Dyslexia or Gifted; Teach Your Student to LEARN how to Learn with Founder of the Learning Success Academy Kohila Sivas

Hey guys, I'm Jackie Finneman. I'm a parenting strategist and coach. And after 30 years and with more than 50,000 hours of experience working with kids and families, I promise you there is a solution for your parenting challenges. The key to this parenting gig is to guide and lead your kids with less fear and more confidence. You don't have to know everything to be the expert of your child.

So let's get to the root of what is going on in your home with you and your kiddos. And then we're going to prepare for the worst and change the conversation. Kick fear, worry, and guilt to the curb. You are exactly the parent your child needs and wants, and you are more capable than you sometimes give yourself credit for. I launched the No Problem Parenting Podcast to reach more parents and share the Cliff Notes version on how to solve a variety of parenting problems in the moment as they are happening in your home. Problems are a part of life, and they're meant to be dealt with and overcome. So I teach parents how to turn any problem into a no problem. In this podcast, you're going to find down to earth practical, fun, no nonsense, and sometimes best backwards tips and ideas for how to navigate this thing we call parenting. You're going to learn about resources on a variety of parenting topics and increase your rock star parenting moments.

Since starting the podcast in April of 2021, we have over 150 episodes, more than 140 guests. So go back and look through the episodes and find the topics that resonate with you. And if you want to fast track to my solo episodes, you can head on over to NoProblemParents.com, click on the podcast tab, and you'll see the 15 episodes or so that I've done just with my favorite techniques and talking about no problem parenting, attachment disorders, remembering the pause, making it right technique, some of my favorites. So you can head on over to NoProblemParents.com and find it there.

and you can subscribe to our emails as well. Follow, review, subscribe to this podcast. We are already a top 2% podcast. The more followers and subscribers and listens that we get, the higher up we rank and the more parents that we're able to reach. All right, for now, let's get into today's topic and meet our next guest. Now that school has started, I'm meeting with parents already that are saying that their kiddo is struggling with their academics or they're having a hard time getting through their schoolwork and, you know, transitioning to school.

Well, I have a super amazing guest who is also one of the authors in our second no problem parenting book, Ms. Kohila Sivas, and she is the founder of the Learning Success Academy. And she's going to talk to us today about alternatives and other options for helping our kids learn. So welcome to the show, Kohila. Thank you, Jackie, for having me. This is amazing.

We always have good conversations. So I'm happy to be here today. You are a wealth of information. You are a bright light when it comes to schooling our kids and teaching our kids.

And I've learned so much from you and Learning Success Academy. It is fully accredited. And you thought maybe 30 hours of accreditation, right? And instead it's 40.

Yes, yes. And so teachers can get 40 hours of credit. Is that how that works? Yes.

So through Learning Success Academy, what parents receive is certified coaches. So these are teachers who are leaving the school system because they're not able to give the quality of education and they're not fulfilled with what they're able to do in the classroom. So they're leaving and they're starting their own business. So I help them start their own business and I give them a methodology.

As a learning success coach, we have a methodology that's brain science and neurolinguistic based. So they get a training over eight weeks. And that training is now accredited and approved by ICF for the 40 credits. And also they're certified under the methodology.

So they're no longer tutors. They're more than teachers. They're holistic learning success coaches. And that is my question for you.

What is the difference between a teacher or a tutor and that learning success coach? So let's start with the teacher. teacher is you know in a classroom with 40 sometimes 30 sometimes 25 kids now after COVID that number in the classroom is not something every teacher can handle anymore because every child is at different levels of learning because of COVID gaps which was in my chapter in your book about the pandemic and the gap that it has created so for example reading writing math they are like some students are four levels behind three levels behind right so if you put a child into a grade four right now teachers can't deal with it because they're at kindergarten level they didn't get the education that supposed to happen and then of course they don't have the regulations because socially emotionally when you're struggling in school what happens is behaviors right that's the language a child knows how to bring on and then now teachers are dealing with the behaviors in the classroom. So they're not able to help the children the way they want. So they're not satisfied. They're going home empty as well. And this is why I left 11 years ago teaching myself because I was going every day empty home because I couldn't serve my students the way I wanted. Right. So 24 years ago, I also started a tutoring company to, you know, maybe more be more meaningful and deliver more meaningful service to students and parents. But tutoring also has

