There is so much confusion and myth surrounding dyslexia. I decided to take this opportunity to answer the questions that keep popping up in my discussions with our parents and teachers. This information comes from a compilation of textbooks on dyslexia, especially Sally Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia, and my own 25 years of experience teaching dyslexic children and adults to read.
What is the Dictionary Definition of Dyslexia?
If you look up dyslexia in the dictionary, it simply says dyslexia is difficulty learning to read, write and spell, despite having the necessary intelligence, motivation, education and sensory skills. That means…. to be labeled dyslexic, a person must be bright, motivated and educated and have normal hearing and vision. Dyslexia is not a delay in reading achievement; it will not resolve itself over time.
What Causes Dyslexia?
Let’s start by clarifying a common myth. Children with dyslexia are NOT prone to seeing letters or words backwards. Children with dyslexia do not SEE “was” as “saw” or “saw” as “was”. They do not SEE ‘d’ for ‘b’ or ‘b’ for ‘d’. They can’t tell the difference between those words/letters, because those squiggly lines and curves we call letters have no meaning for them. Imagine yourself trying to remember the names of two Chinese “letters” that you can’t understand. You’d get those characters mixed up too.
The deficit responsible for dyslexia resides in the language system of the brain. It is not an overall defect in language, but rather a localized weakness in the phonological system of the brain. That is the part of the brain where the sounds of language are put together to form words and where words are broken down into their component sounds. The word “cat”, for example, has 3 sounds….c-a-t. Before a toddler can understand the meaning of cat and learn to pronounce it, that toddler’s brain must break the word “cat” into phonemes (sounds). Children with dyslexia have difficulty doing that…. identifying the phonemes in words.
What are the Earliest Symptoms of Dyslexia?
Children at risk for dyslexia can be identified very early. The first factor for parents to consider is the family history. Dyslexia is a genetic disorder, so if any family member, including aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, were diagnosed with dyslexia, your child has a greater chance of suffering from dyslexia too.
The first physical symptom to appear is a delay in speech and language development. Babies should be speaking their first words by 12 months of age, 18 months at the latest. Toddlers should be combining words into phrases by age 2. Parents should be able to understand 50 – 60% of their one year old’s speech and at least 70% by the time a toddler is 2. Children who don’t meet these standards are warning us of a potential problem.
During the preschool years, 3 year olds should be speaking in 4 – 5 word phrases and 4 year olds should be speaking in complete sentences with occasional grammatical errors. Language should be almost adult-like by age 5. Parents should understand at least 80% of a 3 year old’s language, 90% by age 4 and 98% by age 5.
Preschoolers at risk for dyslexia may also be identified by their malapropisms; they may make pronunciation errors like saying “hangaber” for “hamburger” and “puzghetti” for “spaghetti”. Other red flags are difficulties with rhyming and learning/remembering the letters in their own names.
What Symptoms Appear in Kindergarten and 1st Grade?
This is the age when many children begin to struggle. These are the kids who have difficulty understanding that words can be pulled apart into sounds. Many of these kids have difficulty remembering the names for the letters of the alphabet and/or learning the sounds that go with the letters…..in other words, they have difficulty with early phonics.
Kindergarten and first grade are the years when children learn to read. The way our schools are set up, kids better learn to read during those first years of elementary school, or they are at risk for reading failure.
Why do So Many Kids Slip through the Cracks?
Just as kindergarten and first grade are the years when children learn to read, in third grade and on, children read to learn. Second grade is a transitional year when phonics acquisition is reinforced and children learn to break long words into syllables and then develop fluency in their reading. If children don’t have the ability to “sound out” words by third grade, they are inevitably in trouble.
To complicate the issue, their assigned stories and novels are becoming increasingly complex with fewer pictures. A second grade child who was relying on pictures to understand the plot of a story will fall apart in third grade when the pictures are reduced to one or two per chapter.
