FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #46 Eye Muscles Matter: The Missing Piece in Reading Education
Reading struggles in children often mask a surprisingly simple issue that goes undetected by standard eye exams. In this eye-opening conversation, Leah Stine of Vision Reading Academy shares the transformative approach that's helping children overcome reading difficulties by addressing eye muscle coordination problems rather than assuming learning disabilities.
Leah reveals how each eye contains seven muscles—meaning 14 total muscles must work in perfect harmony for smooth reading. When they don't, children experience tremendous difficulty that traditional interventions can't fix. "My son went from kindergarten reading level to sixth grade reading level in just five months," Leah explains, describing her own journey from desperate parent to academy coach after witnessing her son's remarkable transformation.
The signs of these vision-related reading challenges manifest in various ways: letter reversals, irregular writing, skipping lines, repeating passages without comprehension, or context-filling (making up content while reading). Most poignantly, Leah shares the emotional impact these difficulties have on children's self-esteem. "We get the broken kids," she notes, describing students who've been beaten down by years of unexplained struggle. The program's holistic approach incorporates specialized exercises, pressure points, and reading drills that permanently train the eyes to work properly together—no ongoing therapy required.
Parents who suspect their child might benefit can receive free assessments where they can literally see their child's eye coordination issues firsthand. While some medical professionals remain skeptical, the results speak for themselves—like the student who, after beginning to read independently, excitedly grabbed birthday cards announcing, "Let me read your card!" Ready to discover if vision could be the missing piece in your child's reading journey? Contact Coach Leah at coachleah@visionreadingacademy.com or visit visionreadingacademy.com to learn more.
Free Assessment:
https://oncehub.com/newassessmentcoachleah
http://www.visionreadingacademy.com
coachleah@visionreadingacademy.com
Leah Stine
Vision Reading Academy
visionreadingacademy.com
Info@visionreadingacademy.com
+1 801-589-1154
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. Today, joining me is Leah Stein with Vision Reading Academy. Leah, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm excited for this episode. You and I go way back and I've actually interviewed you before, so I am ready to dive in. Share with us a little bit about Vision Reading Academy.
Speaker 3:So Vision Reading Academy is not my business. The owner is Crystal and she started it after finding, going through all these different steps to try to find a way to help her daughter read, just so something wasn't meshing. And you know, it just was to the point where she was just trying everything and anything and discovered this the way of getting all the muscles and your, your eye muscles and all the things to work together so that it could help. So my son went through the program because I was, he was going into fifth grade, couldn't read and we couldn't figure out why. I mean, I homeschooled him so I had, you know, all the time and the energy to spend on it, but nothing was working. We started over, we trained curriculums, we tried everything.
Speaker 3:I was about to go get a dyslexia diagnosis to try to see if that was it, but unfortunately dyslexia diagnoses are based mostly on reading and read. They're going to a lot of times they're automatically okay, well, they're dyslexic. So luckily, I came across this program instead and within a couple months, within five months, he went from kindergarten reading level sixth grade reading level. He's done. He doesn't ever have to do it again because his eyes are working how they're supposed to be working Really? Yep, so we're not vision therapy because we're not medical they're supposed to be working.
Speaker 3:Really, yep. So we're not vision therapy because we're not medical, we're not anything like that, because we work on the whole muscles, all the things Like part of their exercises is they do massages and pressure points and different reading exercises and gaze point exercises, where they have to watch certain things that they do. It's been amazing for us, it was a, it was life changing for us. So when she was like, hey, I'm going to expand my business, do you, would you be interested in becoming a coach, I was like yes, please. So that's how it started and I love it.
Speaker 2:That is fascinating, so that so you can dive in to a little bit of, I guess, the science of it, how your eyes have to do with your reading. Tell me a little bit about how that works.
Speaker 3:So you probably don't know this Most people don't, I didn't. Each eye to control your eye muscle, like there's seven muscles in each eye.
Speaker 3:So, there's 14 muscles that have to work together to make you see correctly, to get your eye movement to work correctly. Okay, for all those things. Plus, there's also tension that runs all the way through these nerves, all the way through your, your head and your fascial system. So everything's connected and by loosening up those muscles and those nerve endings and the muscle attached, like where they attach those, all of it works together. So it's not just okay here, go look at these things and it's all. Things have to be done together.
