Learning to Read: Neural Efficiency, Not Word Naming

A note sent to me from a 9-year-old student. Received July 3, 2026.

by Rhonda Stone Little Readers Members Only Site Manager

After nine years of transforming children, teens, and adults into successful readers through Dee Tadlock's Read Right methodology, I'm closing that chapter at the end of summer. Yesterday, I was blessed to receive two hand-drawn letters from brothers I tutor. One of two perfectly captures why I'm moving from tutoring struggling readers to launching the Little Readers Members Only parent website: Future reading ability shapes lives!

From personal experience I know that reading with full comprehension and oral fluency by age 5 or 6 is attainable for most children. I know because 100% of my grandchildren achieved it! Yet, only two out of three American students educated under a system that favors decoding and single word naming ever achieve the ability to read proficiently by any age (see the National Assessment of Education Progress).

Reading excellence is so elusive because both society and the reading field remain steadfastly focused on sounding out words and word naming as the only foundation for early reading development. True reading success, however, depends solely on what every individual brain--operating below the level of our conscious awareness--requires to achieve neural efficiency. And neural efficiency requires the brain to spontaneously seek, locate, and integrate ALL knowledge reading demands.

Helping parents help their children discover neural efficiency with reading is exactly what Little Readers Members Only is all about. Through methods developed by my dear friend Dee Tadlock over a 45 year period, Little Readers Members Only will empower parents with 21st-century methods. This is an invitation to join us!