How My Son Finally Started to Move Forward in Reading … Despite Working Through 12 Programs and Therapies with NO IMPROVEMENT
How My Son Finally Started to Move Forward in Reading … Despite Working Through 12 Programs and Therapies with NO IMPROVEMENT
What worked after all the programs recommended by public school reading specialists, independent reading experts, homeschooling mothers, and TED Talks failed
We Tested The Top 12 Reading Programs For Our Son & NONE Of Them Worked…Until We Found Happy Cheetah
I know how frustrating and painful it is when your child can’t read.
My name is Amy Lykosh, and in my son’s case, it took us over three years just to get basic letter sounds down … mostly (he still missed b and d).
I read the advice online from people who said, “Relax! My child was eight and it was like a switch flipped in his brain.”
But I wondered if ever that switch didn’t flip.
(The answer is: YES. In the United States, if a student doesn’t get on grade level by third grade, that student has only a one-in-four chance of ever catching up. The odds are not in your favor.)
We started a reading program.
No significant progress. We started another.
And another. I kept trying to find answers. What could we do next?
After five years, we had done reader-based programs, workbook-based programs, computer programs. We had done the most expensive program and less expensive versions. We had done color overlays, brain training, dyslexia testing, auditory sound recognition. We had talked to a public school reading expert.
But my son was no better off. He still couldn’t remember “the” consistently.
My husband even started a manual labor business in hopes that we could keep our son employed, should he be illiterate forever.
My husband even started a manual labor business in hopes that we could keep our son employed, should he be illiterate forever.
How a Nationally-Recognized Expert Changed Our Lives
Dr. Karen Holinga
We had exhausted the best wisdom that I had been able to find in online and real life searches.
Then my mother went to a homeschool convention. There she went to a talk by Dr. Karen Holinga, a woman who has dedicated her life to teaching children to read.
With her doctorate, she has spent the last 25 years helping children with reading disabilities: over 25,000 of them.
She can’t think of a single one that she hasn’t helped move forward—a 100% success rate.
She sees the frustrated parents and the struggling students every day. She listens to their stories and cries with them.
Then she offers help.
Dr. Karen Holinga
After Dr. Karen’s talk, my mom approached her and said, “Dr. Karen, my grandson can’t read.”
And Dr. Karen, without asking any questions, without wondering what other programs my son has tried, without asking about learning disabilities, said, “Sarita, send your grandson to me and I will teach him to read.”
So my son and I drove seven hours to Ohio to meet Dr. Karen. With so many failed attempts already, the only thing that kept my hope alive was her supreme confidence that she could help my son.
She answered my questions. She explained why my son was struggling.
The Happy Cheetah Difference
In a sea of look-alike programs, Happy Cheetah stands alone.
In Dr. Karen’s practice, four out of five struggling readers have poor functional vision. Odds are good that this is your child. Functional vision is not the same as 20/20!
Most students with poor functional vision have 20/20 eyesight! Rather, functional vision is a disconnect between the eyes and the brain.
These children very literally cannot focus. That’s part of the Right Focus Method: making sure that children have the support they need in order to read well.
The other one in five struggling readers have poor auditory processing. This means that the connection between their ears and their brain isn’t working as it should. Some children actually process sounds about six times slower than normal. You have, perhaps, bumped up the speed on a video or audio before. YouTube lets you listen twice as fast. Can you imagine trying to interpret the world if it was always moving six times as fast? Is it any wonder that these children miss things? If you give three instructions, and they only do one, it’s because they couldn’t make sense of the other two!
My son was dealing with both of these reading challenges, which is, thankfully, quite rare. He didn’t need more intensive phonics, more instruction in rules and syllables. None of that had worked the first five years, and there was no reason to think it would work in the next five.
Rather, he needed to correct his vision, and he needed a reading program that was designed to work with his brain, despite his challenges.
There’s only one program on the market that does that: the Happy Cheetah Reading System.
