It has been estimated that one on ten children have dyslexia. The sooner a child is diagnosed with dyslexia the greater the chance remediation will be successful. A diagnosis can come as early as Kindergarten or first grade. My daughter was diagnosed in first grade. It was clear to me that something was not quite right. The symptoms are beyond an inability to read. It can extend to memory, spelling, and speech. My daughter showed many of the symptoms on the list below. At the time I did not connect the dots to dyslexia. It took a bit of research. I highly encourage you to research your child’s symptoms and get professional help before coming to any conclusions. My daughter had sessions and a test with a reading specialist before she was diagnosed.
One of the best sites on the web for resources and information is Beat dyslexia.com. Thank you, Beat Dyslexia for being an amazing resource and providing a simple list and perfect starting point to determining if a child needs to be tested for dyslexia.
Reading Symptoms:
Difficulty reading unfamiliar words.
Making a lot of errors and not “catching” on to reading.
Labored and slow reading by sounding out each letter or word by word.
Letters appearing to move around or blur
Difficulty tracking
Quickly losing concentration
Fixating on parts of the text for longer than average.
Spelling Symptoms:
Difficulty spelling unfamiliar words.
Difficulty dividing words into their smallest units of speech sound
Forgetting how to spell simple or short words.
Problems distinguishing phonics sounds.
Speech Symptoms:
Occasional pronunciation errors.
Making syntactical errors such as ‘I drive over to your house’, rather than ‘I drove over to your house’.
Memory Symptoms:
Forgetting names of people or objects.
Instantly forgetting the order of letters in a word when it is spelt out.
Forgetting instructions.
Poor ability to recall items on a list.
Difficulty learning the months of the year and times tables.
Others Symptoms:
May lose train of thought more often than average.
Difficulty maintaining concentration.
Lack of coordination.
Disorganization.
Problems telling right from left as a child.