its limitations because when it comes to tutoring parents usually bring the child when they're struggling it's already past the point of you know they are very deep into the struggle and then what we try to do is we try to attack the academic part right so we just go to this you know the immediate problem is fix my marks right that's what i go and attack as a tutor is to okay let me give you the whatever you're missing let's try to you know stuff get you caught up and yeah stuff every information into your brain and see how your information will be held into your brain and then go and do an exam or test and see how it goes right it's kind of like a I always compare it to going to the emergency room right that's all they can do there's certain things they can do they're not going to fix at the root cause of anything they're just going to kind of do with the surface as much as possible. That is a really good point that kids get behind,

we get them a tutor and your job is just to sort of get them caught up to where they're supposed to be, but they're not necessarily, it's to get the mark, it's to get the A or the B or the C, the passing grade of C. And then once that happens, then it's like, okay, we're done tutoring. We didn't fix anything. All we said is, all we also told the child is that when you fall, we'll get you an emergency situation we'll get you emergency help now you're helped and cured but you did not cure the child they didn't learn anything they didn't get what they need retain anything so the next year it happens again and then over time when you do this they're going to rely on me like i became the superhero like go i'll go to kohila and i'll get my a yeah right it's like i'll go to my tutor and they'll get me get my so no longer it's your marks, it's now the tutor's responsibility to get you the marks. So it's kind of a, you know,

we're kind of twisting the role, right? We want the child to take ownership of their learning now, right? That's the most important thing. So they don't become problem solvers. They're now looking for who can solve my problem. Oh, that's so interesting. And it's not proactive at all either. No, no, nothing preventative about it. We're not really learning about our kids learning styles or their abilities? So for me, as a teacher, I didn't get what I wanted. And then as a tutor, it was like, you know, some students even call me like, you know, you're my tutoring machine, do the work for me. I'm like, thank you. Not on my book. It's not happening. Because I'm going to get you to do the work. That's the thing is like, you go home and do the work. I have to give you enough information. You go on your own and do the homework. That's where the learning will happen not me do your homework for you as a tutor right but that's kind of what we're telling the students right you go to the tutor they'll help you help you help you get the marks help you finish the homework okay so you are their homework machine literally at the end of the day so 11 years ago this was not working when I worked over you know over 1600 plus students over that time and I wanted something meaningful so that's how I started you know digging into this coaching methodology where I wanted to serve at the root problem. What is the root cause of this child

struggling? And when I started fixing those, they started learning math on their own because my speciality was math. It doesn't matter what grade they were in. I just went to the root cause of it.

A lot of the time, it's a teacher who told them in grade two that they're not good at math. So now in grade 10, they say the same thing again and again. I'm not good at math. So why would I get this? Your specialty is math, but in your program, through Learning Success Academy, you have trained over 120 teachers. And so there's all different specialties.

So we have teachers in every subject, every level. They're certified in the methodology to really get to the bottom of the problem, really work with the students to intrinsically motivate them, not just, you know, as a tutor, just fixing anything on the surface, we just go to it, and your child will start feeling you know this new energy for learning this motivation that comes from internally instead of pushing and nagging and you know pushing it on to them like you know you need to study you need to study you know everybody heard that right yeah that's what we always say you got to study harder what the heck does that mean i don't know how to study i don't even know how to take notes yeah and i was telling my coaches last night we had a call that you know a lot of things that we were told that that's common sense or you should know how to study in this generation, it's not like that anymore. They need to be really taught how to do those very simple things. They don't know how to stay in focus. You tell your kids, can you not stay in focus for 30 minutes? They don't know how to focus because we live in a distracted environment,

