Could dyslexia be causing your child’s reading trouble?
Your child may have normal vision and intelligence but can’t seem to make sense of anything he reads. If he complains that the letters on the page “won’t stay still,” he may be suffering from dyslexia, a severe reading disorder. Dyslexia affects perception, cognitive abilities and language. Someone with dyslexia might have excellent math skills but have difficulty reading a billboard.
According to Janet Lerner and Frank Kline, authors of “Learning Disabilities and Related Disorders,” definitions of dyslexia vary, but there are key common elements:
- dyslexia occurs in the brain, affecting neural connections
- a person with dyslexia has difficulty recognizing letters and words
- dyslexics find it hard to understand written information
Additional signs may be present as well. The International Dyslexia Association recommends looking for:
- difficulty learning to speak
- poor spelling
- problems memorizing facts involving numbers
If you suspect your child has dyslexia, your doctor can recommend testing. Dyslexia is not determined by a single test. Instead, a combination of tests are given to rule out other factors that may be causing the problem, including hearing, vision, neurological and psychological tests.
There is no cure for dyslexia, but tutoring and remedial education can help a child improve his reading skills. Reading specialists and speech therapists can help find the right reading program for your child’s unique situation. A child with dyslexia does learn, it just takes him a little longer.
Read Auditory processing disorder in children: What does it mean? to for information about a learning problem that is sometimes confused with dyslexia.
The example given about letters on the page not staying still could be due to Scotopic Sensitivity/Irlen Syndrome which often co-exists with Dyslexia, bur requires different treatmenet/approach, which if appropriate can give almost instantaneous improvement. Relevant pages http://www.aaic.org.au/ or http://www.irlen.com/
Comment by Maria — September 1, 2008 @ 5:01 am
“If he complains that the letters on the page “won’t stay still,” he may be suffering from dyslexia, “, Actually that is visual dyslexia. Only about 10% of dyslexics have visual problems that make reading difficult.
See Right Dyslexia Glasses remove the visual problems associated with visual dyslexia and by using a different approach has eliminated the need for a personal evaluation. There is information about visual dyslexia at http://www.dyslexiaglasses.com .
That leaves the majority of dyslexics with phonological problems where the proper intervention is educationally based to help the language processing problems.
Many school systems in the US produce poor readers at a much higher rate than any sum of learning disabilities is possible. There is plenty of blame to go around for these higher than expected rates. Schools ,teachers , parents , and students and below needed budgets all have been selected as the cause by one group or another.
Unless all parts of the educational system are working properly and funding is available for learning disabilities such as dyslexia , many solutions will be based other criteria than what is best for the individual.
Comment by John hayes — September 1, 2008 @ 1:00 pm