We left Ohio with Happy Cheetah in the car, excited to move forward.
We tried every spelling and reading curriculum we could get our hands on. By the time he was eight, we were desperate and scared. Then we found Happy Cheetah. It was literally as if someone had turned a light on in his brain. We had wasted so much time fighting and trying to use materials that just don’t work. Under this program our son, who is now 9, is reading.
Casey Y.
We tried every spelling and reading curriculum we could get our hands on. By the time he was eight, we were desperate and scared. Then we found Happy Cheetah. It was literally as if someone had turned a light on in his brain. We had wasted so much time fighting and trying to use materials that just don’t work. Under this program our son, who is now 9, is reading.
Casey Y.
What Makes Happy Cheetah Different?
Teach your children to read, effortlessly, in just a few minutes a day.
How is Happy Cheetah different?
It uses a unique, proprietary method, the Right Focus Method™.
With the Right Focus Method, your child will focus only on exercises and practicess that are proven to work, both from neuroscience and from Dr. Karen’s clinical experience.
For example, did you know that flashcards go to the “itemized” portion of the brain, an entirely different part of the brain than the “reading” part of the brain?
This is why Dr. Karen routinely sees children come to her office who can perfectly read through 300 flashcards, but when they come across those same words in books, they don’t recognize them.
Those children aren’t rebellious. Their reading program simply doesn’t use up-to-date information on how children learn.
Connecting all new information to what you already know. Learning one new thing at a time. Short lessons. Only positive feedback.
That’s Right Focus.
When you follow Dr. Karen’s Right Focus Method, your child will find success reading. Start at the beginning and, by the end, your child will read at a mid-third grade level. These are books like the Magic Treehouse series, early chapter books.
And you’ll get there without sounding out another word or trying to make your child do a single blend.
My only regret is that this program wasn’t available sooner. Happy Cheetah has literally changed our lives so much that I want to stand at every store and convention and shout, THIS ONE, GET THIS ONE! LOOK NO FURTHER! SERIOUSLY, THIS IS IT! YOUR SEARCH IS OVER! STOP FIGHTING, IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE EASY! THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Jordan H.
My only regret is that this program wasn’t available sooner. Happy Cheetah has literally changed our lives so much that I want to stand at every store and convention and shout, THIS ONE, GET THIS ONE! LOOK NO FURTHER! SERIOUSLY, THIS IS IT! YOUR SEARCH IS OVER! STOP FIGHTING, IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE EASY! THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Jordan H.
It’s So Simple, You Won’t Believe It Works
As a reluctant reading program connoisseur, after using 12 programs and therapies, I was astonished to see how completely different Happy Cheetah was.
With Happy Cheetah, your child will begin reading as a successful reader.
How?
The parent reads the story to the child first, and then the child reads it back. If my son needs extra support, for me to read each page before he reads it, that’s fine.
This is the proven way to build fluency. Fluency is a challenge: in order to build the necessary connections in the brain to have fluency, the child has to be able to read quickly. But in order to read quickly, the child has to have fluency. It’s a chicken-or-egg problem.
With the Happy Cheetah Reading System, every part connects to every other part. When Dr. Karen designed this program, she interwove all of the ideas and the concepts. Like connections in the brain, the parts of the program work together.
The 120 stories in the guided readers gain a few words of new vocabulary in each book. Students keep moving forward at a steady pace.
All of the workbook exercises connect with the reading each day, as does all of the handwriting practice, the spelling practice, and the creative writing. They all interconnect.
The program is multi-sensory, covering kinesthetic, auditory, and visual modalities.
Happy Cheetah Is For You If Your Children:
Cry over their schoolwork
Stretch easy assignments for hours
Find schoolwork exhausting
Hate writing
Randomly mix capital letters into words
It doesn’t matter if your child has already been struggling for years. Whether your student is 5 or 18, your child will experience success from the first day.