To identify dyslexic individuals in second grade and on, look for kids who are having difficulty pronouncing less familiar, complicated words like “aluminum” and “rhinoceros”. Look for problems with oral language like word finding problems and slow response times. Look for difficulty remembering isolated pieces of verbal information like phone numbers and birthdays. Also look for disfluent speech with many “ums” and “ahs” and a tendency to use imprecise language like substituting the words “stuff” and “thing” for proper names of objects.
Another big red flag is a problem with word identification strategies during reading. These are the kids who have difficulty reading unknown words that must be sounded out…this problem is especially noticeable when they try to read lists of words like spelling words or class lists. These kids rely on contextual cues to read words, because they don’t have reliable word identification strategies.
Another common symptom is problems with writing, especially spelling. These kids often have disastrous spelling. They may do OK on spelling tests because of their excellent memories. But ask them to write a story using their spelling words and their accuracy goes right out the window.
Can You Prevent Dyslexia?
Remember the motto…..the best intervention is prevention. Very early intervention can prevent a potential problem with dyslexia. And even when prevention was not possible, early intervention can nip a problem in the bud and enable at-risk children to read. In fact, early intervention and treatment bring about more positive changes at a faster pace than intervention provided to older children.
Can You Overcome Dyslexia?
The answer is a resounding YES! Any child with normal cognitive skills can be taught to read. But you must start with the earliest possible diagnosis and then seek effective treatment. The keys to successful treatment are:
- Early intervention. A child needs help before he fails. Don’t use the “wait to fail” model. There is too much at stake here. Fluency comes from correctly and repeatedly reading the same words over and over. Poor readers avoid reading, so the longer you wait, the farther behind your child will become. A dyslexic child who is not identified until 3rd grade is already thousands of unlearned words behind his peers.
- Intense instruction. A dyslexic child must progress faster than his neuro-typical peers. Optimally, instruction should be individualized and take place multiple times every week.
- High quality instruction. Sally Shaywitz, a leading expert in dyslexia research, says teaching IS rocket science. The teacher’s knowledge and experience are key. And the reading program must be based on scientifically proven methods that address phonemic awareness, decoding, spelling, memorizing sight words, fluency, written expression, vocabulary, worldly knowledge and comprehension strategies.
- Sufficient duration. The most common error parents make is withdrawing prematurely from instruction that seems to be working. Some dyslexic children need 150 – 300 hours of intensive instruction to close the reading gap. The longer you wait to identify the problem and begin the remediation, the longer it will take for your child to catch up.
What can Parents do to help?
Parents are their children’s advocates. Parents must do everything possible to get help early and then insist on proven reading programs with qualified teachers and optimal instructional settings.
Home is the place for reinforcement of new skills and for pleasure reading. Home is the place to build word and worldly knowledge. Parents can do this by reading to their child at her interest/intellectual level but above her reading level. This will enable her to gain new vocabulary words and new knowledge about the world that would otherwise be unavailable to her. Think of how much easier it is to read the word “Yosemite” and visualize the gushing waterfalls, towering rocks and lush meadows if you have heard about it, and better yet, if you’ve actually been there.
Parents’ number one priority should be nourishing their child’s soul and preserving his self-esteem. That starts with helping him understand the nature of his reading problem….helping him understand that it has nothing to do with his intelligence, but rather, a very specific challenge in one little part of his brain. Point out other people who have suffered from dyslexia including relatives, Tom Cruise, John Irving and Charles Schwab. Help your child identify an interest or hobby in an area where he can have a positive experience…either through enjoyment or excellence. Make sure that school is a positive experience and teach him to advocate for himself. That starts with speaking up and asking for more time on tests or sitting closer to the teacher. And that starts at home….by having parents who listen to their children and respond thoughtfully to their concerns.
If you would like more information about our assessment and/or intervention programs, either at our clinic or on school site, please contact us at 858.509.1131. It is never too early or too late to begin.