Parent Spotlight: "I Thought It Was Just English as a Second Language" (Episode 6)

She knew every phonics sound... but she still couldn't read fluently.

When Ashley adopted her daughter from India, she assumed the reading struggles they faced were simply because English was her second language. Her daughter quickly learned to speak English, mastered her phonics, and could identify every sound on a flashcard.

But when it came time to actually read...

Everything fell apart.

Words were repeated over and over. Reading was painfully slow. Comprehension was almost nonexistent. Ashley kept thinking, "Maybe she just needs more time."

It turned out time wasn't the answer.

In this heartfelt episode of Raising Confident Readers, Ashley shares her family's journey through Vision Reading Academy and the incredible transformation that followed.

Today, her daughter isn't just reading- she's choosing to read. She's finishing chapter books, reading to her younger brother at bedtime, discussing books with her mom, and even choosing to sit by the pool with a novel in her hands.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why mastering phonics isn't always enough
• The signs Ashley almost overlooked
• How English as a second language wasn't the real issue
• The importance of consistency with exercises
• The confidence that comes when reading finally clicks
• Why coaching and accountability made all the difference
• How reading transformed their family's relationships

Ashley's story is a beautiful reminder that sometimes the missing piece isn't another curriculum- it's finding the root cause.

If your child knows their phonics but still struggles to read fluently, this episode is one you won't want to miss.

📍 Learn more or schedule your FREE assessment at www.visionreadingacademy.com.

Looking to learn more? Head to VisionReadingAcademy.com to learn more, sign up for a free assessment, or get your questions answered. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode. Today we have the fantastic opportunity of interviewing one of our students' moms. And she is a fantastic individual. This is Ashley here with us. And she wanted to come on and tell the amazing success story of her daughter and the whole progress that she made throughout our entire program. So, Ashley, can you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your daughter and what was her journey like before joining Jason Reading Academy?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Sure. So I'm Ashri. I have four kids, and we were all adopted. And so my oldest daughter was adopted from India in 2016. And so essentially English was her second language. And we brought her home. It was in a few weeks she was learning English. She was speaking, and I could understand her, and just amazing. Then she could speak English. We start learning to read and write. And she learned all of her sounds, all of her phonics. You could hold up a flashcard and she could tell you all the sounds that a ch can make, all of the multi-letter phonograms, the single-letter phonograms. She she could do them. But it's when we started to read those books that there was something just wasn't working. She could not string together the sentences. They would be so slow. She would keep repeating the same word that she read and she'd have it correct, but she'd keep going back and going back, and we'd read, we'd have to go back. And it was so slow, she could never remember what she read or answer a question about what she read because so much effort was spent just sounding out the words. And I kept telling myself this is probably English as a second language. She's so bright and smart. So this has to just be English as a second language. Time will fix this. Or maybe if I just bought the right reader, or if I just found the right collection of or topic that she was interested in, then she would like it so much and the speed would improve. I just thought that time would fix it. It wasn't time we needed, it was Vision Reading Academy that we needed.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

I love that. That's amazing. So let's transition a little bit into how you learned about the program and your initial thoughts. What challenges were happening and what led you to then finally seek out Vision Dreaming Academy?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

One of your coaches is part of my homeschool group. And so we were all at a conference together, and Coach Jay was talking. She sponsored it. So she was advertising it and she was talking about some struggles her daughter had. And I was like, that sounds just like my daughter. The repeating, the slow reading, and able to know the sounds and could do a flashcard, no problem. But the actual moving across the page, there was something happening there. And I signed up. I signed up after I think I called or got on the website that day because when I heard her story, I was like, that's us.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Were there any hesitations or concerns you had before starting the program?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Probably just time. That was going to be the challenge. Do we have time to have the meetings? Is there time in the schedule to add in all of the exercises and things we need to do at home? And I just decided to treat it like I would a sport because she can go through life and be a very average softball player. She can be very average at golf, but I don't want her to struggle reading. If we're gonna get to the golf course three times a week or do our swim lesson once a week, or be on the softball team or whatnot, then we can make time to do our reading exercises every day. Meet twice a week with our coach. Her future is way more impacted by the reading academy exercises than softball. So that's the way we looked at it.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

