Seeing Words: How Visual Thinking Unlocks Literacy w/ Olive Hickmott EP 203

Seeing Words: How Visual Thinking Unlocks Literacy w/ Olive Hickmott EP 203

What if reading finally clicked the moment a child learned to see words, not just sound them out?

In this episode, we sit down with forensic health and learning coach Olive Hickmott to explore how visual thinking can transform literacy for dyslexic and ADHD learners—and why this simple shift has the power to change an entire school’s culture.

Olive shares the observation that sparked her work: fluent spellers tend to look up and visualise words, while struggling spellers often look down into emotion. From that insight grew a practical, inclusive approach grounded in the brain’s visual word form area—the place where how a word looks, sounds, and means come together.

Together, we unpack why English is a highly visual language, especially with homophones and rule-breakers, and how pairing images with whole words can accelerate reading, spelling, and even handwriting. Olive is clear: this approach complements phonics rather than replaces it, offering realistic, step-by-step strategies parents and teachers can use right away—eyes-up cues, meaning-anchored word cards, and classroom scripts that fit into busy school days.

We also discuss ADHD, mental imagery overload, the creative strengths of neurodiverse thinkers, and how early years settings can gently “load” words before stress and self-doubt set in. Olive shares success stories from schools across Ireland and Wales, emerging research, and a blueprint for whole-school pilots.

This is a powerful reframe—from “What’s wrong with the child?” to “What else can we teach?” Expect practical tools, honest reflections, and a hopeful vision of learners lighting up as they realise they can do what once felt impossible.

If you care about literacy, inclusion, and giving every child a fair shot, this episode is for you.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow, rate, and share the show with a teacher or parent who needs this. Your review helps more listeners discover practical ways to help children thrive.

Website:  www.empoweringlearning.co.uk (including all books)
Learning Platform: www.visualkids.co.uk 
3 books about learning differences, the latest is 
The Elephants in the Classroom, Neurodiversity through the lens of mental imagery.
Blog: www.olivehickmott.co.uk

If you are enjoying my work then you can support me by 'buying me a coffee' at this page  
I look forward to connecting with you Anita Mattu https://linktr.ee/AnitaMattu

Transcript

Two Paths To Genius

Olive Hickmott 1:07

There's some people that go through the system very linear, a very linear way, and get to being really good at PhDs and something or whatever it is. And you get these other people who come in at sort of an angle and jump all that lot, didn't do very well at school, but actually come up with the most amazing solutions to problems. And they're the ones that come up with completely out of the box. Thank you.

Anita Mattu 1:34

Today's guest is my dear friend Olive Hickmott. Now, Olive, before I even introduce you, you've been on the show a few times now, and I absolutely welcome you back with open arms. It's always fantastic to have you here. So thank you in advance.

Olive Hickmott 1:52

Thank you so much. It's a long time since we first met.

Anita Mattu 1:55

Yes, and a number of decades or two. Yes. Definitely. And it's been a pleasure every time. So that's brilliant. So with that said, Olive Hickmont, a forensic health and learning coach, a reformed dyslexic and ADHD. She created empowering learning to enable highly creative, imaginative, neurodivergent students to learn in the most effective way for them. That is typically through their strengths of mental imagery. She personally struggled with poor reading and spelling for 50 years before making the vital discovery of how visual thinkers learn best through images. Olive trains and coaches teachers, parents, children, and adults in improving their experience of dyslexic and ADHD. Welcome, Olive.

Olive Hickmott 3:00

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Anita Mattu 3:03

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And with that said, what is one of the most courageous things you've done? Because you've done an awful lot of things.

The NLP Spark And Spelling Insight

Olive Hickmott 3:14

Um, what's the most courageous thing I've done? Hmm. I always wonder whether I am being courageous or whether I'm just being absolutely I won't I won't change my mind. But what happened to me was that um back in uh 25 years ago, I was sitting in a workshop doing my NLP training, that's neurolinguistic programming training, and I saw something that was in plain sight. They they got some people up on the stage, and the people who could spell easily looked up and saw words. The people who couldn't looked at the floor and felt embarrassed, and it was absolutely obvious to the audience, and I went, How do they do that? I have had poor spelling and reading all my life, and by this time I'm 50-ish. And um, how are they gonna do how do they do that? And so with my NLP hat on, if you like, I started practicing with I walked into a special needs school where I happened to know the deputy head, and I said, Have you got anybody who can't spell? He said, We've got hundreds, which ones do you want? And so I started to teach them what I just learned two days before, and I couldn't believe what I could achieve. And so slowly my own experience improved, the students improved even faster than I than I was, and the that was that was what happened. Now, was that courageous? I suppose it was courageous walking into a special needs school after two days of training, and the um but I happened to know the guy, so that was really easy. And the it was so rewarding working with these kids that it wasn't courageous anymore, it was just an absolute delight.

Anita Mattu 5:11

Oh wow. And yeah, it helps to know the deputy head, I can assure you.

Olive Hickmott 5:17

If I only knew him socially, you know, I'd I'd met him with a few because he's the the the school is in our village, and so I'd met him with a a few events, and so I just went, well go for this. And it was really exploration.

Anita Mattu 5:33

I mean, that's interesting in itself that you could instantly see the difference it was making, and you were teaching others. Yeah.

First Wins In Special Needs School

Olive Hickmott 5:42

And those kids helped me um learn how to teach people. And I always say, if you can teach in special needs school, you can teach anywhere. I mean, for example, there was one lad who I always remember who was about six foot, and he was only in year uh he was in about the second year in in in in this was a secondary school. And um, when I asked him to visualize um anything, he's uh he's wearing glasses and his eyes are going like this. And I went, What are you looking at? And anybody can try this for themselves, you know. Just ask somebody if they can picture something that they really know really easily, like a cat or a dog. And he's looking like this, and I went, What are you doing? He went, I have no idea. So I said, Well, I'm looking at his eyes, and I'm thinking, he's looking at something really, really long way away. And so I said to him, Can you bring it a bit nearer? Because I don't think you can see it as far away as that. And he suddenly walked back in the chair and went, Whoops, it's on the window now. And he told me exactly what it was. And the that was, you know, that was you if you're for literacy in the English language, you need to be able to visualize words. He couldn't even visualize a cat that he could actually see. And it's so rewarding when you just see, you just offer somebody a bit of a encouragement and go, I think you could bring it nearer, and whoops, it did.

Anita Mattu 7:19

How amazing. Absolutely amazing, isn't it?

Olive Hickmott 7:22

Yeah, exactly. And it's it's not known about, but it's actually, as I say, it's in plain in plain sight. If you actually watch people's eyes, as I do all the time, they know whether they're visualizing or not, you can see it. That if they're looking up, they're visualizing. If they're looking down, and this is something that every parent and teacher should know, if they're looking down, they're going to be in their emotions. And if they're miserable about struggling with literacy, don't let them look down.

Anita Mattu 7:55

Yes.

Olive Hickmott 7:56

Just encourage them to look up all the time.

Anita Mattu 7:58

Absolutely. That's brilliant. So, Olive, what actually triggered you to start this work?

Olive Hickmott 8:05

This the event in my training triggered me to start this work, followed by going into the special needs school, and I went, if I can teach them, I can teach anybody. And that's what I started doing 25 years ago, which makes me seem really old. And then since then I've been I've been training um students, youngsters, adults. I've taught in schools, I've taught teachers, but there is a resistance at the moment about doing this in school because it's not what is not incorporated in teacher training in the UK, but it is in um a teacher training course in Ireland. And so we have teachers coming through who have been involved in understanding this, but it does take time and it takes what we just need is open-minded teachers who are prepared to give it a go. With they've got students that they know are struggling, and if they if they want to give it a go, then we've got really either free support for them or very minimal cost support, so we can teach them how to do it.

Anita Mattu 9:26

So why isn't it in schools here then?

Visualising Words Beats Shame And Stress

Olive Hickmott 9:29

Because it's not the way the government sets the national curriculum. I'm sorry to say. Um the national curriculum is all about what the word sounds like, and for some children sounds like doesn't work very well. So we those the children that are struggling, and I'd rather much rather be children before they're struggling, because they've got all sorts of more stress if they're struggling already. If they're struggling, and the um I I I check out whether they can visualize things, and normally, interestingly, they are always, I would say 100% are really good at visualizing stuff, but they haven't thought of visualizing words. So it's really easy to teach them how to visualize words. We've got a few tricks along the way that we've learned that, and the um, so it's not we are not stopping schools doing the phonic training that they're doing, we are doing it in parallel because you need both. And whatever scheme you go through, you need to be able to visualize words, and we know thanks to the neuroscience, we know exactly how that works, and so that's exactly how we teach people.