A Day in the Life of a Happy Cheetah Student
DESIGNED FOR PARENTS
Open and go
No teacher’s guide
No additional training needed
No prep time
Don’t drive to a tutor
Spend every minute in effective interaction
Lightly scripted activities
No background in education required
Ongoing support
Open and go
Designed for Parents
Open and go
No teacher’s guide
No additional training needed
No prep time
Don’t drive to a tutor
Spend every minute in effective interaction
Lightly scripted activities
No background in education required
Ongoing support
A Complete Language Arts Program
Phonics
Handwriting
Punctuation and grammer
Spelling
Reading comprehension
Creative expression
Confidence-building
A Complete Language Arts Program
Phonics
Handwriting
Punctuation and grammar
Spelling
Reading comprehension
Creative expression
Confidence-building
Multi-Sensory Daily Lessons
Short, 20-minute lessons
One focus at a time
A variety of short activities around the one focus
Mastery-based: incremental lessons offer continual review
Keep focused attention naturally
Multi-Sensory Daily Lessons
Short, 20-minute lessons
One focus at a time
A variety of short activities around the one focus
Mastery-based: incremental lessons offer continual review
Keep focused attention naturally
Device-free—just bring a pencil
Visual, aural, and kinesthetic (seeing, hearing, and touching)
Enjoy immediate success
Read A Story
Full color illustrations
Engaging illustrations keep children relaxed and laughing
Guided readers
Controlled vocabulary
Appeals to both boys and girls
120 stories total in 12 readers
Read A Story
Full color illustrations
Engaging illustrations keep children relaxed and laughing
Guided readers
Controlled vocabulary
Phonics and sight words
Predictable context
Multiple genres (fiction, nonfiction, fairy-tales)
Appeals to both boys and girls
120 stories total in 12 readers
Fill in a Workbook Spread
All new information connected to old
Build on what your children already know: constant encouragement
Simple, manageable exercises
Fully integrated exercises connect to the reader
Games and activities included
Fill in a Workbook Spread
All new information connected to old
Build on what your children already know: constant encouragement
Simple, manageable exercises
Fully integrated exercises connect to the reader
Games and activities included
Unique method
The proven way to boost reading levels in half the time
Work on fluency, not rule memorization
No tests, no “wrong” answers, no stress
All practices well-supported by current research
No tears and frustration (necessary for new learning)
Give your children all the help they need
Only positive communication
Fun for parents and students
Unique Method
The proven way to boost reading levels in half the time
Work on fluency, not rule memorization
No tests, no “wrong” answers, no stress
All practices well-supported by current research
No tears and frustration (necessary for new learning)
Give your children all the help they need
Only positive communication
Fun for parents and students
Other programs might have one or two of these elements.
Happy Cheetah is the only program that has them all.
We had tried three other programs and none of them offered what we needed, and he didn’t enjoy them. It was a battle every day. This is the first program I have seen that combines visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning in such a seamless way. In the past four months, my son went from barely being able to read to now reading everything in sight! His handwriting went from being jagged and barely readable, to uniform and clear!
Janna J.
We had tried three other programs and none of them offered what we needed, and he didn’t enjoy them. It was a battle every day. This is the first program I have seen that combines visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning in such a seamless way. In the past four months, my son went from barely being able to read to now reading everything in sight! His handwriting went from being jagged and barely readable, to uniform and clear!
Janna J.
Plus These Awesome Bonuses
When you order the Happy Cheetah Reading System today, you not only get the complete system, you also get this amazing package of bonuses.
Bonus #1
The #1 Optometrist-Recommended Guide for Reading
Dr. Karen Holinga’s preferred optometrist called her one day with two specific recommendations: stop giving gumballs as treats, and use this tool with children who struggle to keep their place on a page.
Dr. Karen didn’t stop giving gumballs, but she did start using this tool when she reads with her students.
This low-tech tool helps beginning readers keep their place on the page. You’ll be thrilled by how much less distracted your child is once you incorporate this in your daily reading practice.