And I'm so glad we I love it. Let's go in a little bit deeper with that. So your daughter's athletic, so she does like doing sports and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, we do not even just sports, but dance and guitar lessons and so yes, we're on the move a lot doing lots of extra things, and yeah, so time you can feel rushed. You feel pretty rushed at times, but so glad we made time for this.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

One of the things your daughter did well was keeping up with the exercises immediately. She got into the five and she stuck with it the entire time. What were some ways that you were able to help her or methods that she took to keep that up?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

So I would say we got into three right away. And then within a month or so, we're up to the five. But I made a little dry erase schedule so she could check off each time she did them, and then we erased it. So we didn't really keep track of previous days. Did we do them the five? Yes, erase. Okay, tomorrow, did we do them the five? Erase. So that's how we kept track of what we were getting them done each and every day.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

I love that idea because it makes it so that she's not looking back and going, I failed previous. It's fresh start, new day. That's fantastic. I love that idea. Coach, we're gonna put that on our list of ideas to give other parents because that's fantastic. So thank you for telling us that. We're gonna rewind a little bit. I want to go back to the sports things because there is a little bit of a connection there that our students that they play sports, that there is some happy things that they're seeing. When you watched your daughter as she started going through the program, did you notice any changes in her abilities in the sports that she was playing? Like if she's playing softball, was she able to track the ball better? Was she able to hit better? Like her hitting percentage went up. Did you notice anything like that happening?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

So her main sport with the ball is golf. And so the ball isn't moving towards you, pinning it away from you, but I would say confidence has improved every other activity she's in. She's more confident now. Because I think the slow reading impacted her confidence. And so always wondering, am I understanding this right? I'm obviously I'm struggling with my reading. Can I really trust that I understand what you're telling me in dance? Can I really trust that I'm swinging the golf club correctly? Or am I good enough? Yes. Am I good enough? Yes, yes. I obviously struggle at reading, so who's to say I don't struggle in all the other aspects of life? I think for sure, just confidence is improved drastically.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

That's amazing. Can you walk us through what the program was like for your daughter? What were some of the key exercises or activities that she did that you feel like were that linchpin that really made a difference for her throughout the program?

SPEAKER_01 8:25

So when we started the exercises, I noticed so much less blinking in her reading. She could actually stay focused on the word. She wasn't constantly blinking. If I look back from now to pictures before, I can see the eyes weren't symmetrical. I didn't notice it at the time, but I can look back now and I see a picture of her now and I look at a picture of her then, and I'm like, her eyes are both looking at me straight. I could see white evenly. So those would probably be the main physical things, much less fidgeting when she's reading. The book would just be bouncing the whole thing she's trying to read, and she's blinking, and everything's just moving. And now she's still and relaxed.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So those would probably be the main things. So I have to add a comment here because the picture thing I think is huge. I went back and looked at pictures of my child as well, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm seeing now. I see the tension in the eyebrow and the difference in how much white showing on this eye versus the other eye. And I look at now, I'm like, huh, everything's symmetrical. You can see all that tension going away. So yeah, that's amazing. What about a brief explanation of how critical you think the exercises are to contribute to some of the successes that she had?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

So we we started doing the exercises, and then really not reading a ton at home while we're doing the exercises. She had a break from the struggle every day, and we were focusing on the exercises. And then meeting with Coach Jay, we would just review some basic phonics. There'd be a few word games we play so she could see it was neat, like week to week or meeting to meeting, the improvement. So whatever game we played, it was like, oh, well, the very next week you did this much better, or you've got through this many words in the list. And so it was just in the meetings that we were really reading. And then after we had really made a lot of progress with the exercises, we started adding back in the reading, and you could just see and hear the improvement in her voice and just in the speed, in her comprehension. Do you feel like that?