Speaker 2:Okay. And so with your son as an example when he went was going through the exercises. How did that correlate to reading?
Speaker 3:So, okay, Think about if you're looking at a word okay. Let's just use cat, for example. Okay, he was using so much energy to get his eyes to go like this and focus on that letter, the c to sound out, k, the a to go at, the t to go, so that when he saw the whole word, it wasn't a word, it was just these letters. But he couldn't really see him correctly because his he had to look at each letter individually.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So it took so much energy for his eyes to even go together when we did his assessment. It was crazy because, like, one of the things we do is we just go like this and have to look at the tip and one eye just wouldn't move, it didn't even follow the tip, and they were like are you looking at it? He's like, yeah, I'm looking at it. It didn't even follow the tip and they were like are you looking at it?
Speaker 3:He's like yeah, I'm looking at it. Wow, he thought he was looking at it, you know. So he saw all along this way. He's never known anything different, so how would he know that it's size? We went to an ophthalmologist that was one of the things that we did before, like when we first started the journey and they're like nope, his eyes look great. He has 2020 vision, wow. So, like, it's not even something they look for. Yeah, because they don't. You know, it's just, it's not as enough well known and um, a lot of times the other diagnoses take over and they're like oh, that's it, you know.
Speaker 3:So it was interesting, the game changer for us. I mean, he couldn't even see graph papers, like I didn't know it. But I'm like put your numbers in the squares, you know. I mean I even enlarged it. And he's like, okay, and he thinks he's doing it because in his mind he's doing it right and it's all over the place. And like when he his eyes were working better, I gave him graph paper again and he's like oh, that's graph. Wow, that's what you meant by putting in the squares. Wow, you couldn't even see it. And here I am like, why aren't you doing it?
Speaker 2:You know he's probably like a different kid. Yeah, like his confidence and everything he's.
Speaker 3:Probably it goes through all my students. I mean I have an older student who's he just turned 15 and he couldn't read three letter words and like you know he had, he struggled very badly with kind of attitude in our sessions, things like that. But I'm like, okay, you know, this is part of it. Unfortunately we get the broken kids. We get the kids who are broken. They've been beat down because they haven't been able to read. They don't know what's wrong with them.
Speaker 3:Their parents don't know what's wrong with them. They think something's wrong with them. And it's not something wrong with them. It something wrong with them, it's easily fixed and so so by this point they're broken and they're struggling and their confidence is shot and like the turnaround from him is just amazing. He's been with me for four months I think, and like he gets on the sessions, he participates, he's, you know, happy to be there, he's nice and like it's like that little bit of confidence changes everything for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what important work you're doing and how satisfying and just rewarding for you to be able to be a part of that transformation. That's so cool.
Speaker 3:You just don't even know. I'm about to start crying because it's like so emotional to me because, like we wouldn't have found it, I mean he probably still wouldn't be able to read. And same for myself. I mean I have a student, my first student, graduating, um, probably next month.
Speaker 3:I have other students who were like I mean I have these two brothers and they were just they didn't want to do it, they were fighting with mom every day. They're like I can read, fine, I don't need this, I I'm fine, I don't need it. And um, we do benchmarking videos to record like just snippets of them reading. And um, they were like I said they were fighting mom. We're like, okay, let's make a deal, we'll try it for one month.
Speaker 3:If you do your exercises every day and you really try and put in your effort and your energy, um, then in a month we'll reevaluate and see where we're at and see if you believe it or not believe it, you know. So I showed them their benchmarking videos and both of them jaws dropped and they were like oh my gosh, I can't believe that I missed that word. I can't believe I missed that, you know, and I thought I was reading it correctly, you know it's just crazy. It's just crazy so like, and you don't know, because this progress is slower. You know it's not. It's not an immediate thing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how are parents learning about what you're doing? How are they finding you?
Speaker 3:word of mouth pretty much all of our students are by just people who know, people who've done the program or um, we are. We accept a lot of scholarships. Like the owner actually lives in Utah. So there's like a Utah fits all scholarship, so we're a part of their network and open ed, which is another one, the Virginia one, that is no longer available. They were part of that one, so that's a good way to is to get the word out yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It seems like ophthalmologists and pediatricians need to be trained too right?
