Multisensory Reading Clinic

 

How do you know if your child has dyslexia and needs specific help in learning to read and spell?

 

It takes very specific skills, professional training, and education to diagnose an individual with dyslexia; therefore, not everyone can identify if your child has dyslexia. If you are planning to see a psychologist or neurologist, ask him or her if he or she knows how to do it.

 

Dyslexia literally means difficulty (dys) with words (lex). According to Shaywitz (2003), author of Overcoming Dyslexia, dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and reading abilities, as well as problems in reading comprehension. Because dyslexia is a specific learning disability that affects learning to read, spell, write, and comprehend, the results of the student's reading assessment will tell us if he or she has signs and symptoms of dyslexia. But if you want to go deeper into your child's language problem, such as the rate of his or her processing difficulty, a further evaluation with a neurologist or psychologist who has a background and training in dyslexia is needed. However, the information below and on previous pages will give you enough details to determine if your child needs professional help in learning to read, spell, write, and comprehend the correct way.

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At seven years old, or by grade two, most children have started learning to read, and by grade three, most children can read at their own grade level. So, if your child is still struggling to read, he might have dyslexia. If he cannot get the help that is really needed, his reading level will lag further and further behind.

 

He is also falling further and further behind his classmates not just in reading, but also with other skills that require reading, such as math problem-solving, sciences, history, etc. In addition, your child’s spelling and comprehension skills are other clues that he needs specific help in learning to read and spell. His spelling is horrible, or he cannot spell words that have not been seen before, and there is a problem comprehending what is read. Well, it is common sense that if a child cannot read, of course, he cannot comprehend. But if there is a problem comprehending what is read, it means the child has not reached fluency in that concept yet. If it remains unnoticed, it means that your child could have strong memory skills, and it will become apparent in later years, usually in high school, where tasks that involve reading and reading comprehension are more demanding. And yes, even if he has strong memory skills, the reading assessment will tell us if there is a specific learning difficulty!

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Earliest Clues

• Family history of reading problems. Dyslexia runs in families. If you, your partner, uncles, aunts, cousins, or grandparents have dyslexia, it increases the probability that your child has dyslexia too. And if one of your children is dyslexic, it is likely that your other children have dyslexia as well.

• Delay in speaking. Typically, children say their first word at about one year old or so and say simple two-word phrases at about 18 months to two years old. Children with dyslexia may begin saying their first words after 15 months and may speak in phrases after their second birthday, but then again, some dyslexic children may not demonstrate a speech delay.

• Difficulties in pronunciation, sometimes referred to as “baby talk.” By five or six years old, most children have little problem saying most simple words correctly. Typical mispronunciations of dyslexic children involve leaving off beginning sounds, such as "lephant" for "elephant," and inverting the sounds within a word, such as "aminal" for "animal" or "bastekball" for "basketball."

 

Pre-Kindergarten/Preschool

• Trouble learning and singing common nursery rhymes, such as "Jack and Jill," "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," and "Hickory, Dickory Dock." Familiarity with nursery rhymes is an early indicator of getting ready to read and a strong predictor of early reading success.

• Difficulty learning and remembering the names of letters in the alphabet, especially learning them in order (sequencing).

• Has trouble recognizing the letters in his or her own name.

• Continues mispronouncing familiar words; persistent “baby talk.” For example, the child tends to say "spusgetti" instead of "spaghetti."

• Doesn’t recognize rhyming patterns like cat, bat, rat, sat. Most often, dyslexic children are unable to tell which word pair rhymes.

• Tends to avoid or hates playing games with sounds and with rhyming words because dyslexic children have trouble penetrating the sound structure of words.

 

Kindergarten and/or First Grade

 

Reading

• Reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters on the page—will say “puppy” instead of “dog” and "home" instead of "house" with pictures of a dog and a house on a page, and vice versa. This error indicates that your child cannot read but is guessing words based on what is seen in the pictures. Children cannot learn and will never learn to read and spell by just looking at and figuring out what they see in the pictures. They need to accurately sound out words. Most dyslexic children are insensitive to awareness at the sound level; thus, they need phonics literacy instruction and must also learn to connect and pull out sounds for minimal pairs of words.

• Reading words with clusters of letters like bl, cl, sl—especially with r (br, cr, dr)—and three-letter blends (spl, scr, spr) are very difficult to read and spell; thus, a child needs a strategy to pull them out and put them back together.

• Reading is not an enjoyable or pleasant experience but a struggle.