SPEAKER_02 10:51

It's one or the other. Because I tell people that are coming into the program with new assessments, I say, like when I started this with my daughter, and it was gathering all different techniques from different modalities that I started working with her on, it was almost like I was taking the entire pot of spaghetti and throwing it at the wall so that something would stick. And I feel like that now that we have a handle on and we've had hundreds of students that have come through the program now, that we've narrowed it down to what has worked best. And so I want to hear from a mother's perspective that has gone through the program, both from you and Christine. You've both gone through the program. Do you feel like that it was the massages and eye exercises that was the trick, or was it the reading training that was the trick? Was it because we were more of like a reading tutor, or do you feel like that was an all-encompassing program? Where do you feel like it was best or if it was all-encompassing? Okay, yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

So I could have never looked up the exercises and done it myself.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I needed a coach, we needed accountability, we needed to be able to meet with someone twice a week. Evelyn needed the exercises for sure. And then I think following it was that confidence of you've already learned phonics, you know phonics, you know sounds, but reviewing it now that the eyes are working correctly, and she now has that confidence, and it probably looked different to her brain because the ch probably sometimes looked like an HC to her. And so now you know that the CH is a chuck or a cu. Once the eyes were working properly, and then throwing in the phonics again just built her confidence more and built on what she had already learned in school, but to where her eyes just weren't cooperating, they were fighting against her. All-encompassing in that just the weakling meetup with the coach was huge, huge, huge because accountability for me and for my daughter, and to know that you're not doing it alone. Yeah, it's easy to give up on you're so too nerfed. Give up someone you're meeting. Oh, we want to get this done. We can tell our coach about it. Our coach is gonna ask about this, we want to have it done. And there was times that we were on vacation and missed things, so it wasn't a stressful, I'm gonna be in trouble if we miss something this week. It wasn't like that, but the accountability was huge. I could have never done this on my own with her, just me and her. We needed a coach.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Fantastic. So you feel like that even though that there's more than just the massages for the eyes and those exercises, that the second part of it where there was the reading exercises that were still exercising her eyes, you felt like that was also a key point helping her.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Right, right, yes. It built her confidence, it tied the two together. It was like you knew how to read, but your eyes weren't cooperating, but now your eyes are cooperating, and now let's come full circle and read.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

What about what are the moments in our sessions where you're all distance four feet? Was there a point where you're like, we're gonna keep on this because it is doing amazing? Or was there a moment, or was it just consecutive you just saw things improving slowly?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

I think it was very slow at first. The huge aha was the comprehension. She read a passage at the beginning early on, and very slow and very low comprehension. And then we spent some time not testing her for a while, but doing the exercises, and then we tested her again, and it was scary rocketed speed and comprehension just through the roof, through the roof.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah, so I would agree the aha moment I had for her was it was an informational passage, and she read it, and I think both of us, our mouths were just dropped open. What just happened? And she was just like, What's the big deal? Yeah, you're like, You've never read like that before. So that was a good one. And when she started, she would say there's something we do as a word attack, and she would say everything in interrogative or question. Yes, we would try to do word attack, and I'd be like, What's this word? And she's like, hot. I'm like, Are you? She was like, Yes, right, and we're like, You're right, but you're sounding them out correctly, you know all your phonics. We want you to be confident in what you're saying, too. You want to declare it, like a statement. And she was like, Okay, and it took her a little bit to pull out of that, and then when we had that informational passage and it was fluent and emotional, and it wasn't choppy at all. After that, those games started getting more confidence in saying those words, yes, yeah, yes, and she would confidently say a 15-letter word or something, yup. What were some changes that happened post graduation? Because it's been four months and she started school program and she's in middle school now. What's the things that have changed for her from last year? Because we were going through the program last year while she was in what sixth grade? And now she's moving on and everything's done. What's different for her? And does she notice it, or is it just something that you're noticing?