right? They don't. It's a new skill that needs to be taught. When we were younger, there wasn't all the technology or the distractions or the stimuli, all that extra stimulation. It's a totally different world right now. So it makes sense that we would need to teach that. Yeah. So we work on a lot of executive functioning parts of the program is so whatever the child needs. So this is another thing with our program. We don't have a preset program. We don't just go, okay, okay, you're struggling with math. Here you go. This is how program should be. We always customize it and individualize it because every child is different. Every child is different. And this is why the system is failing right because the system attacks as everybody learns the same way everybody learns at the same speed everybody should just learn it this way right that's it why aren't you getting it if you don't get it you have some kind of disability now let me fix you right this is kind of what we're doing to our children right but no they learn a certain way they think a certain way so we have to customize it to that certain way so that is part of our my training to these teachers are how to customize it and individualize and personalize it to that student.

So there's no one size, a model. Yeah, right. No one size fits all kind of thing. Do you already have to be in school somewhere else?

Or is this like a homeschooling model? We work with both type of parents and students. Sometimes it's homeschooling, unschooling, and parents have taken them out and they're having problems. Sometimes we even go into the whole family situation to just establish a routine for this academic part and the social emotional regulations part right all together as a family or it's it's traditional schools they're in the traditional school they have fallen behind they're four years behind in their reading we have reading specialist teachers that just go in there and they can you know work with them in a customized way that they learn the way they learn they get them caught up and what I'm hearing from you as well is even if they're not behind but they're just struggling. I mean, how many kids, this happened with our son, which later we found out he's dyslexic. He had to work. I remember our son coming home from school sometimes and saying,

you know, oh, I'd say, hey buddy, how'd you do on the test? And he'd say, I got a B minus, or I got a C plus. And I'd say, wow, I can tell you worked really hard. And you know, are you happy with that grade? And he's like, no mom, I worked so hard. And he'd say, my friend got an A and he told me he didn't even study. And that was so defeating. So even though we were happy because it was math or a subject that he typically struggled in, we were more than happy with a C plus or a B minus, which thinking about that, we shouldn't have been, right? Because we could see how hard he worked, but then he was just defeated because his friend didn't even study and got an A. And we talk about all of these things. Like we prepare students for tests, exams, and also how to like how to learn to learn is my methodology like the meta learning de-stress methodology that I was able to work with the neuroscientist and prove it and then we just get to the neurological pathways of the brain right and reprogram the student's mind because a lot of the time you know what your son would say is even if I study I'm not going to do well anyway next time right when it comes to it because he just got defeated and if you think about if he keep saying that over time he's never going to even like look at that subject anymore it's like whatever you know if I even do it you know I'm not going to get the results I want so why bother

right this is kind of where we meet our students why bother so it comes from this but what happened is he didn't know how to study for the test he probably studied as he was doing his homework because there's a difference between when you're doing your homework versus when you're studying for a quiz versus when you're studying for a test versus when you're studying for an exam They're all different. We don't teach kids how to learn to learn.

Yes, exactly. We teach them what to learn. We teach them what to learn. We never teach them how to learn in the school.

None of us have that education. You know, you just do it. Exactly. Well, and, you know, the other thing is once we found out that our son had dyslexia, one of the consultants we reached out to said he doesn't have a learning disability.

He has a teaching disability because he needs to learn different. And often in your private or public schools, they still teach just a certain way. And even though there were accommodations, right, he could take longer to take his test. He could go into a different room, a darker room, quieter room.

He didn't have to feel embarrassed about not getting done in time or whatever it was. There were accommodations. Honest to God, those accommodations were kind of BS, right? I mean, they weren't, they were sort of band-aiding, but they weren't actually helping him.

