Is it Dyslexia?
Is your child very bright but his teacher telling you that his performance is lagging behind his peers? Have the teachers told you that your child is a “late bloomer” and that eventually he will catch up? Did someone in your family also struggle with reading, spelling, handwriting, or even math when they were in school? Did they show signs of dyslexia symptoms?
Diagnosis and Services
Our services are designed to help your family get a correct diagnosis and the right remedial program if your child has dyslexia. We prescreen all families. If your child can benefit from our services we can plan an individualized tutoring program to help your child succeed. If the symptoms of dyslexia are not present we will refer you to other professionals who may be able to help you.
Dyslexia Symptoms
Dyslexia can be recognized as early as in pre-school, on up to and including adults with varying degrees of the disability. Symptoms can vary across age groups, such as in:
Dyslexia symptoms include:
- Delayed speech
- Mixing up the sounds and syllables in long words
- Chronic ear infections
- Severe reactions for childhood illnesses
- Late establishing a dominant hand
- Difficulty learning to tie shoes
- Trouble memorizing their address, phone number, or the alphabet
The symptoms are:
- Non-automatic handwriting
- Letter and or number reversals continuing past the end of the first grade
- Extreme difficulty learning cursive
- Slow, choppy, inaccurate reading:
- Guesses based on shape or context
- Skips or misreads prepositions (at, to, of)
- Ignores suffixes
- Can’t sound out unknown words
- Terrible spelling
- Often can’t remember sight words (they, were, does) or homonyms (their, they’re, there)
- Difficulty telling time on a clock with hands
- Trouble with math
- Memorizing multiplication tables
- Memorizing a sequence of steps
- Directionality
- When speaking, difficulty finding the correct word
- Extremely messy bedroom, backpack, and desk
- Dreads going to school
- Complains of stomach aches or headaches
- May have nightmares about school
All of the elementary symptoms plus:
- Limited vocabulary
- Extremely poor written expression
- Large discrepancy between verbal skills and written composition
- Unable to master a foreign language
- Difficulty reading printed music
- Poor grades in many classes
- May drop out of high school
Educational history will be similar to earlier years. In addition:
- May have to read a page 2 or 3 times to understand it
- Slow reader
- Terrible speller
- Difficulty putting thoughts onto paper
- Still has difficulty with right versus left
- Often gets lost, even in a familiar city
- Sometimes confuses b and d, especially when tired or sick
Used with permission from Bright Solutions for Dyslexia—www.Bright Solutions.US.