A child with dyslexia has a reading difficulty or problem. Dyslexia is a learning disability of neurobiological origin. The reading problem is obvious as it happens to intelligent and bright children as well. Children are naturally inquisitive and most of them would want to read a storybook. You will see them naturally progress from easy and simple books to the ones that contain more words.
Dyslexic children however will struggle and find it frustrating to learn to read even simple words. So for these children, the words are difficult to understand when they see it on paper or printed in the book. It can be a perplexing situation for them as they understand the meaning of the words spoken and they also love to hear stories. However, when they see the words on the pages of a book, it does not make sense to them.
Contrary to popular belief, reading does not come naturally to a person. It must be learned and when a child is taught effectively, the reading process becomes easy. The child will grasps the letters, the sounds, the words, the sentences and eventually whole paragraphs. Generally, parents and teachers ignore a child’s reading problem believing that it is only temporary and a phase that will soon past by.
What are the signs or clues?
Observant parents should look for the following signs or clues for dyslexia which varies according to the child’s age and educational level.
For Kindergarten and First Grade
• The parents or siblings have a history of reading problems
• The child dislikes to read and complaint a lot about the difficulty
• He is unable to read or to sound out simple single-syllable words like cat or nap
• He is making obvious mistakes, i.e. not recognizing the word as shown on the page
• He is unable to associate the correct sound to their letter, e.g. the letter ‘S’ with the ‘S’ sound.
For Second Grade and onwards
• He is unable to progress much in his reading skills
• He has problems reading new words and always makes wild guesses
• He is unable to read function words like ‘that’, ‘an’, ‘in’
• His oral reading is not smooth and full of mistakes, mispronunciations, omissions and lacks inflection
• He relies on the context to derive the meaning of what is being read
In addition to the problems in reading as described above, also look out for problems in speaking such as below:
• He has serious problems with pronunciation especially with long and strange words. He also tends to omit parts of a word like “safied” for “satisfied”
• He is unable to speak fluently with lots of pauses in between
• He has difficulty in finding the correct words to say
• He often confuses words that sound alike
• He has weak rote memory, i.e. difficulty to remember names, dates and telephone numbers
If you suspect that your child has dyslexia, get him properly tested or diagnosed. It is even more vital if there is a history of dyslexia within the immediate family. You can read more on the subject at http://learningdisabilities.about.com/
Does your child has dyslexia? How did you find out about it?