Yeah, they weren't helping him retain or learn how he could learn the information. When he left senior high to do to play a junior's hockey team, we had to get online school for him. He excelled in online school because the teachers were able to work with him and meet him where he's at and see how he could learn. And he excelled. His stats got an A in a stats class, never had gotten an A in a math class before.

nice you know and then of course finished up the school year uh the last last month and a half uh in-person school year and you know there went the grade point average yeah it was so sad to see it is so frustrating some kids excel and they do great and for those kids that can learn the way this traditional school system is set up to learn that is fantastic we're not talking about those kids we're talking about the kids who just really struggle and they shouldn't have to and we shouldn't be labeling them and sending that message to them that they're not capable or that they're dumb. Yeah. And it also happens the other way because last night I was meeting with a parent who had a child who was double gifted. Hey there parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Are you losing your crap on your kids, yelling, giving in and exhausted at the end of every day? You are already a good parent and I'm sure you've sought advice from friends or family.

You've read books on your child-specific behavior problem. Maybe you've even signed them up to see the school counselor or an outpatient therapist. But despite your efforts to find the right person or thing that will help, your family is still struggling. You're tired of pretending everything's okay.

Well, if your confidence is shot and you feel like you're failing your kids, but you also don't have a ton of time or money, register to become a No Problem Parent for just $50. It comes with an app so you can listen to the tips and tools just like you're listening to this podcast. You can start building confidence in your parenting immediately, whether your child is a toddler or all grown up and still living in your house.

Don't make this parenting gig harder than it needs to be. Become a no problem parent today. So if you have a gifted child, what happens is they sit with the regular class. Now the teacher's averaging her instruction, right?

Everything is average in our world, right? We teach to teach to become average. so when he's up here and like majority of them are low down here she's got to pick a middle point to teach and also you know teachers don't get that much of training into how to differentiate and all of that stuff too right there's a right how could they i mean we just got to give a shout out to our teachers they are doing the best they can with what they've got and just like you said you've got the super gifted kids and then you've got the kids who are slower to learn and the teacher has to figure out how to meet all those needs.

So this is not a knock on teachers by any means. Means, yeah, yeah. So they're doing their best. So this kid, this double gifted kid is now sitting in that classroom.

I see this with a lot of them when I meet them. Now he's bored. So the more bored he gets, right? You know, behavior comes in of some sort, right?

And so he's not being challenged in that classroom. So the reason that parent is, you know, seeking our learning success coach is because they want him to be challenged. and not necessarily go a higher level, but challenge within it because we can give them word problems because double gifted students, one of the things they have is that they don't like getting anything wrong because they always get everything right.

So getting something wrong is like life is ending. So that skill alone, a learning success coach can fix that, give him challenging levels of questions within the level he's at and he's gonna have to go through that emotion. emotions again and again and again and he will learn that getting wrong answer is part of growth what can i learn from this opportunity right instead of pushing him to another grade so the mom came to us saying thinking like we're going to push him to like he's in grade five let's do grade seven math no he should be actually pushed on this emotional stuff which is it's a common thing for them they just cry and they just shut down every you know and that is so i i've known several kids who are like that. They're, they're super smart, super gifted, motivated, energized,

but they're getting everything right all the time. So who wouldn't, who wouldn't want to, who wouldn't love that? Right. And, but they're also bored. And so we're doing them a disservice by not giving them more challenging work, keeping them at their grade level. So socially they're at, you know, with their grade level, but that they're also learning to fail and that that doesn't define who they are. That I love this, Kohila, that is such a good point.

yeah absolutely because i do see that too kids go off to college college is harder they crash i've seen some some really heartbreaking things where kids are suicidal because it was too hard and they don't know how to to not get an a yeah and i have a my son uh had a classmate he was gifted all the way through and he even went to different school to be a challenged and all that he got into you know grade 10 math and grade 10 level of studies he's now fully on drugs does not have a coping mechanism so that's the thing with that gifted right we can push our children to a certain level but pushing them or skipping a grade and all of that we need to build emotions and we need to build their um stability and perseverance yeah fighting through things right like absolutely some resilience and grit and also some um empowerment and confidence in their abilities for themselves.

