Parent Stories: "Mom... That's How It Always Used to Look" (pt 1) Episode 8

What do you do when you've tried everything... and your child is still struggling?

In this heartfelt episode of Raising Confident Readers, Coach K sits down with Kennessa- a homeschooling mom of five- to share the emotional journey of watching one of her children struggle while all of her other children learned to read with ease.

Kennessa opens up about the guilt, frustration, and self-doubt that so many parents quietly carry. Was she failing her daughter? Was she using the wrong curriculum? Was she simply not doing enough?

Then one conversation changed everything.

After discovering Vision Reading Academy, Kennessa began looking beyond reading itself and started asking different questions. What followed transformed not only her daughter's ability to read, but also her confidence, independence, and outlook on life.

One moment in particular stopped everyone in their tracks.

While observing another student's assessment, her daughter looked at a demonstration of overlapping words and quietly said,

"Mom... that's how it always used to look."

She had lived her entire life believing everyone saw words the same way she did.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, you'll hear:

• The hidden signs that something wasn't quite right
• The emotional weight parents carry when one child struggles
• Why "trying harder" wasn't the answer
• The moment everything finally made sense
• How one discovery changed the trajectory of an entire family

Whether you're homeschooling, public schooling, or simply searching for answers, this episode is a reminder that sometimes the biggest breakthroughs begin with asking a different question.

Next week, Kennessa returns to share what happened after they found the missing piece—including the daily challenges, the resistance, the victories, and the incredible confidence that grew from staying consistent through the process.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Welcome to another episode of Vision Reading Academy. Today we have a wonderful guest with us. Her name is Kinessa, and she had her daughter go through the program. And we wanted to bring her on and let her talk about her journey in the program with her daughter and where it has led her daughter now today. So, Canessa, welcome. Happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

I am a homeschooling mom of five. And I had been homeschooling for several years when my second to last daughter, she was in second grade at the time. I didn't even realize that she was struggling because she could do all of the activities that she was doing. She could read the word. I just thought we were moving at a great pace until we got into some bigger reading, bigger sentences. And it was painfully slow. And it wasn't just painfully slow. She wouldn't remember a word she had just read in the sentence previously. And I was like, what is happening? We'd already worked with multiple curriculums and things like that. And I had success with my other children. So I was like, what am I doing wrong? How am I failing this child? Why is she struggling when my other kiddos were doing just fine? And that's when I really began to start asking some hard questions. But that's where things got really hard. Because as a homeschooling mom, and you don't homeschooling mom, so you know what that's like. We take the full weight of the responsibility of educating our children and working with their strengths, helping them with their weaknesses, finding a curriculum that helps them learn best, all of those things. And so when this particular child was struggling, I felt like I was feeling this child. How can all my children succeed but this one? What am I doing wrong? And I hate to admit it, but I was so frustrated. I would get so frustrated with her. If I'm being honest, I was probably more frustrated with myself because I was lacking. How am I going to fix this? What can I do? And when everything I tried wasn't working.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Well, then you have outside judgments that are starting to come in of people being like, oh, so you're just not working well enough with her. You're really qualified to homeschool. All those sort of questions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Right. And oftentimes that's a battle that a lot of homeschooling parents deal with. Well, you're not qualified. I have higher education. I have a bachelor's degree. So I should be qualified to teach my own child. We have to advocate for our children.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

And so that's exactly what you did for your daughter. As you were advocating for your daughter, you knew that there was something that wasn't working because you had already done it with your older children.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

They were reading, it was fine, it was successful. And then here comes your daughter, and you're questioning everything and you're trying all of the things. So what now led you to the path of finding Vision Writing Academy?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Well, it's very interesting because I was venting to a friend about my struggles. And she's like, um, do you know what I do? Did you raise your hand? There we go. So at the time, at the time though, I knew your background in the medical field, in the science world that you had worked in. The hospital, you started mentioning students, and I was like, How does she have students when she's working at the hospital? I was like, what is I don't understand what's happening here? And it's interesting because it crossed my mind that it's not something we had talked about. And so when you had asked me, do you know what I do? Have we even talked about that? I'm like, no, you've mentioned students, but I've been like, wait, what are you doing? That's when I was introduced to Vision Reading Academy. At the time, I was actually living in Mexico. So my family had chosen to homeschool abroad for a certain time period. And I'm working with the resources that I have. I'm doing a lot of work online, things like that. I had brought a lot of materials with me to Mexico. We're working through her curriculum. And then I'm like, she's struggling. And I don't have the resources that I would typically know to look for or have because I'm not even in my home country. So it was a huge blessing to me that when we were really good friends at the time, and to be like, Do you know what I do? So that's when I found or was I was rather introduced to Vision Reading Academy. I had known your daughter's story. And although I wasn't super familiar with it, because I think I would have used you as a resource. It would have been like, all right, what did you do? How did you help her? So in all the of the life sharing that we did, that was one thing that we just didn't really get into at that time. Until that point of frustration, when I was venting to you, I was like, I don't know what else to do. I feel like I'm failing my child. I'm failing myself. I'm so frustrated and that I don't like how it's affecting my relationship with my daughter because I get frustrated with her. I'm frustrated with myself. And I don't like what's happening here. I don't like who I'm becoming in the process of this incredible frustration that I'm dealing with. And Vision Reading Academy was introduced to me. We did an assessment, and that was where you said, let's just let's just see. Let's rule it out. And I think that's the best thing any parent could do. If you have any question whatsoever, you're kind of struggling with reading, you've tried everything. This is the thing to do. We offer free assessments. So just rule it out at the very least. Maybe that's not what you need, but maybe it's the very thing you need. And you can find out for free. So that's what we did. And we actually almost missed it with her. So oftentimes kiddos, like at least from what I've observed, because I did become a coach, that'll be in a later podcast. But what I've observed is that we can oftentimes see it right away. Whether it's in the myofascial network of the face, how the eyebrows are sitting, within the first exercise, oftentimes we can see there is a substantial weakness, and that's something that we can help. With her, it wasn't any of the initial stuff, and you're like, I'm not seeing it. I remember there was this moment where it was like a light bulb, and you're like, hang on, let's try something else. I've got it. When we did that other test, we found it, she just was more of a rare case of how the weakness that she had was just different than what's normal. And so we found it, and we just began right away. And it's been quite a journey for her. She's quite a stubborn child. We love her, we love her, but she's quite a stubborn little one. And it's been quite a journey for her. But she went from absolute struggle and frustration to she is reading beautifully. And she has the confidence to read, which is massive. Especially parents who have a child who struggles knows that lack of confidence and the belief that they're stupid, those negative beliefs that come with struggle. She's very confident now. She's reading beautiful, her speed is amazing. She's on grade level. These are things that I feared wouldn't happen with the path we were on, and they wouldn't have with the path we were on, had we not have discovered this and helped to correct the weakness in the muscles. The best part for me though was that after doing some substantial amount of work, she happened to walk into the room during an assessment for a prospective student. And when she saw the overlap of words that if your gaze point is not unified, this is what happens, this is what it looks like. And the words were all right on top of each other, and it was very difficult to see to decipher what these individual words were. She saw that and she went, Mom, that's how it always used to look. He was so used to it that she didn't know that that wasn't right, that wasn't normal, but she didn't have the words to even tell me. She didn't know. He didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

