Nathan’s Story

As Told By His Mother, Lisa Harp, the founder of Bravo! Reading

“Whenever I hear parents talk about their children’s reading problems, I go back in time to the early 1990’s…to Chandler, Arizona.”

“I can still feel that penetrating wall of heat as I walked my six-year-old son across the street to school.  You see, there were two children from Nathan’s class who qualified for extra help that summer break, and you got it, my little cowboy was one of them.”

“The math was there for all to see…he was at the bottom of his class…the very bottom reading group.

The Kangaroos

“Everyone knew that the Dolphins were the good readers, the rising stars of the universe. But not the Kangaroos. As a teacher, I’d witnessed countless children get placed into low reading groups, and they rarely had the opportunity to break free from them, sentenced to life as poor readers.”

“As I held Nathan’s tiny hand in mine, the sweltering heat felt like it might just melt us both before we even got to the school.  Even worse, my little boy who’d always been so happy, was losing his sunshine.“

​”My thought process was brutal, one almost every parent of a struggling child has had. He’s not enough. I’m not enough. Even worse, here I was…a teacher…and my child was struggling to read, write, and perform even the simplest math equations. The embarrassment ran deep, but sheer worry crowded it out. Why couldn’t I help him read?  After all, reading was my specialty.”

“Previously, I’d been hired to design supplementary reading materials for the Kyrene School District. It had been a lot of work, a labor of love. Yet, it didn’t help me one bit in teaching my own son learn to read. How had I so completely missed that mark?”

“I knew that Nathan was smart. He had an amazing vocabulary, was an excellent Lego builder, and he could figure out how to assemble almost anything. Socially, he was gifted, never meeting a stranger. But what truly pained me, what hurt the most, was that he wanted to read so badly.”

When You Know Something’s Not Right

“I knew something else was going on with my perfect little boy. I just didn’t know what it was. I also knew I was wasting my time taking him to the school that hot day, as there weren’t any unique or innovative activities that they’d be doing.”

“I also knew they’d just be giving him more of the same that hadn’t worked all day when he was in school. But I was desperate – beyond desperate. At the time, if an expert would had told me to turn my little cowboy upside down in a corner for 45 minutes a day, I probably would have!”

“But I naively told myself he just needed more time, more practice, that his reading skills would just somehow magically kick in, as if someone had waved a magic wand over his soft brown curls. That was the parent in me. But the teacher in me knew better, knew that my little cowboy wasn’t the only kid who seemed to get lost in the reading battle.”

“I didn’t know at the time that the reason Nathan had a hard time reading was because he had dyslexia. And that kids with dyslexia are smart but they learn differently. I would go on to find out he had ADD and significant auditory processing problems. But at the time, I couldn’t understand why he was struggling so hard, why his eyes glazed over during those traditional phonics lessons I forced him to do – the ones that never worked.”

“I only knew that the beautiful, happy baby I’d had only a few years previously, was apparently now…a bottom feeder. A Kangaroo, of all things, and he was falling behind rapidly in every other subject as well.”

Some Good Teachers, Some Bad…

“Years passed without any real change. Nathan had a couple of great teachers and a couple that sliced huge scars onto his soul. That damage can’t be fixed, but we muddled through it together, and our bond to this day is strong because of all we went through back then. I – then and now – held great respect for such a little guy who loved learning and reading – even when he had no right to.”

“I pushed on him. If a little dose of phonics worked for other kids, then a huge dose would work for him. I was relentless. While little boys lined up outside our front door waiting for Nathan to come out and play, I forced more and more phonics down his throat. I used flashcards to make him memorize sight words and tamped down disappointment when he forgot them the next day, when he looked up blankly at me with pained brown eyes.”

But it only helped so much.

“Some of his teachers pushed for medication. I stood my ground and refused. Keep in mind that this was the heyday of Ritalin where kids lined up in the nurse’s office at school to get their pills. I knew one thing in all of this: that wasn’t going to be my child.“

It wasn’t.

​”I can’t say that I didn’t have some weak moments where I thought medication might help. But I’d read too much about the down sides of Ritalin and didn’t want that for my little boy. I’m glad I held my ground on that issue!”

“When Nathan was in the fifth grade, we moved to Colorado and the real struggle began. He fell further and further behind. His asthma was so bad that he had to have breathing treatments almost every day at school. He was stressed out and knew he wasn’t performing as well as his peers. He was beginning to think that he was stupid, and that really smacked hard.”