SPEAKER_01 17:09

She's at the point now. She is reading through a 20-chapter book every couple weeks until last May. She maybe never made it through a chapter book. She might get through a few chapters and it would just stop because you didn't even remember what she read. So it's really hard to say motivated. Keep reading through a 20-chapter book. Since we graduated, she's working out to about a book every three weeks, a 20-chapter book every three weeks. And we talk about books now. We talk about what we're reading. So it's opened a whole new world with her where we have more to talk about together and deepened our relationship because I can tell her what I'm reading, she can tell me what she's reading, and we talk about the characters, and she's asking questions about dilemmas that each character faced in the book. So it's a whole new life, really. It's really amazing. Really, really amazing.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

That's wonderful. And then she had shared some stuff about how it had changed some activities with her siblings as well. Can you touch on between the siblings? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

So she has three younger siblings, and her littlest brother, she reads him to sleep at night now and likes doing it, and he loves listening to her read. And before, that was never going to be something that she would have wanted to do. So that's deepening her relationships with her siblings. And books are becoming a part of their life. It's something they love.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

I had seen her daughter at our dance recital. We lived close enough to each other, we're blessed to see each other. And Ash's daughter had come up to me and ran into me and gave me a hug. She goes, Coach Jerry, I have to tell you. I'm like, what's up? Because normally we would share our small wins in the beginning of every session, but I hadn't seen her for probably a month or so at that point. And so she was coached. I finished the book. I had bought her a book, Treasure Hunters, the first one by James Patterson. And at first it was a struggle. We were doing some book drills with her, and it has a lot of tricky vocabulary because it's nautical terms and it's not stuff that is general knowledge. And so it was really tricky in the beginning. And then as we went forth, she would just increase the amount of time she was reading and really getting into the story and comprehending what the story was. So for her coming and telling me that she had finished this book, she was beamy. Her whole face would just lit up like a Christmas tree that she was so excited she finished this book. And her sister was standing next to her, and she goes, Yeah, we can't wait to get the next book because we just want to know what happens. And I was like, haha. Applaud. I made a plan. So that was at the recital practice. And so the tradition is to give a bouquet to the dancers when they're done. Instead, because it's coming for me, and I was her coach. I'm gonna give her the next book, and I'm just gonna put a single flower in it. Is this her bouquet for after recital? And I'm so proud of you for finishing this book. And so after the recital, so it was the following day, I had gone up behind the scenes when the parents were gonna go pick up all the kids and everything. I had it behind my back, and I was like, hey, I have something for you. And she was just really confused, basically, what coach, what are you doing? And so I pulled it out and I showed her the cover of the book, and both her and her sisters were both excited. We kids are fine. It's so just sitting in the light of how excited she is about having something that she can do and be confident about, and then even her sister was excited about it because she knew that her sister was gonna read it out loud to her, and they were so excited. So yeah, it was yes, yeah. I think I have shed more tears over Ashley's child than any of my part of because of just how drastic the change was from the beginning to the end.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

That reminded me of something else at the pool the summer, whereas any summer before she would have been playing the whole time. We're at the pool, you do whatever you want. And she chose to sit by the pool and read a good chunk of the summer, which was like I didn't tell you to pack your book, I didn't make you read. You just chose to lay by the pool and read. Never did I ever think that my daughter would choose reading over swimming in the pool with her siblings, but she is now.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Love that. Your daughter sounds very similar to my daughter. We are a baseball, softball family, and so we're at the field a lot. And now all of the parents, even parents that aren't on the same teams as my children, they all know my daughter, and they all know that she loves to read. And so they will go up to her and they will talk to her about these different books. We just had it just the other day, where this mom didn't know my daughter's name, but she knew my daughter through our younger daughter, and so she's like, Hey younger daughter's sister, is what she said. And so my daughter looks over at her and she's like, Yeah, she's like, I've done a new book for you, you're gonna love it. And so what you were saying to me resonated so much, where you were saying that, like, I never thought that she was gonna go from me telling her you have to read to choosing to read. And now it's to the point where there's sometimes I have to ground my daughter from reading for books because she doesn't get the customer things done. And that is one of those things I never imagined that this would be this way because I bought for so many years to just have her be like, Why don't you like reading? Why don't you want to read those books? I love to read. I am a bookworm, I love to read. And then I have this daughter that. She would rather go and sit in the hot summer Danny in an outhouse. Miserable. Something misery. She would much rather do. I know that is a weird analogy, but that is just what came to my mind. So we're gonna go with it. But that's how much she despised reading. And it wasn't because she didn't want to, but it was because she couldn't. But she also could not tell me. And that's that was the biggest change, right? Is all of our children couldn't say, I'm not seeing things like everybody else is because they don't know. The tension that's in my face and head that is affecting me so much is a problem. They don't know that isn't how they're supposed to feel. So they cannot tell you that. Thank you so much for telling your story. I love it. What advice would you give to parents who are considering Vision Reading Academy for their child?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