Yours free with your purchase.
My son was struggling at school. He was in first grade. Dr. Karen came to visit and she was trying to figure out exactly what level he was. She pulled out The Littles.
He struggled. After she gave him the tool [The #1 Optometrist-Recommended Guide for Reading], he read the lines perfectly. Now he knows how to read. But I had no idea what the problem was. I had no idea.
Stephanie R.
My son was struggling at school. He was in first grade. Dr. Karen came to visit and she was trying to figure out exactly what level he was. She pulled out The Littles.
He struggled. After she gave him the tool [The #1 Optometrist-Recommended Guide for Reading], he read the lines perfectly. Now he knows how to read. But I had no idea what the problem was. I had no idea.
Stephanie R.
Bonus #2
Exclusive Top 100 Most Value-Rich Audio Recordings
For struggling readers, one of the most valuable things you can do is let them listen to books as much as possible. Since most parents don’t have eight to twelve hours to read aloud, audio books become one of the best way to build the needed pathways in the brain to help a student learn to read as quickly as possible.
In my audio book library, I have over 450 titles, worth well over $7,000.
In my audio book library, I have over 450 titles, worth well over $7,000.
My children and I combed through our list to find our top favorite children’s audio books. The ones they return to again and again. The ones that offer the best value for their price. The ones that a range of ages enjoy. The ones that enhance the audio book art form the most, where the recording is not just a book that’s read aloud, but a book that comes alive through a skillful narrator.
From this list, the books are divided out according to age and according to personal preference, from the very greatest must listens, to the ones we still like much.
Yours free with your purchase.
I would pay $1000 for this audio book list.
Dr. Karen
I would pay $1000 for this audio book list.
Dr. Karen
Bonus #3: Special Report
Prevent the Brain from Hijacking Your Child’s Ability to Learn
Your child can learn so much more easily than you think! Learn how to stop the frustration and how to start working in cooperation with your child’s brain. This bonus will empower you to enjoy your child’s education, and really maximize every single time you work together.
This masterclass will transform your school. When you understand how the brain works—how emotions affect it, how important it is for the brain to feel at ease, where your child is developmentally, and more—you will look forward to more learning, and more peace in your home.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #4
Special Report: How to Raise Your Child’s Reading Level in Half the Time
Without hours of effort, hiring a tutor, or spending big bucks on fancy doodads!
Learn the simple, proven technique and get started today.
In Dr. Karen’s doctoral studies, and her clinical practice, she has seen what a tremendous difference this method offers. And so few parents do it!
Don’t travel the bumpy, dusty road to reading; come on over to the paved superhighway.
There are so few ways to multiple time. This is one.
Yours free with your purchase.
Bonus #5
Special Report: The Successful Students’ Cheat Codes: How to Level Up Your Student’s Reading Using the Secret Techniques That Good Readers Know Automatically
Successful readers use several simple techniques that are easily understood, that you can teach to struggling readers. The Happy Cheetah Reading System incorporates these automatically. A quick guide to help understand the foundational method.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #6
Foolproof Stop Reversing B and D Forever Bookmarks
Did you know that every time children say or write the wrong sound, they need to say the correct sound twelve times in a row to eliminate the sound confusion?
Help your child never guess again.
In Dr. Karen’s clinical practice, she has experimented with many methods of helping students not reverse their letters, and at last she has found the solution to stop b-d confusion.
When children see the letters in order a-b-c-d, they don’t mix up the sounds. Even children who struggle to memorize the whole alphabet know A, B, C, and when they see the letters in order, they can double-check the letters and sounds and know for sure . . . no guessing!
Keep one of these bookmarks handy whenever your child is reading or writing, and watch reversals become a thing of the past.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #7
Dr. Karen’s Mistake Cover-Up Tape
With Happy Cheetah, we wanted to make your experience at home as close to an office visit to Dr. Karen as possible.
