Dyslexia is a neural l disorder experienced by around 5 to 15 percent of people. It’s a learning disorder that inhibits a person’s ability to learn to read. It occurs when there is a problem with the way the brain processes graphic symbols. The main traits of dyslexia are mixing up words, spelling words out of order, low levels of trouble reading and comprehension.
Even though dyslexia is a neural condition, it’s not linked to lower intelligence. Many people with a severe form of dyslexia can be extremely bright and intelligent.
Identifying symptoms and signs of dyslexia early can increase the odds of effective treatment. In this post, you’ll learn how to spot early symptoms of dyslexia and find out what can be done to help those who might be affected.
Most common signs of dyslexia in kids
Dyslexia can be a tough disability to spot, especially in a child. Only when a child starts school can the parents find out if they are dyslexic or not. The teacher might be able to spot the first signs of dyslexia when they see that the child is struggling to spell, read, or write.
While dyslexia itself is a communication disability, but the symptoms associated with it keeps changing throughout the dyslexic person’s life. Each child/adult with dyslexia might experience different symptoms or challenges and might find their unique strengths to deal with it.
Below are some of the most common signs of dyslexia in children. Keep in mind that symptoms of dyslexia differ depending on age. To make things more difficult, educational purposes, symptoms of dyslexia can vary widely from person to person.
If you’re suspecting your child showing any of the following symptoms, you might first consider taking the online tests with dyslexia checklists to see if your child has any of the symptoms attributed to dyslexia. Then you should ask the school d to conduct proper testing to establish a proper diagnosis.
- Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or remembering the letters of the alphabet.
- Having trouble recognizing letters, read write
- Difficulty reading or slow rate of reading
- failure to understand what they read
- Misspelling easy words that most children in their age group can spell
- Struggle to follow simple instructions
- Trouble writing
- Messy handwriting that’s hard to read
- Misusing simple words
- deficiency to remember or learn new words
- Small glossary for their age
Early signs of dyslexia
The first thing to consider when diagnosing dyslexia is a person’s family history. The disorder is passed down genetically, meaning that a person is more likely to have it if their parents or grandparents had it.
It’s important to note that dyslexia can skip generations. Since dyslexia wasn’t well known it was often misdiagnosed. Thus, older adults who were afflicted were thought to have difficulty in reading rather than being dyslexic. Making it hard to determine the number of people suffering from dyslexia in previous generations.
Below are general signs that are usually seen in each age group:
Preschoolers
· Find it difficult to learn the alphabets
· Don’t understand rhyming patterns
· Mispronounce words a lot
Grade schoolers
· Read slower than their counterparts
· Can’t separate between certain letters
· Struggle to read because of the deficiency to sound words
· Don’t connect letters to their phonics
· Struggle to follow instructions
· Misspell easy words
· Write slowly
Older kids
· Have messy handwriting
· Take a longer time to finish their tests
· Write slowly
· Speak slowly
· Don’t read out aloud
· Use wrong words (dictionary) while reading or writing
· Use a lot of fillers (umm, uhh) while they talk
If you suffered from these early signs and symptoms of dyslexia and had not suffered any loss of vision or hearing, then chances are that you might be suffering from dyslexia.
Below are more common symptoms of dyslexia found in children.
Trouble speaking and reading
There are many issues that can affect a person’s ability to read or speak. However, keep in mind, just because someone has problems speaking or reading, it doesn’t mean dyslexia is the reason. reading problems such as hearing loss or vision loss can also be to blame. Seek the kids help of professionals to make a proper assessment.
Delayed or slow speech is one of the common signs. A person suffering from dyslexia may swap the characters within lists (alphabet, numbers, etc.) as well as mixing the letters of words and names.
This difficulty extends to the diction of words with numerous syllables. Many of us have trouble with long words, but this is normal to a certain degree.
Difficulty pronouncing words with four or five syllables may be an early warning sign of dyslexia. Keep in mind that most kids at an early age will have trouble with these types of skills. If your child has these problems before the age of five, this might not signal dyslexia but simply mean a slower rate of language development in some children.
The combination of these difficulties should become more apparent when a child becomes more engaged in elementary school and high school work. If the child has dyslexia, difficulty reading age related texts and spelling common words will start to interfere with a child’s academic development. At this point the presence of a learning disorder might become more obvious and medical professional assessment will be necessary and tests will need to be conducted by trained medical staff for proper diagnosis.
Want to learn more?
Often the symptoms and signs of people with dyslexia symptoms can be difficult to recognize. Paying close attention to your child development will help you determine if they are suffering from dyslexia or simply have trouble learning during the early stages of development that will disappear as they get older.
If you want to learn more about dyslexia take a look at our checklist for detecting signs of learning disability and take free online dyslexia tests to diagnose your symptoms
Early assessment and intervention is critical
Early assessment and intervention are critical for improving positive outcomes for children with dyslexia. Without early assessment and proper intervention, gaps for struggling readers and their peers will only continue to widen. Any method of intervention must be specifically tailored to each child’s specific learning deficit in order to be the most effective.
If you suspect your kids with dyslexia , it’s important to learn as much as possible and to take action as soon as you become aware of the signs.