And I just, yeah, I love everything about that. You guys have a very compelling mission. Your goal is to assist 1.5 million students by the year 2035.

You believe that every student deserves access to high quality education and personalized coaching. Kohila, how does a family that's interested reach out to you? What is the process? yeah we have our website learning success coaches academy.com you know there's an application they can fill out and all of the people that we take on we have a one-on-one calls with them first we want to know what your needs are first right it's called clarity coaching call so not only that you're going to get clarity at the end of it no matter what because that's number one thing parents need is clarity because when you're in a chaos with your child when you're fighting when you're when you're nagging when you feel like they're not listening to you like your relationship is going further and further right that's what you work on too right right so hard to get that academic piece in order because now you're just fighting 24 7 with these kids especially when they're and if you don't have a close relationship with your child from the beginning maybe split families this comes up to different rules right and then they go to high school level or middle school level now it gets even complicated for that so coming to our clarity coaching call it's it's it will change the life of what's happening for the parents you know like at least give you that clarity but at the end of that clarity coaching call is when we like really offer what

is the most important thing that needs to happen first so our learning success coach will do the assessment and tell the parent and the student this is the next step and that's how we always take the students on board the students we have an onboarding process as well you're getting to the root of the problem which is step step one and no problem parenting right we're going to get to the root of the problem and and your holistic learning does that you have a coaching call you have a free child assessment all of this is on your website the way the methodology works is if if a coach gets a child who was a team right and if they're working with that child and the parents are coming for math or science or whatever the subject they're bringing in our coaches can offer all of that along with the subject we don't separate them you know in order for a child to learn all of these other things has to be in place and this is what I learned over the 24 years as being with the students is that I was trying to give them the best way to learn math here's the code because I was excited I cracked the code of the math and I came out of high school I'm like I'm gonna become a teacher I'm gonna give them all the codes everyone's gonna learn this and they're going to do really well. And I started in the process of doing that. And even when I gave them the simplest way of doing math, when the child wasn't ready, when they had all the other

regulatory problems, and they were calling themselves stupid, and their grade one teacher told them that you'll never be good at math. And here I am in grade 10, telling them you're really good, do this, here's the code, they won't take it, it was a full rejection. And I would say, what's wrong here, I'm giving you the easy way to do math, why won't you take it and do it? What's the problem and then eventually you know as i went through the training from my students i realized that it was in the math that was the problem it was them learning learning to learn and learning to you know talk to their brain because one of my part of my methodology is how to talk to your own brain and even i get them to label name their brain we separate it and they get to talk to it and they train their brain so that it works with them so it's a neurological training that our coaches go through so every child who comes in we executive coaching is part of that program you know academic coaching is part of it and some part of it is even like coaching like we look at their sleep schedule all the time because you know um in this distractive economy that we all live in right now many of us are on the phone our kids are too right like my son used to come out of his bedroom in the morning with the red eye all sleepy i'm like did you not sleep what happened last night and then this was happening when he was in grade nine right and then I ended up finding out

that he had he was on his phone until 2 a.m he's very honest with me you know we have a good relationship and I'm like okay so you have a trouble now holding off on the phone so no more phones in the room let's keep it outside at night now he's having his sound like he's sleeping beautiful he can be wakes up fine so after 10 o'clock you don't no child needs a phone inside because you know it's like leading the whole world to come and sleep in your child's bed we won't let anyone through our front door but in through this phone we let the whole world into our child's bedroom until two in the morning yeah crazy right crazy and they can access anything they want like i can't sleep in my bedroom unless i see my son's phone outside of his room yeah because it almost feel like I have the whole billion people in his room. That's what I feel like. That's a great way to reframe that or to frame that. Yeah. When you think about it that way, that who are you allowing to be in your home after 10 o'clock at night in your child's bedroom? As in while I'm sleeping,