When Dr. Karen works with students, she always keeps this cover-up tape on hand. Whenever a student makes an error, she immediately uses the tape to cover it up, because the less time a student looks at an error, the better!
When your student writes in their workbooks, you can stop worrying about misplaced erasers and the shadowy, show-through lines that can’t be fully erased.
Use this tape for instant correction, so your child always works from a clean piece of paper—or at least a piece of paper that feels clean.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #8
Dr. Karen’s Constant Encouragement Button
“I’m going to give you an easy book to read. It’s about a cat, and you’re going to find out what the cat says.”
When the child reads, “The cat says ‘Meow,’” she’ll say, “Too easy! Great work! Hit the button!”
And the encouragement button says, “Easy!”
Keep the button near at hand, and offer your child the chance to press the button at every opportunity.
After reading each review story
After reading each new story
After reading the printed story in the workbook
After each of the Think-and-Do exercises
After each sentence (or each word!) copied and read
Basically, as often as you can reasonably suggest it.
A normal lesson might include over twenty “Easy!” moments of positive reinforcement, so your child thinks, “This lesson is easy and fun!”
The encouragement button should be a funny and empowering little tool that your student enjoys.
And the constant reinforcement of the message That was easy! is an excellent way to keep your child’s brain relaxed and engaged.
And since, with Happy Cheetah Reading, every part of the program actually is easy, you’re reminding your student that reading is not just possible . . . it’s easy!
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #9
Dr. Karen’s Mistake Cover-Up Tape
Dr. Karen didn’t stop giving gumballs, but she did start using this tool when she reads with her students.
This low-tech tool helps beginning readers keep their place on the page. You’ll be thrilled by how much less distracted your child is once you incorporate this in your daily reading practice.
Yours free with your purchase.
Bonus #10
Dr. Karen’s Cure Book
Because though a digital copy is nice, a physical copy is better.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #11
Miss Nelson Is Missing Picture Book
Because when reading is difficult, the promise at the end—the joy of reading!—becomes harder to hold on to. This classic book, one of our family’s favorites, is for you to share with your child, to remember that reading can be fun and surprising.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #12
Highlights Activity Pad
The best activity book we’ve ever found. Because it doesn’t rely on reading or writing, but instead focuses on things like matching, hidden pictures, and search-and-find, this book is perfect for not-quite-there-yet readers, while also offering some of the best activities developmental optometrists recommend. Outstanding.
Yours free with purchase.
Bonus #13
World Mazes
Full color illustrations and charming, around-the-world settings make this book a delight. Another activity book that is perfect for non-readers, with some exceptional opportunity to boost fine motor skills.
Yours free with purchase.
Now It’s Your Turn
Get started today.
One payment of $399.
Happy Cheetah Testimonials
Yesterday, while she was at Girl Scout camp, Lizzy read out loud in the group as it came her turn. Her leader knows of her reading struggles and has watched her struggle in group settings over the past three years, so she was ready to skip over her. But Lizzy spoke up and said she could do it!! And she did!!! With tears of thanksgiving and joy unspeakable.
Melanie S.
Ronnie is loving the readings and thinks this is his easiest subject of the day. (This after buckets of tears with several other programs!)
Carrie O.
Joel was older, and we had made some progress with him initially but had stalled out. I couldn’t figure it out. With this program he’s enjoying reading the stories on his own and feels more confident and relaxed each week. Now he’s even willing and able to do it with no melt downs. That’s huge in my book.
Alexis K.
After being completely stuck for nearly two years in his reading progress, finally we are moving forward! Today he picked up Hop on Pop, and Go, Dog, Go and read them with little assistance from me and with joy. I am so grateful.
Tricia R.
Jamie couldn’t hear sounds like our older ones could and we were stumped. We had taught our older kids to read easily but she couldn’t get it. Finally, with Happy Cheetah, she got it. And now she’s reading everything.
Courtney S.