I would say go for it, do it, you'll never regret it. Treat it like you're adding on a new hobby or dance or a new sport or something. It will take time, but like I said before, a child who is a poor dancer, poor baseball player, poor golfer, they can still do okay in life. But a poor reader that affects everything. And so you do it and go all in because it'll be worth so worth it in the end. And it's not like you guys said before, your goal is to graduate children. Your goal is not to string us along for all of a sudden, oh, I've been paying for therapy for years. No, you have goals, and the goal is to graduate you, not pass you off, not keep referring you on to different therapists or different doctors or whatnot to just graduate you. So it's a commitment, plus or minus a few, just do it. That's the advice.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

I love that. So if you could go back and talk to yourself at the start of this journey, what would you say to encourage yourself?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I think if what you were saying before about she doesn't know to tell you that it doesn't look like hits a poster, she doesn't know to say that the tension in her face is different than everybody else's. I can't tell you how many times you could get frustrated hearing them read and you're, we just read that word. You really were you not paying attention? I already told you what that word was. And there's times where I got frustrated and made her frustrated, assuming she wasn't paying attention, right? It wasn't that she wasn't paying attention, it was that her eyes were fighting her. That's what I wish I could have told myself a year ago, two years ago, seven years ago.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

It's her eyes, it's her eyes, and I want to add on to that to say all of these parents out there that are along this journey to give yourself grace because you don't know. And I didn't know there were so many things that I, same thing, would get frustrated with my daughter with. So even going back and knowing that you're like, okay, well, she couldn't tell me type of things. I love that you're recognizing that, but I want to give you some advice to say, give yourself some grace. Thank you. All right, fantastic. Is there anything else that you would like to share about your experience with Vision Reading Academy or your daughter's success?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Just thank you, guys. Thank you very much. My year would be looking much differently right now if I hadn't found you guys. You found me, really. If you hadn't found me when you have, she wouldn't be able to do the schoolwork this being assigned to her right now. We would have had to find a whole new curriculum or something because she did seventh grade. That means a lot of book reading. So if I hadn't found you when I did, she wouldn't be getting through these books, but she is God perfect the timing that we completed. We graduated before seventh grade, and now she's off. Can't wait to see all that she does. To the races. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Christine, is there anything else that you want to add before we sign off? I want to thank Ashley for being an awesome support during all this for her daughter, because without the pair's support on that aspect of it, she wouldn't have been as successful as she was. And a kiddo trying to do this by themselves, it's looks drastically different. And so having that support of you behind her, and even if it's just reminding her of the exercises or sitting down and doing the reading exercises with her, because you and her did most of the work, you two at home in the trenches, noticing when she had any kind of frustration that to pause and let her calm down a little bit, and then popping in with me. And she got to have fun with me, right? Like coming with Jake was like playing games and passing things off and stuff, but the behind the scenes I think is something that needs to be mentioned too, because as having that constant support by the parent makes a huge difference. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

I agree. It's a team effort, right? Yes, it's parents and child, and then that's why we go by coach. It's because we're coaching that team and getting you guys through where you need to be for that thriving success that we know that each of our students can have. So, Ashley, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for telling your daughter's story and your struggles and your heartache and the amazing wins that she has now. I appreciate you coming on and opening up your heart to us and to the rest of our listeners. So, thank you very much. And I'm sure that we will probably hear from you again and with more successes as she continues on her journey. So, until next time. See you later. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley.