Teach Your Child To Read Founder Helps Build Proficiency In Phonics While Strengthening Parent/Child Bond:UPDATED

Teach Your Child To Read: Builds Proficiency in Phonics While Strengthening the Parent/Child Bond

Editor’s note: You can see other interviews with Cindy Mich, including her interview with actor Chris Maher and with the founders of JTIFF film festival.  According to the Literacy Trust:

Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language.

Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.

Understanding phonics will also help children know which letters to use when they are writing words.

Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch.

We asked the following about Mary Follin: Do you happen to know what was the spark that made her become aware of the literacy issues kids face, that made her want to found the company?  

When my kids were at the age of starting school, most public school systems had adopted the Whole Language approach of teaching reading, which made no sense to me. The premise was that a child could learn to read the same way they learned to talk—with little or no phonics and a lot of guessing. I was determined that my kids would learn to read with phonics, so I assembled my own materials and taught them to read at home. What surprised me was how easy it was, so I developed the tool so other parents could teach their children at home, too.

Mary Follin began her career as a systems engineer at IBM and has since worked in product development, market research, and marketing consulting for professional services firms. She is the creator of Teach Your Child to Read and author of Ethyr, which earned the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award. Mary co-authors the award-winning advice column, Ask Mom, in Fredericksburg Parent & Family Magazine. She also contributes regularly to Daily Mom, where she writes about children’s literacy and teaching kids to read. I am grateful that she took some time to speak with us today about her creation.

Here are some additional details about Mary, who currently resides in Virginia, and her services are available across the country: Mary grew up in Rockville, MD, and she has always loved kids. When she saw a friend in college teaching her then three-year-old son to read, she was fascinated. The little boy got so excited when he got a word right–one time he even did a somersault! Mary could see how easy it was to teach reading and how rewarding it was for both her friend and the child. Later when she had kids of her own, she could not wait to get started. Because Mary had kids, she was also more aware of how the method of teaching reading in multiple school systems was failing so many children, and she wanted to help.

To commence, I understand that you served as a systems engineer for many years. Did your work in that area make it more simplistic to create the software for Teach Your Child to Read? Further, as to the technical side of this tool, did you create fail-safes or fallbacks for customers so that the program will consistently run smoothly?

As a systems engineer, I configured complex systems, wrote software manuals, and was particularly adept at making complex concepts easy to understand. Combined with my passion for literacy, I believe I was well-equipped to create a software platform for parents to use to teach their children to read with phonics—and make it easy. That said, there was nothing simplistic about creating the program, which is rather complex on the backend. Yet, with the efficiency of the internet, programming languages, and modern-day servers in 2025, the program runs without any issues close to 100% of the time in geographic areas and homes that have regular access to online service.

You spend a good deal of time acting as a freelance writer to mom friendly publications. What was the main motivation behind your decision to do so? Moreover, what magazines or blogs do you subscribe to that you find well written and regularly resourceful to you?

I remember how helpful it was to me when my kids were young to read about other moms’ experiences. Many of the moms writing for today’s publications are sharing such great wisdom, stories, and humor, and I thought it would be fun to join the conversation. However, my reason for doing so is motivated by something far more urgent than having fun. As of 2024, 69% of our nation’s fourth grade students are not proficient readers, which is a frightening two out of three children. We are in a literacy crisis, and I think a lot of people do not realize this. My goal is to bring this issue to people’s attention and help parents feel empowered to take charge of teaching their children to read. Activities that center around phonemic awareness, reading aloud, and learning phonics are just some of the things that a parent can do at home.

Teach Your Child to Read is both a visual and audio program designed to both teach and be gift parents with more personal time together. Do children respond more to the sound or sight feature? There are ten e-storybooks with this kit. How do you determine what content to carve out for the best reading results?

One of the most fascinating aspects of developing this program is how easy and logical it is to present phonics to small children using a step-by-step, sequential approach. Phonics is associating the sounds of letters and letter patterns with the associated letters, so sound and sight are equally critical for teaching phonics – with modifications, of course, for children who have hearing or visual issues. Using this program, parents do not need to figure out what content to carve out to get the best results. All they need to do is start with STEP 1, Lesson 1, and continue through STEP 6 in a linear fashion. No guesswork or wondering ‘what’s next’…just following one step after the other.

