Warning Signs of Dyslexia

If you notice that your child is having a difficult time with learning to read, spell, write, and/or master math skills, dyslexia might be the cause. There are different types of learning disabilities so it is important to know the warning signs of dyslexia. Keep in mind, individuals with dyslexia can learn and are often very bright. They just require a specialized way of learning.

Warning Signs

There are many warning signs of dyslexia and many of us have one or two of them. This does not mean that everyone has dyslexia. Individuals with dyslexia have several of these characteristics that do not go away over time and can interfere with their learning.

Pre-School/Kindergarten:

• Delayed speech (not speaking any words by first birthday, sometimes not even until after two or three)
• Mixing up sounds in words (aminal for animal)
• Early stuttering
• Chronic ear infections
• Confusion over left vs. right, over vs. under, before vs. after, and other directionality words
• Difficulty mastering tying shoes
• Late establishing a dominant hand
• Difficulty learning to rhyme - they can tell you a rhyming word for cat (after age four and a half)
• Difficulty learning the names of the letters or sounds in the alphabet
• Trouble with articulating R's and L's as well as M's and N's

Reading & Spelling

• Can read a word on one page, can't on the next page
• Knows phonics but still can't sound out word
• Slow and inaccurate reading of single words in isolation (no story line or pictures to provide clues)
• Slow and choppy when reading aloud
• Directionality confusion: b-d, b-p, n-u, m-w
• Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence (house for horse, sunrise for surprise)
• When reading a story, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn't look similar (trip for journey, fast for speed)
• Misreads, omits, or even adds on small functional words (an, a, from, the to, were)
• Leaves off suffixes (need for needed, late for lately)

A big warning sign is related to Spelling!

• Their spelling is often far worse than their reading!
• They have difficulty with vowel sounds and often leave them out
• With a lot of effort, they can memorize the Monday spelling list in order to pass the test on Friday - but they can't remember the same words hours later when writing them in a their own work.
• Misspells high frequency sight words (what, where, were, does, because)

Other Common Warning Signs:

• Difficulty memorizing non-meaningful facts (multiplication tables, the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year)
• Telling time on a clock with hands (due to directionality difficulties)
• Extremely messy bedrooms, backpacks, desks, lockers, purses - People with dyslexia have hard time organizing their belongings.
• Math difficulties (memorizing addition, subtraction, multiplication tables, remembering a sequence of steps in long division, reading word problems, staring a math problem on the wrong side, showing their work)
• Quality of their written work does not match their ability to tell you what they know.
• Poor, nearly illegible handwriting

Summary:

If your child has several of these warning signs, he or she may need to be evaluated for dyslexia.