“Awareness…it’s a thing with kids. They know who’s getting A’s and who’s getting F’s. They know who’s the fastest runner and the kid who can barely make it to the finish line. They know the Kangaroos are the low reading group and the Dolphins are the high reading group.“

​“One day, something snapped. I knew Nathan couldn’t go back to school. I knew he needed something different. I knew one thing. I would somehow fix it.“

“I went on a mother mission. Back then, the internet was only an infant, so I took classes, researched at the library at night, and started applying what I learned. There wasn’t a lot of available information out there, but I took what I could and spun it into a learning web for my son – a reading web of sorts.”

“That’s when I discovered the Orton-Gillingham research. In a nutshell, in the 1930’s, researchers figured out the best way for students with learning disabilities to learn to read. They found that if there was predictability, if the kids knew the basic sound units of our language that they could learn to read. Also, a multi-sensory approach was needed.”

I was hooked!

“From all my years teaching elementary school, I knew that some kids just naturally learned to read while others struggled to know and retain sounds of letters and units of sound. But if I added movement, color, pictures, auditory cues, and a right-brain spin to decoding, then maybe…just maybe Nathan…and other kids…might learn to read without smacking them over their metaphorical heads with a board.”

“I also worked on Nathan’s visual and auditory processing skills to help strengthen what was weak. I discovered brain-based learning and applied it to his routine.”

Fight or Flight…it’s a Thing!

“I didn’t know then that you can’t learn well when you’re in fight-or-flight, and my son had been living six years of fight-or-flight. We pulled him out of school and committed to homeschooling him. Slowly, we started getting our sweet boy back.”

“I continued with the new reading instruction, and it was like you could see a light bulb glowing above Nathan’s head. He started confidently sounding out multi-syllable words. He quit guessing at words and systematically decoded them. His fluency and comprehension skyrocketed until I found him reading books just for the joy of it. When he asked to go to Barnes and Noble to pick out some motocross books, we happily hopped in the car and made that trip!”

“Those days passed like a whirlwind and then the news came that we were moving yet again…this time to California. I worried about Nathan…of course. You see, he was Mr. Social and desperately wanted to go back to school. By then he’d completed the sixth grade as a homeschooler, and I didn’t think he was ready for middle school. I entertained the thought of private schools, but I knew the area we were moving to was remote. It was what we wanted for the kids – the life of living in the country. But I knew schooling options were limited.”

A Determined Boy!

“By the time autumn rolled around, Nathan was stir crazy and had his chin set in a hard line. ‘I’m going back to school,’ he announced. There was no arguing with him about that.  

“So…I enrolled him in Toyon Middle School, scared out of my wits.  I didn’t know what I’d do if we had a repeat performance of his other school days, but I wanted him to be happy. The first few months flew by. He struggled a bit in algebra, but beyond that he seemed to be doing fine.

Then, we received a letter in the mail toward the end of the first quarter inviting us to an awards ceremony, so of course we went. I didn’t pay too much attention to the details as like most families, we were busy and had a lot going on with sports, horses, and just normal life.”

Honor Roll!

“We sat on the hard benches in the crowded auditorium listening as student after student was called up to receive an honor roll certificate. I sat back, wondering what we were doing there. Maybe Nathan had a sports award or something.”

“And then something happened that I’ll never forget. They called Nathan’s name…for his honor roll certificate. Nathan made the honor roll!  He’d done it…we’d done it! I breathed. I cried…swiping my tears away so I wouldn’t embarrass anyone. But I was a proud mom, let me tell you!”

Bumper Stickers

“Back then, schools often gave out bumper stickers that announced your child was an honor student. The principal told us to take one of the bumper stickers off a table. I took two…I guess I figured he’d earned it. It’s funny how something as silly as a bumper sticker can make you feel like you’ve made it in the world, that you’ll be okay, when really it’s nothing more than plastic, glue, and letters.”

“Oddly, I never put those bumper stickers on my car…it was enough knowing that Nathan had made the honor roll. But I remembered what if felt like to have a child who wasn’t an honor student, who struggled and worked and never could quite make it.  I’ll never forget that feeling.“

A Tenth Grade Reading Level in the Seventh Grade!

​”Oh, we got more good news as time passed.  By then, Nathan was reading at a tenth-grade level and his confidence grew in every aspect. His grades soared, and he continued as an honor student, graduated high school and went to college with scholarships. He

bought his first house at 23 and started a business at 27.”

​”His future is bright…because he’s that same bright boy I always knew lived inside a disconnected body and brain…a boy who had learning struggles but still had a lot of intelligence and potential. If I hadn’t gone on a mother mission, if I hadn’t come up with what is now the Bravo! Reading System, I don’t know what would have happened to my sweet little boy.”

Never Give Up!

“My message to you is clean and simple and pure. Never give up on your child, especially where dyslexia is concerned. Whether it’s autism or dysgraphia or CAPD, (central auditory processing disorder), don’t give up. If it’s a behavior issue, don’t give up.“

“There’s always a way to help your child. There’s always hope.”