Shaw: Okay. Let’s just talk about, you’ve given us some great sort of case studies of how this works. It seems as though multi-sensory learning and passion would be very, very big components in this. I love that you said to find a book or some sort of print material that the child is incredibly into, and then encourage them to sort of break that down.
Can you explain just a little bit more concisely why this is so effective for dyslexic learners?
Russell Van Brocklen: You’re asking your dyslexic kid to go into school focusing on the back part of the brain, where we just have next to nothing going on. His classmates are going crazy with that. It is literally, it’s like asking a clumsy kid to become a basketball star. It just doesn’t work. What we need to do to modify things just until they’re at grade level.
Remember Reed’s doing fine. He fights, he pouts, he complains a bit. His parents and the teachers are walls. He has to adapt to their way of doing things, and he can once you’re done with this, and he’s doing that. What you have to do during the intervention period is you absolutely have to find the kid’s passion.
Suzy Shaw: Right.
Russell Van Brocklen: Then as you focus on teaching them from the specific to the general, and then that word analysis followed by articulation. There’s simple ways that we show parents how to do this. The acceleration is incredible. In Kimberly’s case, again, she spent less than half a time per week a public school would spend with Reed on English, all right? She taught him literally over seven times faster, not double, not triple, over seven times faster.
Suzy Shaw: You have a lot of information on your website, dyslexiaclasses.com. Can you tell us a little bit about what is on your website and other places? You’ve mentioned some books already, but where parents can go for reliable resources and information on dyslexia?
Russell Van Brocklen: Yeah. Generally, as I said, the book you want to just … not how you fix dyslexia, I disagree with them on that because I’m a front brain person, they’re a back brain person, but just so you know what dyslexia is, it’s Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, second edition. She’s from Yale.
Then what I do, if you’re interested, is just go to my website, dyslexiaclasses.com with an S, plural, dyslexiaclasses.com with an S. Then there’s a button there that says download free guide. Just click on that, then all you have to do is to fill out the three questions, you’re going to get a document, the three reasons your child’s having trouble in school due to dyslexia. Then if you want to actually get value about what I do, you actually have to set up a time to speak with me and you and your child. It’s free, it’s a half an hour, it doesn’t cost anything. Then I tell you what their speciality is and I find their book and their audio book. This is the hardest thing of part of the process and I find it’s just better if I do it myself with your child. I ask them a couple of questions, they’re normally like, yeah, that’s me. How did you know? I said, oh, I went through what you’re going through, but my dyslexia is worse. When I was in college, it was a first grade reading and writing level and then we talked about that for a bit. Then I asked parents if you would like me to show you to do what I did with Kimberly.
You work at your own pace, you get … They said she did it in six months. Some kids are faster, some are slower, older kids are quicker; typically, younger kids take a lot more time because they’re younger. You can solve this at home without the need for a 75K school, and if you want to go the entire route, we literally show parents how to bring their kids to college, senior, first-year graduate level, while they’re still in high school. Why is this important? I was on a podcast with a college professor, and they all tell me the same thing. They want the students to know the craft of research before they go to college, and none of them do, and it drives them insane.
Suzy Shaw: Russell, I know there are a lot of famous people who have dyslexia. Can you just mention some of them so that moms understand that their son might be in very, very good company?
Russell Van Brocklen: Steven Spielberg is confirmed dyslexic. Half the sharks on Shark Tank are dyslectics: Mr. Wonderful, Damian, and Barbara. Half! There are a lot of other famous dyslectics. We don’t know if Walt Disney himself was dyslexic. He’s strongly suspected to be. There’s one quote that he gave in, I think it was 1963, and this is his quote. He said, ”it’s fun doing the impossible.” Doing it all is life. When your dyslexic child goes to college, goes on to graduate school, here’s a little hint. When they go into a grad program, we own the place day one or soon thereafter. The original idea that we’ve been working on for our entire lives, just solving things in that specific area, that’s the currency of the realm and it is such a huge advantage.
Suzy Shaw: Russell, we ask all of our guests to share a guiding sort of motto or thought with our moms. Is the Walt Disney quote, is that the one you would suggest?
Russell Van Brocklen: I would say for your kid, they think that it’s impossible. It’s fun doing the impossible, doing things you’re not supposed to do.
People are under the misimpression that dyslexia is a reading problem. I can actually show parents, I’ve sort of shown dyslectics how to read things that are beyond the ability of most reading teachers. What I tell parents is really what’s going on is a lack of organization in the front part of the brain because it’s two and a half times overactive. It’s flying around with no cohesion. We fix that. A lot of the other things self-correct.
For example, that original program I did, the teacher spent almost no time on spelling and grammar, yet it went from horrendous to clean at the grad level. Doing the impossible over and over again, that’s the fun part about being a dyslexic.
Suzy Shaw: Well, Russell, thank you so much for helping us see the strength behind the struggle. Mom, your son’s brain is the blueprint for brilliance. As he matures, because I think maturity is a big part of their success too, he will succeed with your support and find a path to thrive.
Thank you all for joining us today. Follow the MOB on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and your favorite podcast platform. Be kind to yourself, moms, and have a great week.
