Dyslexia is not an intelligence, vision or hearing problem. It’s an issue of how the brain processes sound and how it is then mapped onto given symbols. Often our kids are intellectually above average, but their writing and spelling simply don’t reflect it. That gap between ability and performance is what gets my attention. I always get excited when a child is referred to me because it is often the first step in helping this child to not only overcome frustrating obstacles but also to give them the opportunity (and relief) to be taught in the way they learn.

Most children have strong visual learning modalities that they use, particularly when learning to read. But the kids I see need an approach that uses other learning strengths. Words and sounds need to be broken down into the smallest of components, and then repeatedly manipulated in a variety of ways.  They also need to know not just how a word is spelled, but why it’s spelled that way. This is precisely what we do, in a very intensive way, in the Barton program.