Anita Mattu 10:52

That's amazing because as you know, I'm dyslexic, and it is the sound, my type of dyslexia is the phonological sound. I don't hear the sound, so that would be absolutely useless for me anyway, and that's probably why I didn't learn at school.

Why Schools Resist Visual Methods

Olive Hickmott 11:05

Yeah. Yeah. And so all we need to do is to teach you how to visualize the words, and you'll find that things like reading and spelling and see and also even handwriting improves. So it's a special place in your brain, I'll to give you the a little bit of technology which holds it's called the visual word form area, and it holds what the word sounds like, what it looks like, and what it means, all locked together in one place. And in my 25 years of working with students, I have an interesting statistic. Not one dyslexic is reliably using their visual word form area. Not one. And so I teach them how to do it, and then they need to practice because they've been doing something else all their lives, but they can relatively quickly pick it up, as I did. I'll give you an interesting statistic for me is that when I was at school, I would always be going to sleep reading reading because it was such hard work. Yeah. I can now read a 300-page talk in a weekend.

Anita Mattu 12:17

Wow.

Olive Hickmott 12:18

That's the difference this made to me. And if you want that for your children, you know, then just contact me because we can we can organise that. And it is really, really simple. Once you understand the trait, which I have to say is in plain sight.

Anita Mattu 12:37

Absolutely. So that nicely goes on to my next question. What has it grown into over the last 25 years?

The Visual Word Form Area Explained

Olive Hickmott 12:46

Well, yes. Um, the first thing, one of the first things I've always do is ask people what they're good at. Um, all the time. And we found that people who were struggling with literacy were really good at visual things. Now that sounds counterintuitive because I'm saying they're really good at visual things, they're really creative, they're imaginative, they're problem solvers, etc. We found that all that this was a really common thread, and they'd all got great mental images, but they just never thought of using these images to words. And so that's one thing. I have carried on talking for 25 years about the exceptional strengths of these people. And what do we need in the world after finally education? We need people who can solve the difficult problems in the world. And these people are actually some of the best problem solvers we have. And we're sidelining them into special needs and going, there's something wrong with these people. And I go, no, there's not. There's something wrong with the way us big people are teaching these people. And it is so easy to let teachers carry on doing what they're doing, but give them extra tools in the toolbox. We know not every child. I mean, if you if I ask a teacher, does every child learn the same? And they'll go, no. So this is this is how we solve the problem, if you like. So what else has it grown into? Um I've been um I've challenged the definition of dyslexia, which hasn't been popular, um because I do think that we that teachers need more skills to teach visual thinkers. And I've actually even produced a curriculum for visual thinkers. So actually, we've we've done the job that the government really should have done about um uh for visual thinkers. And don't forget these visual thinkers are really talented. Um and then what else have I done? Uh I've drifted into ADHD because ADHD people, um diagnosed or undiagnosed or self-diagnosed or whatever, have normally got extremely good mental images and lots of them. They're normally somewhat overwhelming their heads. And so some of the stuff we do for um literacy is really useful for ADHD as well. And by the way, there is a huge overlap between dyslexia and ADHD. So if you're really confused about literacy, you'll start looking like ADHD. I'm not saying that's a formal diagnosis, but it happens so often. I mean, when I looked up figures recently, somewhere like 60%, somewhat 40%, I mean, somewhere, I don't know where they are in between, but there is definitely a connection there. And I believe the connection is mental imagery. Oh, and then in the last year we've added in early years to try and teach this to preschoolers before they start getting confused in primary school. And now we're also doing some work for how to teach teachers who aren't coaches, but how they can integrate what we do into their normal 30 children classroom, and that's going to be really helpful to them because we're not we we can't expect teachers to do the whole coach training, which is what I did, and I'm a I'm a coach which who primarily works one-on-one. But what we can do is give them a script, if you like, that they can go through quite easily and they can understand they can explore the children's experience.

Anita Mattu 16:59

I mean, to be able to even go to preschool now and catch them before they've even gone into school, that's amazing. And that's what you want to do before they've got confused with all everything else that's going on.

Olive Hickmott 17:11

Exactly. We've I was lucky enough to be invited for in by early years in Wales to do some webinars for them, which they have um made available to their early years settings in Wales. So I'm desperate to hear how they're getting on with that. And we've got a couple of primaries actually for um preschools uh who are all also doing this in um further up um in the north of England.