There's no way that she could go, I'm seeing different from you, because that's all she was ever able to see. So she couldn't say, Mom, I don't see the same way with the words that you do.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Right. And it never looks the same, or she's literally having to blink and focus, try to get her eyes to see the thing without there being this easy overlap. And it's not because she needed glasses, it wasn't a vision thing. She had fantastic vision. She could see it fine. It was the literal alignment of her eyes that was the issue.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

That was that tension with causing the issue. It wasn't even that there was anything wrong with her eyes, it was beyond that. It was beyond that. Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

It was the tightness and tension, it was weakness in muscle. And when we got that moving, it's a game changer. The whole world literally opened up for her in ways that even she didn't know is possible.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yep. Completely different kid now. Completely different kid.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Completely. Yeah. Completely. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to take a few minutes to talk about where we're headed next because I think it's important for you to understand why we're having these conversations. One of the reasons I started raising confident readers is because as parents, we're often given pieces of the puzzle, but rarely the whole picture. When a child struggles to read, we immediately start looking at reading itself. We buy another curriculum, we hire another tutor, we spend more time practicing, we wonder if it's dyslexia, ADHD, or if our child just needs to work harder. Those are all understandable places to start because that's what we've been taught. What if reading is simply where the struggle becomes visible? That question changed my life. It set me on a journey that completely changed the direction of Vision Reading Academy. Over the next several weeks, we're going to begin unpacking that journey together. We're going to look beyond reading and start asking bigger questions. How do the muscles of the head, face, and neck influence the way the eyes move? Can tension throughout the body affect visual efficiency? How does the nervous system influence learning? What roles does movement play in brain development? What are retained primitive refluxes? And why do they continue to show up long after infancy in some children? These are questions that I didn't even know to ask years ago. As many of you know, before I ever started Vision Reading Academy, I spent two decades working in the medical field. Science has always fascinated me. When my own daughter struggled, I couldn't accept she'll just have to work harder as the final answer. So I started asking questions. That search eventually led me to conversations with professionals from many different fields. People who looked at the body from completely different perspectives than traditional reading intervention. Over the next several episodes, you'll get to hear from some of those experts. I'm incredibly excited to introduce you to a medical massage therapist who has spent years studying how muscles, fascia, posture, and movement influence the body as a whole. We'll talk about why looking only at the eyes sometimes isn't enough and why the rest of the body may be contributing more than we realize. We'll also sit down with a cranial sacral therapist for a fascinating conversation about how the nervous system, movement, and the body's natural rhythms can influence development, regulation, and learning. Whether you've heard of cranial sacral therapy before or it's completely new to you, I think you're going to walk away with a different perspective. We'll also spend time diving deep into retain primitive reflexes. If you've been around Vision Reading Academy for very long, you've probably heard us mention them. Maybe you've wondered what they are or why they matter. We're going to answer those questions. We'll explain what retain primitive reflexes are, how they develop, what can happen when they remain active longer than expected, and why we believe observing them has become such an important part of understanding how a child learns and interacts with the world around them. And we're not stopping there. You'll continue hearing stories from parents who refuse to give up on their children. You'll meet more of our coaches and hear why they are so passionate about what they do. We'll share practical ideas that you can begin using at home. And every once in a while, I'll jump on here myself and simply teach. We'll nerd out on the science together, break down research into everyday language, and hopefully answer some of the questions you've been carrying for years. If there's one thing I hope you can take away from this podcast, it's this. Never stop asking why. Sometimes the answer is exactly what you expected. Sometimes it isn't. But every time you ask another question, you become a better advocate for your child. That's what this podcast is about. It's about giving parents information, hope, and practical tools so that they can make informed decisions for their own families. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. If today's episode encouraged you, would you do me a favor? Follow the podcast, leave us a review, and share this episode with another parent. You never know whose life could change because someone took the time to pass along a little hope. Until next time, keep believing in your child because their future is worth fighting for.