• Prone to reversal problems, such as 'b' instead of 'd,' and 'saw' instead of 'was,' and vice versa.

 

Spelling

• Difficulty in spelling and/or learning to spell words.

• Can't spell words that have not been seen; horrible at spelling.

• If the child can spell the learned words during the test, he tends to forget them easily; thus, a child must learn the rules of the language and spelling strategies.

 

Handwriting

• Awkward pencil grip.

• Very large, misshapen, and uneven-sized letters.

• Wobbly handwriting.

 

Second Grade and Up

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Reading

• Is very slow in acquiring reading skills.

• Has trouble reading unfamiliar words, often making wild guesses because he cannot sound out words.

• Avoids reading out loud.

• Most of the time, he can only read words that have been seen—he is memorizing these words.

 

Spelling

• Difficulty in spelling/learning to spell words or horrible at spelling.

• Cannot spell words that have not been seen.

• If the child can spell the learned words during the test, he tends to forget them easily.

 

Reading Comprehension

• If the child can "read" mostly words that have already been seen, he is usually having difficulty comprehending what is read.

• Having trouble solving math problems that involve reading, even if the child excels in math.

• Inferential questions are also a struggle to answer.

 

Writing

• Having trouble/difficulty with any written tasks.

• Most of the time, handwriting is awkward and wobbly.

 

Speaking

• Searches for specific words and ends up using vague language, such as "stuff" or "thing," without naming the object.

• Pauses and uses lots of "um's" and "ah's" when speaking.

• Confuses words that sound alike, such as "satistics" for "statistics" or "pacific" for "specific."

• Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar, or complicated words.

• Seems to need extra time to respond to questions.

 

Young Adults/Adolescents and Adults

 

Reading

• A childhood history of reading and spelling difficulties.

• While reading skills have developed over time, reading still requires great effort and is done at a slow pace.

• Rarely reads for pleasure, especially if it involves longer reading materials.

• Slow reading of most materials—books, manuals, subtitles in films.

• Avoids reading aloud.

 

Speaking

• Not fluent, not glib; often anxious when speaking.

• Pausing or hesitating often when speaking; using lots of "um's" and "ah's" and imprecise language, for example, "stuff" or "thing" instead of the proper name of an object when speaking.

• Often mispronounces the names of people and places.

• Difficulty remembering names of people and places; confuses names that sound alike.

• Retrieval difficulties; struggles with retrieving words; has the "it was on the tip of my tongue" moment frequently.

• Expressive language problem; rarely has a fast response in conversations and/or writing; struggles when put on the spot.

• Spoken vocabulary is smaller than listening vocabulary.

• Earlier oral language difficulties persist.

 

Spelling

• Weak spelling skills.

• Cannot spell unfamiliar words.

• Having difficulty spelling multisyllabic (longer) words.

 

Reading Comprehension

• Most of the time, having difficulty comprehending what is read.

• Inferential questions are a struggle to answer.

• Analyzing the concepts in pages of the book is a nightmare.

 

Writing

• Having trouble/difficulty expressing oneself in writing; always needs help in writing, e.g., electronically, to come up with words/spelling, especially with longer and complicated words.

• Expressing oneself in writing requires great effort and longer time than necessary, even with extra help.

• Most of the time, handwriting is also awkward.

 

School Life

• Penalized by multiple-choice tests.

• Frequently sacrifices social life for studying.

• Suffers extreme fatigue when reading and writing.

• Performs rote clerical tasks poorly.

 

This format is based on "Signs of Dyslexia," Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, 2015.

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If your child shows any of the above signs and symptoms, your best option is to seek appropriate help from a reading instructor or a reading tutor/specialist specializing in the treatment of individuals with dyslexia. The earlier you act to start remediation/intervention, the better off you and your child will be—financially, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. Waiting for another day, week, month, and/or year would not solve your child's learning-to-read difficulties, and the more you wait, the more your child will struggle academically and psychologically, and the more his or her self-esteem and self-confidence will be affected.

 

Do not forget that your child has specific learning problems: reading, spelling, and comprehending what is read, and you are not looking for an ordinary or typical tutor.

 

What happens if he becomes an adult? Life would be difficult for someone who cannot read because reading is a tool to succeed in life, particularly in an industrialized country. And if your child relies on "Google" to express himself or herself in reading and writing, then he would be bound to rely on "Google" to read and write for the rest of his life!

 

Do not let your child suffer for another day!