Anita Mattu 17:42

Absolutely wonderful. And that's what you want. Yeah, an easier way for people to learn.

Olive Hickmott 17:48

Yeah.

Anita Mattu 17:48

Without all the stress, getting overwhelmed, getting frustrated. Just cut all that out.

Olive Hickmott 17:56

And we know that the the thing I was saying earlier, the visual word form area, we know that that can be populated without doing breaking words apart. You know, if you if you see the word dog enough times, it will start loading into your visual word form area without you doing anything else. So what we do is we encourage people, parents and teachers, to put pictures on the wall. You know, they've all got pictures on the wall of dogs and cats and zebras and things. Just write the words on the on the side of the dog and the cat. And so it encourages them to start absorbing words at the same time as the pictures.

Anita Mattu 18:39

Absolutely fantastic, really is. So, Olive, what is your driving force then? Because you're still doing it now. I am, and um what's the driving force?

From Dyslexia To Strengths And Problem Solving

Olive Hickmott 18:52

When you coach a child and you see the child light up with joy, especially when they uh suddenly realize they could do something they thought was impossible. That's what drives them. And so it's about seeing them change. And you know, there's so many people now who are identified as having poor literacy, dyslexia or whatever, and are going, oh well, that's all right, we've what got workarounds. And I go, Well, actually, you really could do with picking up how to do this reliably, because even if you've got workarounds, it's pretty stressful. You know, you just imagine, for example, you go into a restaurant with with a friend and you can't read the menu. And the that just isn't fair. And that generates more stress in you, so it's much better if we can stop it happen. But that's where I'm in conflict with the people who identify dyslexia as being something wrong with the child. My attitude is there's nothing wrong with them. Yeah. We need to teach them differently.

Anita Mattu 20:05

I couldn't agree more. Absolutely. That really is the statement there which everyone should take on board. Yes. And how much courage did it take?

Olive Hickmott 20:17

I just think I'm a lunatic, really. You like the challenge? Uh, I think it's because it happened to me. I knew exactly what poor literacy was like for 50 years. I was really lucky I could do maths. By the way, maths is another visual skill, but I could do maths, so I ended up taking a maths degree. So I actually managed to get a good chunk of education, even with really poor spelling and reading. I do have a uh report to my head teacher when I was 16 years old, which said it would be useful if Olive could learn to spell. And I've been there since I was four. Yeah. And whatever they'd learn. Hadn't worked. So, you know, you need to change change the way you're looking at it.

Anita Mattu 21:13

For sure. Honestly, for sure.

Olive Hickmott 21:16

And for children who can read and spell, I mean it it's all very well to say technology is gonna is gonna help. Technology does help. But it's not everything. And we it just uh opens the world to them for what they want to do in the future.

Anita Mattu 21:34

Absolutely, it's skills. They you know, nothing nothing will be impossible then for them.

Olive Hickmott 21:40

Yeah.

Anita Mattu 21:41

Yeah.

Olive Hickmott 21:42

I have friends who've who've done training with me to say I'm an I'm a nightmare now because I'm forever reading, and I tell them they should be reading other books. You know, their bedside table is full of books because I've read them. And this is something I didn't I I never did any of the children's books when I was a kid. I never read any because it was just impossible.

Anita Mattu 22:09

Yeah, same here. I mean, as you know my story, I read my first book cover to cover when I was thirty-five years old.

Olive Hickmott 22:16

Yeah, you did better than I did, I wish you was fifty.

Anita Mattu 22:20

And now, honestly, there's so many books in the house. I've actually got actually funnily enough, I was actually thinking this morning, I was thinking, I've actually got five bookcases in my house.

Olive Hickmott 22:33

Yeah.

Anita Mattu 22:35

I love reading.

Olive Hickmott 22:37

And when when you have a kid, how many did you have?

Anita Mattu 22:40

Zero.

Olive Hickmott 22:40

Zero. Me too.

Anita Mattu 22:43

Absolutely. It's amazing, isn't it? Once you know how, then you know.

ADHD, Imagery Overload, And Overlap

Olive Hickmott 22:50

On the back of one of my books, somebody wrote a testimonial for me. I can't I'm gonna butcher it, I can't have a price how it goes, but basically it says, once you know something, you can't unknow it. Great. Absolutely great. And you have to tell other people.