I don't even know who's entering and leaving. Like we would never do that physically, but with the phone, somehow it's okay. It's not okay. I have students who fall asleep in my sessions.

yeah and then I had to get to it and then and then eating right that's there's so many eating disorders going on with especially with girls in high school they come and they have no energy and we have to talk so life coaching is part of it so uh you know when you are working with the learning success coach they would go to the root cause of it whatever that is if it's the phone addiction if it's it's to do with the food or if it's to do with the friendship bullying doesn't matter we fix all of that and prime learning condition for the child so that the child starts learning because when then one of those steps are working we stuff education in they're not going to take it yeah exactly exactly well there i've had several kids who have been you know through trauma and and have had years of of struggles and um during all of that they're saying oh they're falling behind in school they're falling behind well i have learned from experience i can guarantee that this happens when you take care of the child's emotional self, which is one of the things that your executive functioning coaching does, right? Because that's not only helping the brain control behavior with a focus on achieving certain goals, but it's helping them emotionally as well and to be empowered and take control. When their emotional status and their emotional well-being is met, and at least to that sort of like a neutral level, the grades all of a sudden

just come they do catch up in school they just they excel they can catch up three four grades in a year it's like a byproduct like we don't even have to work on the grade and that's exactly how I was able to say you know what forget the math like you know 11 years ago and I really got it into my my my my like that light bulb moment is like you know what if I do all of this they start working for their own marks yeah like we just fight the other way around and it doesn't work right so that's what our learning success coaches are certified so they go through a full training on their mind how to help the students in that level and also now they're accredited for that as well so parents can uh you know hire a learning success coach and trust to see results it's not just let's see if this works they will see results they will see results in the way their kids walking talking like it's it's it's like it's not a mark only right mark is a byproduct that will come as well but it's this emotional thing it's the internal the physical light that their mood their energy they're wanting us to learn how early can a child come to you oh we have teachers trained for kindergartners and then all the way through college yeah all the way to college any of that and some of them are working with adults to the adults too like this just works for everyone and anyone it is just such an amazing program i'm so glad you've developed it i'm happy

to be in contact or connection with you and to continue. You are really my go-to for anyone struggling with their kids academically. And on top of that, with their life, the teenagers, the middle schoolers, it's first grade, fourth grade, and ninth grade. Parents listening today, if your kiddo is struggling at either one of those grade levels, it's because the curriculum changes and it starts to get harder. First grade, fourth grade, and ninth grade. If you're hearing your kids say, I don't want to go to school. I don't like it. I'm not going to school. I'm not going to do it, reach out, click the link in the show notes here for learningsuccessacademy.com.

I'm also going to put the direct link for the free assessment that you offer. You can check all of it out. I just thank you so much, Kohila, for taking the time to be with me on the show today. I know that you're super busy, never a dull moment in your life either. So thanks so much for being with me today. Thank you, Jackie, for having me. And if you're a parent, I strongly recommend, you know, booking a clarity coaching call with one of our learning success coaches, because as I said, it's not about you buying the services. We're there to help you get clarity.

That is the number one thing for any parent right now is clarity. Absolutely. Clarity is key. And in fact, it's step one of no problem parenting, seeking first to understand. When we understand, when we know what's going on, we get that clarity, we can become the confident leader our kids crave us to be. Before you go, head into the show notes, click on the links for the Learning Success Academy. And you can also get the book there, No Problem Parenting, resources and stories that create confidence and connection.

Check out Kohila's chapter on page 115, No Problem Rebounding Your Kids from Lockdown Learning Loss. That's it for today's episode. Thank you so much to everybody who's followed, downloaded, subscribed, and left us a review of the show. We so appreciate that.

We are nearing that top 1%. And we're so grateful to our listeners. By sharing the podcast, you're helping us to help more families. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.

Digital Audio Health by... Cymotrax.