Would it be fair to ask if Teach Your Child to Read can take the place of a tutor, or is this designed to work alongside them? Further, please talk to me about how children find themselves more confident and motivated after utilization of your unique offerings.

Teach Your Child to Read is designed for children ages three to six, so it would be uncommon for a tutor to be involved. However, many tutors (and teachers) are using the program to work alongside older children who are struggling to learn to read. The ability to read gives everybody confidence, not just in school, but in every area of life. We need to know how to read to fill out a form, read a menu, do taxes—reading is everywhere. The inability to read is not only devastating in and of itself, but also an obstacle to anything a person desires to accomplish in this modern-day world. Specific to my program, kids get so excited when they learn how to sound out a word! (Parents love that lightbulb moment, too.) By step two, kids can read beginning words. Once this happens, they start reading everywhere they go: street signs, menus, picking out words in books. By the time they complete step five, they are ready to go to the library and check out books.

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I note that you offer a seven-day trial – is it conceivable that a parent can make ground with their child in just a week and not need to purchase? As to the five minutes a day, did you select this time allotment based upon research or life experience?

Yes, indeed, a parent could use the seven-day trial to learn how to teach phonics. That being said, it is a significant project to create one’s own materials, learn how to pronounce the sounds correctly, and segment lessons into five-minute increments. It is much easier (and fun!) to keep going with the program. Either way, the most important part to me is that yet another child learns to read, regardless of how they get there.

The five-minute-a-day format is a ‘must’ for children at such a young age. This was easy to incorporate into the program because phonics is such a sequential, linear approach to teaching reading. Five-minute micro lessons are not only great for short attention spans, but they are also ideal for busy parents. By keeping the lessons to five minutes, you never lose track of where you are and what has been covered. No need to get acclimated when you sit down to a lesson, as you just log in and get started!

In doing my research, I see that you regularly offer the program free of charge to teachers. Have educators been receptive to this tool, and do they offer constructive feedback for possible improvement? Please address the concern that someone such as yourself, who is not a formal educator, is soliciting others to purchase a phonics product?

Many, many teachers are using the program to work with students who are struggling to read or who have fallen behind due to the pandemic. Thus far, they are not requesting changes to the program, and I am getting multiple orders from parents whose child’s teacher has recommended they buy it. Although I have never been an elementary school teacher, I have done a significant amount of teaching in my career: instructional design, corporate training, motivational speaking, and working as a volunteer with my area literacy council even before I taught my children to read. What parents appreciate about my not having been an elementary school teacher is that if I can teach my kids to read, they can too! If I can get one message out to the parents, it is that they do not need ‘permission’ to teach their children to read; they are 100% qualified to do the job at home.

Looking towards the future, are you planning to make this tool accessible to other demographics outside of children ages three to six? Perhaps pen another book?

I have lots of ideas about how Teach Your Child to Read can be beneficial to older students and even adults. The program is so easy to use that with minimal (or no) guidance, someone would be able to work through it by themselves. However, the materials would need to be modified to appeal to an older audience. Right now, that is a vision, as my focus is supporting the current version for children ages three to six.

Teach Your Child to Read logo. Image Credit – Mary Follin

Mary Follin. Image Credit – Cindy Mich

To learn more about Mary and Teach Your Child to Read, visit: Teach Your Child To Read—Online Phonics Program

Cindy Mich

Cindy Mich is an award-winning journalist/media personality who is also a filmmaker and Founder of the independent film festival, Art is Alive, now in its seventh year. Her total listening audience is at 205,000 to date. In print, she currently contributes to various digital publications, along with having owned and operated her own publication, The Art is Alive Magazine. After eight issues, her readership was at 78,000. She performs the duties of a professional film judge, having screened over 800 films in the last few years - along with covering various film festivals as accredited media. Further, she has taught in both the public and private sector. In 2023, Cindy is adding a distribution arm to her film festival, and soon will be releasing her made for television series on medical misdiagnosis, Hurt by Healthcare.