Anita Mattu 23:10

So now an interesting question for you. So, what is this whole neurodiversion? And for anyone that's listening that doesn't know, and like there's been a lot of different press about it. If people are neurodiverse or they're not, there's a lot of different things. Give me your take on it.

Early Years And Whole-Class Integration

Olive Hickmott 23:31

Lovely lady in Australia who um identify who came up with the term neurodiverse. Now, if you think about it, we are all diverse, we are all neurodiverse. You know, we've got different size clothes, different size shoes, we do lots and lots of things we are the human race is pretty diverse on, more so than the animals. You know, if you see one golden retriever, you probably you know, they're probably pretty similar to another. But the human race is sort of more diverse. She had um autism in her family, and so she came up with the expression neurodiverse um to try and make her family more inclusive in the world, as it were, which was a really great because it was for her PhD, and it really took off across the world, so that was neurodiverse, but then what I think was a was a setback was that people started saying, Well, some people are neurotypical and some people are neurodivergent, and I'm and I went along with that for a long time. Um but who's got the right to say what is a neurotypical person? I don't think anybody has. I mean uh because we're all different, you know, we've got all sorts of different things going on, and there's no reason why we should be anybody can identify what is neurotypical. It was referred to as basically the children who succeed with the way we are teaching them in school. So that was the neurotypicals. Then we had the neurodivergents, which was the people who didn't work with the way we were teaching them in school, which made them sound as if there was something wrong with them. And that's where all the categories of dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscula, ADHD, and autism came in. So anybody with one of those is typically known as neurodivergent. A year ago to the day, actually the day before yesterday, January the 1st last year, I refused to use the words neurotypical and neurodivergent anymore. I call everybody neurodivergent. Because I d uh because of the reasons I've just given you, I think it's completely outrageous to say anybody is typical. Um, and anybody is somehow caught it. Because I come from all I I've done NLP training, and my attitude always is if you've got a problem, let's talk about it, let's talk about what's driving it, let's see if we can come up jointly come up with a way to improve it. And that's exactly what I've done with literacy. And similarly with ADHD, I don't claim to um cure ADHD, but there is a lot of things that we know about um mental imagery and ADHD and stress that can definitely help people. Um, so it's um that's the way I look at it. And and and going and saying going back to dyslexia, I mean, there may be people that really there will be people who find it difficult to visualize words. So I'll totally accept that fact. But with a bit of practice and being open-minded, most people can do it. And my experience, everybody I've met who isn't using visualization for words is um has has managed to learn it. Some people have done it better than others, some people have practiced more than others, etc. But everybody can do it. It does take practice. It takes practice because you've been doing something completely different for the last few decades. You know, that's why it's it's so important to get to small children. Wow to answer your question.

Anita Mattu 27:40

Absolutely, and I think I'm with you that everyone's unique, everyone's got a neuro side to them. So and yeah. And I don't really like these boxes or categories anyway. Um I'm always, you know, uh thinking outside the box, but I'll say what box Yeah, you know Exactly.

Olive Hickmott 28:00

And that's the great thing about about neurodiversity. Um, you know, that's it's I have a list of forty skills that are you originally I called neurodivergent, I now call them neurodiverse. And that that thinking outside the box is on the list. You know, it's and we need these skills in people. We don't need them to be suppressed into, oh no, you've got to do things like this, this, this, and this, because that's not the way your brain works.

Anita Mattu 28:34

And wasn't it a while back at the Bletchley Circle they wanted people that were dyslexic because of the way they thought differently, which was such a good thing.

Neurodiversity Without The Boxes

Olive Hickmott 28:45

Yep, absolutely. And we've got now we've got some companies like GCHQ and Google and people like that promoting the fact that they want to recruit people who are neurodiverse because they want to people come up with the most extraordinary things when you're neurodiverse. Um, if you've gone to, I was reading a book recently about well, it was sort of about dyslexia, but it was about the amazing things people do. It's called, let me just get this, seeing things that others do not see. Um and by Thomas G. West, by the way. And he's got lots of stories in there about meeting people who have a different way of thinking, basically. Whatever field you're in, you might be an architect, you might be a biologist, you might be a software engineer or whatever. The and what he was saying was, which is so true, is that you there's some people that go through the system very linear, in a very linear way, and get to being really good and PhDs and stuff that whatever it is. And you get these other people who come in at sort of an angle that go and jump all that lot, didn't do very well at school, but actually come up with the most amazing solutions to problems. And he was noting that quite a few of the um Nobel prize winners have got that neurodiverse, very neurodiverse view of the world. And they can and they're the ones that come up with the completely out-of-the-box thinking.