Speaker 3:well, unfortunately we have. You know, ophthalmologists don't like what we do, because we're fixing them. Oh, I see there are some that are very open to it and are like, well, that's great, you know. But then there are some that are very open to it and are like, well, that's great, you know. But then there are some that feel threatened and not even fair because, honestly, we're just helping the kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Wow. So what advice would you give parents who you know they're thinking well, my kid is struggling, struggling, you know what is? Maybe some signs that this might work for their child?
Speaker 3:um, if you think they're dyslexic, if you start seeing those signs, they're flipping their letters, they're flipping their numbers, they're writing funky like up and down. They're not on the line. Um, they skip lines when they read. They read the same thing over and over again and have no idea what they read. They potentially could well most of my students context fill. So they make it up as they go, they make up the story of what they think it should say. They change the endings of words. So, even if they are a good reader, they change the endings of words. I mean, like I have one student who's a very good reader Like he's actually reads pretty well but he takes and he removes S's from the end of words and he adds S's and then he flips the whole sentence to make it make sense with or without that S. So they don't know they're doing it Right. So those are like the big key things is you know, just not knowing where to go from here.
Speaker 2:I mean that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 3:We have free assessments. So it's like no harm, no foul, like try it, you know, and we will definitely not lie and be like oh yeah, that's the problem, Like you can see it, like you can see it yourself. We always say okay, mom, look look at what we're doing, and turn to mom, show her what your eye is doing, and so you can like literally see it, and so there's no way to like be shiesty about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good. That's good that you're able to assess them on and and get pretty good data that whether or not the program would work for them. That's actually really big.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a lot of commitment. I mean that the kids have to be committed, because it's not like just going and getting glasses that they just have to put on every day. They have to do their exercises. They have to do the reading exercises. You know, the more they do it, the quicker they go through the program, you know. And once they're done, we want them to be gone. We don't want to ever see them again. The only time we want to see them is when they're saying hey, look, I got into this college. You know, like we want to celebrate their wins but we want to push them out, get them on their way, because this is it's not a thing we'll have to do again, right?
Speaker 2:Well, that's amazing that it's a fix. That's huge that it's not something that they have to live with for the rest of their lives, Like no, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3:What is something that you wish the listeners knew about Vision Reading Academy. Just that it exists, honestly, because it's so. Like I said, it's word of mouth, you know and nobody knows about it. And if you don't know about it, you're just sitting there again and again twiddling your thumbs saying why is my kid doing so bad in school? Why are they not getting it? Why is you know they might not be able to read that great, but why are they suffering in history? Because it all goes together, right All of it. And every subject there's reading, there's writing, right All of it. In every subject there's reading, there's writing, and if they can't read, they can't write. If they can't see things correctly, they can't do any of it and they already feel really bad. They're sorry. I'm gonna start, I'm gonna get a little upset, um, because it's it's heart-wrenching to think about what these kids feel like yeah my son.
Speaker 3:Like at the first birthday after we started the program, he was like mom, it felt so good to be able to read my birthday cards. I mean, like I didn't know it was a thing, like I didn't even know. That was like a, that's something he felt, right, you know, and like monopoly, and he was like let me read your card, let me read your card, let me read your card, you know. Like he's grabbing every big cards, right, you know. It's like I didn't know that was a thing that he cared about, right, clearly it was hurting his heart, you know that he couldn't do these things and yeah, well, what you're doing is so important.
Speaker 2:So thank you for thank you for sharing it with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So important. I love it, I just love all of it.
Speaker 2:If the listeners want to reach out to you or learn more about Vision Reading Academy, what's the best way for them to find you?
Speaker 3:Well, I can share my link for an assessment. They can email me. I don't know if you want me to verbalize that or if you want to write.
Speaker 2:I can put it all in the show notes if it's a link that they can click on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just coachleah at visionreadingacademy. com Pretty easy, and the website is visionreadingacademy. com and there's a AI bot on there that can answer additional questions if there's something in particular that you know they're looking for. And yeah, and we try to keep the prices low so that you know we're not trying to get a vacation home, we're just trying to help kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, keep the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Leah, what you're doing is so important. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing Vision Reading Academy with us. Yes, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to fxbgneighborspodcast. com. That's fxbgneighborspodcast. com, or call 540-534-4618.