Does My Pre-schooler have Dyslexia?

Posted in symptoms of dyslexia | 2 comments

Many parents can see symptoms of dyslexia even in very young children. Today’s society does not like to test for dyslexia until a child is older. Public schools and doctors are not aggressive about testing for learning disabilities. Parents need to be proactive to get help for their young children. If your child has three or more of these warning signs, the child should be tested for dyslexia when the child is getting ready to enroll for Kindergarten at four or five years of age. This is especially critical if there is a family history of dyslexia and/or ADD.

To help your young child not loose ground you can read to them every single day. Read books that are age appropriate but also books that contain a subject the child is interested in. If you have a young child that loves basketball than find stories both fiction and nonfiction about basketball. Also, play games with your young child that will help with phonemic awareness and other reading readiness activities. Check out books with read along tapes from your local library. They also sell stuffed toys that move that read along with books. The excitement of having a toy read to you can encourage the child to learn to love books. That is your primary goal. It is not to teach your child to read but to instill the love of learning and reading.

• delayed speech (not speaking any words by the child’s first birthday)
  
• mixing up sounds in multi-syllable words (ex: chepup for ketchup, aminal for animal, bisghetti for spaghetti). Some parents think this is “cute” and actually encourage the child’s mispronuncing words by paying attention and highlighting the mistake.
  
• stuttering
  
• numerous ear infections
  
• can’t learn to tye their shoes the traditional way
  
• Confusion over which direction is which. Left or right, over or under, before or after.
  
• late to establish a dominant hand
• Can’t learn the alphabet song, can’t recite the alphabet easily.
• If learned the alphabet can’t taklk the words, need to sing the song to get the order correctly.
  May switch from right hand to left hand while coloring, writing, or doing any other task. Eventually, the child will usually establish a preferred hand, but it may not be until they are 7 or 8. Even then, they may use one hand for writing, but the other hand for sports.
  
• Not able to tell you words that rhyme despite listening to stories that contain lots of rhyming words, such as Dr. Seus.
  
• difficulty learning the names of the letters or sounds in the alphabet; difficulty writing the alphabet in order
  
• Mispronouncing words that other children in their age group can say without trouble. Don’t leave your child behind by not having them tested until age eight as some believe is neccesary.