Anita Mattu 30:34

And it's so true, honestly. It's just amazing how being different is actually quite a good thing because we're adding to the world, not taken away.

Olive Hickmott 30:43

Yeah, totally.

Anita Mattu 30:45

Yeah, totally. And I I think personally myself I've got a really good spatial awareness as well. I can actually fit things into places as whereas some people just kind of said, Oh, let me do that for you and you know, change things around and sort it out.

Olive Hickmott 30:59

Well, I'm the neurodiv I'll use that word. I'm the neurodiverse person, my husband is the opposite angle. Now he is an unbelievable um reader, can get totally absorbed in things. I don't do that. I'm much more um I can read now fantastically well, but I'm forever making quantum leaps, and I'm going, is that true? Um I did one the other day and I went, oh I'm just I can I share this one with you. Is it a quantum leap of mine that I don't know if it's true? Is the way we are teaching visual students, because we all start to be, we all start as visual little people when we're born. So we now know how to teach visual students. And is this the a solution to the challenges we're seeing in schools these days, where children are not are got all sorts of behavioral challenges because the way we're not teaching them isn't work, the way we're teaching them isn't working for them. They want to be more creative and imaginative, they want to be more self-directed and exploring. And so lots of these things are exactly what we're doing with visual thinkers.

Anita Mattu 32:21

And I think that's so true. It is the way it is.

Olive Hickmott 32:24

So as I say, I don't know whether how long it'll be before we can get that into schools. Because what I'd love to see is some some schools saying, right, we're gonna give this a go, because we've got I said to the head teacher the other day, how many dyslexics have you got involved? And there's a lot. There's two or three in every class, if not more. And how much effort and how much cost is going into that? And what about trying teaching them to work and seeing what happens there?

Industry Wants Different Thinkers

Anita Mattu 32:57

And that's brilliant. I think it should be made a priority.

Olive Hickmott 33:01

Personally I would love it to be. Unfortunately, the party line is let's assess more people. Um let's assess them younger, let's teach them phonics young younger because that's the only way to teach them, but it's not the way to teach preschoolers.

Anita Mattu 33:18

So what would you like to achieve now? You've achieved a lot anyway, huge amount. So what's on your list?

Olive Hickmott 33:27

With respect to work, the um I want to I want to get more schools who will take who I've got a head teacher who is going, I've heard about this, I want to see it working, and I'm gonna make it happen. We have one teacher in Ireland, we have more than one teacher who's who's made a success of it, but we have one really well-known teacher in Ireland who is a principal of a primary school, and he has the whole school is integrated into visual learning. And the um he's the guy that now teaches in teacher training. And so I don't want more of him in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world, because you can t the other thing about this is you can teach it in any language. Once you're visualizing words, it doesn't matter if you're visualizing words in French or in Swahili or anything, yeah, it's the same technique. So the any any school can take it on, and what I want is schools who take it on and really commit to it and go, and then tell me what happens. We've had a um one of our practitioners on a piece of another piece of research um quite recently, and she's just finishing it for her thesis about the results of this, and she said it's just been mind-boggling what people are saying and what have actually succeeded in using it. Um, and so um I'd love to I'd love to see more research on on on it. I think the research I'd really like to see is whole schools. I want a school to put up their hand and go, we'll do this for the whole school. Um, and it could be a special needs school, it doesn't have to be a mainstream school. Um, and we are really committed to doing this, and we are in conjunction with what we're doing already, we're gonna run them in parallel, and we are going to and we I'm looking forward to the day when people can say we don't have dyslexia in our soul.

Anita Mattu 35:49

Yeah. That would be an absolute achievement.

Fix Teaching, Not Children

Olive Hickmott 35:54

Think how much money it would save. Yeah, absolutely. And parents um end up because there's an awful lot of testing going on at the moment, and it's really expensive, and it testing is good to prove what they can't do, but it doesn't prove what they can do. A few of people, when they make re recommendations now, do actually put a little what sentence in about what we do. Um, but it all in my view, let's do an assessment and then say, you've got a visual thinker, look at doing this to teach them how to do literacy.

Anita Mattu 36:34

Yes. And I think you've just preempted my next question, which was what changes have you seen in the school system that has improved? So yeah.

Olive Hickmott 36:46

I mean, the school system is very busy trying to do a phonic approach, but we um and they've done they're doing a good job of it, but it just doesn't work for children. And the other n another problem we have is that we have parents who never did phonics. So they might be really good at spelling and reading, or they might not be really good at spelling and reading, you know, depending on whether it works or not. And the but they don't understand how their children are being taught. And so that's another challenge. Um, I have one of my practitioners who actually now runs ADHD classes for grandparents, because that's a really interesting topic. If your child has got children who are being diagnosed as ADHD, for example, who are you know got behavioral challenges, all sorts of things going on, the grandparents can't understand this at all. Grandparents will often turn around and say, don't be ridiculous, pull yourself together or something. Because it didn't exist in their way. It's completely out of their scope of understanding. And so we it they the girl that's running those classes uses uh our information plus her coaching information, and um is really helpful to grandparents who just don't understand, never had the training, never never experienced it. You know, if I hadn't done this, I'd be in the same boat as that. You know, when I was at school, this ADHD didn't exist, and we had an identity dyslexia. We just built some people who were just, you know, looked upon as being stupid and couldn't swim and read. That's right. So we have moved on a long way since then, but we need to be more open-minded to different possibilities for different kids.

Anita Mattu 38:49

And that's the key here. Open-minded with the possibilities of anything. There is and I don't understand why they haven't realized or they have realized why are the government not doing more? Because obviously they realize what they're doing in schools doesn't work. How many people have said, you know, literacy doesn't work now?

Whole-School Change And Research

Olive Hickmott 39:11

I've last year in 2024, I responded to four government initiatives, and they're not easy government initiatives. You're asked 150 questions and your brain is going all over the place, and I responded to four of them. I haven't seen any results yet for all the work I've put into that. Um, and so I'd rather get I'm earning now towards let's prove it with some schools so that we but you need the whole school approach. You can't just have the Senko, it's text this on. She needs to get the rest of the teaching staff to understand enough about how these children learn. And so if we've got any volunteers from this, please let me know, and I will endeavor to help you make some progress and potentially save you a lot of money. Oh, I should have mentioned one thing. We don't have a purely phonetic language. English, there are languages, Spanish, Italian, and I think it's Swedish or Norwegian, it's one of the northern languages, who have got perfectly phonetic languages. And so what you hear is what you write, and it's easy. English isn't. English has so many rules, we have words that break the rules, we and we have those wonderful things called homophones, which are now if anybody doesn't know what a homophone is, it's like wear on where. So something you wear or where has a cargot or something, they are pronounced exactly the same, and they have got completely different spellings and completely different meanings. Those are homophones, and we have hundreds of them in the English language. You need to be able to visualize homophones to stand a chance to remembering which is which. Because what we do when we teach them, we get them to, you know, write where W E A R and a little um sketch of a t-shirt, for example, on a card, so that every time they think of where they see the t-shirt. Or, you know, we do cards for each one of the words. And so there you go. We can we can help with the English language. Um we're never gonna change the English language. And so we might as well learn how to work with it.

Anita Mattu 41:49

And that's the key thing here, adjusting ourselves. It's about adjusting it. Like you said, the English language is solid, it's not gonna change. But our approach on it and how we deal with it absolutely can change.

Olive Hickmott 42:02

Yeah, I'm a head teachers do need the ch to challenge the system because they've also got cost there to deal with, but this is gonna produce better results, positive results for them, if they are open-minded to doing both the things they need. I think go back to the the thing I said earlier. When coaching a child, or being a parent to a child, it took you down to be a coach, or you can be a teacher. I see them light up with joy, especially when they realize they can do things they thought was impossible. And children will say to me so often, oh, I can do that. I didn't know I was meant to be doing that, oh I can do that. And you know, I've got children who I've I've worked with who now have PhDs. Yeah, you know, and when they were because I've been doing it so long, 25 years, you know, uh when I worked with them, they were eight or something, and they're now 20 something or other, and they've they can't even remember struggling with riches.

Anita Mattu 43:15

It's amazing, isn't it? Absolutely amazing. Just that little shift, and it has a big impact.

Olive Hickmott 43:23

Yeah.

Phonics Limits And English Quirks

Anita Mattu 43:25

So if there was one key takeaway you want every listener to walk away with today, what would that be Olive?

Olive Hickmott 43:33

Look for inspiring children. That's what it's about. It's not about me, it's about what the children can achieve. And when I hear what some children have achieved, um I just think it's just amazing because I know where they came from as it was.

Anita Mattu 43:50

Yeah, I mean, I my personal story as well, I I know what it's like. And the thing is, I love talking to you, Olive, because you always go against the grain, and I love that about you, you know, let's do this, why not?

Olive Hickmott 44:05

So my wish whilst I'm still doing this, or whilst I'm still on the planet, because I have no intention of stopping, is that we have more schools who can act as exemplar schools of going, this is what we are doing, this is how it works, this is what we did as what this is how we got trained, and this is how the head teacher made it happen. That's the key thing. We need head teachers to in point of fact, I should probably be asking if I can talk at the teachers' conference. We need head teachers who will actually go the extra mile and go, yeah, this is we've got so many kids who are struggling, there must be enough, there must be something else we can try. So let's try this. You know, that's all I really need from somebody because and to be open-minded and make it happen.

Anita Mattu 45:04

Definitely. Absolutely. And come on, I'm cheering you on. There's a lot of people that actually are cheering you on because it's so much needed. They just don't understand. I I don't even think.

Olive Hickmott 45:18

I mean, if I talk to a parent, sometimes I get from a parent, uh, oh, I've talked to school about this and they don't like and they they don't they don't accept that that you should be doing that. And it's like right, okay. You know, do you but the proof of the pudding is in the plain sight is when you have a child turn around to you and say, I didn't know I was meant to be doing that.

Anita Mattu 45:46

It's simple.

Olive Hickmott 45:47

Yeah.

Anita Mattu 45:48

It is simple.

Olive Hickmott 45:50

Listen to our kids. You know, that's one of the things, one of the messages.

Anita Mattu 45:55

So, where can the listeners get your books, find you online, what's your website, Olive?

Joyful Breakthroughs And Lifelong Reading

Olive Hickmott 46:00

Yes, um, the website is in called empoweringlearning.co.uk. Please be careful because there is a dot com one who are a very nice organization, but we've got unfortunately got the same name. And um, they are a recruitment teachers. They are not doing what I'm doing, so I need to look up.co.uk. There is also, we now have a learning platform because one of these days I'm gonna have to retire. And so there is a learning platform at visualkids.co.uk, and there's lots of free stuff there, and there's lots of books there, and uh so between those two platforms, all the books are there, and the training and the free stuff, and so there's loads of stuff you can have a look through. And the other thing is when when I decided to um go down the neurodiverse route a year ago in January, I started doing um blogs which are called visual visual thinking. And if you you don't just find those with olipickmop.co.uk and regularly I am posting information about things you can start looking at in really small snippets, so things you can start trying out to yourself.

Anita Mattu 47:23

And Olive, all the links will be in the show notes. So, listeners, just go along to the show notes, click on things and get the help you need, or pass it on to someone that you know needs the help.

Olive Hickmott 47:35

Yep, thank you very much.

Anita Mattu 47:37

Absolutely, and thank you for sharing your insightful wisdom and knowledge with us today. And by doing so, I know you are helping so many other people, and you're making such a big difference, Olive. I really want to acknowledge you for that, Olive Hickmont.

Olive Hickmott 47:53

Thank you very much. And if anybody else has got podcasts running, I'd love to come and talk there. Uh I I don't go very far these days. So doing them from home is much, much easier for me. Thank you so much for the invitation. And uh I look forward to passing it on to other people.

Anita Mattu 48:12

Absolutely my pleasure.

Olive Hickmott 48:15

Thank you.

Anita Mattu 48:15

So, with that said, we are all about create the courage to be fearless podcast. What is your definition of courage?

Olive Hickmott 48:22

Oh, that's we that's the chuff one you were gonna use. What's my definition of courage? I don't think I have one. To be honest, I just think just try it. Um see what you can do. I mean, if it wasn't for the kids in special needs school, I would never have believed what I could do. Those were the original kids that I worked with. Um I asked my the guy I knew who was the dedicated, and I went to this to try it. And without the extraordinary results with those kids who basically never thought they'd be able to sell anything because they'd been struggling in primary school for years and they were now in special needs. Um without them, I if if that had come if I got turned down by them, if you like, or not inspired, the opposite of saying not inspired by them, I would have probably given up. They were the ones that inspired me. That my goodness, I can do this. And I literally had to have 15 minutes training as a little module in my NLP training.