Dyslexia in Children

Generally, children have no problem in learning or understanding a subject in the primary stages of schooling. They can easily recognize letters and find out the relation between letters and sounds. However, there are some children, who find it difficult to spell or read a word or a sentence. This may mislead a parent to assume their child as being dull or intellectually poor. To clear this misconception, let me inform you that dyslexia is a result of neurological differences in the brain. It is caused due to the brain’s inability to transfer images received from the eyes and ears into understandable language. Dyslexia has been diagnosed in highly intelligent children too.

A German ophthalmologist Rudolf Berlin first used the term "dyslexia" in the year 1887, while diagnosing a child. The child was suffering from learning disability, in spite of showing talent in other respective fields. Presently, dyslexia is a recognized disorder, and if identified at the initial stage, one can find out ways to cope with this learning disability and improve their language skills

Types of Dyslexia

There are different subtypes of dyslexia in which a child is unable to read and recognize letters. These include surface dyslexia and phonological dyslexia. Surface dyslexia refers to the learning disability, in which a child has poor lexical skills and is unable to make out irregular words; whereas, in phonological dyslexia, a child is unable to make out letters or read them loudly.

Symptoms of Dyslexia

Dyslexia can be identified from many signs that a kid shows before or after being admitted in school. The following symptoms of dyslexia may help you to identify this condition in a child.

• If the child starts talking late unlike other children.
• If the child shows signs of difficulty in rhyming.
• Inability to recognize letters.
• Poor reading ability.
• In case, the child is unable to understand what he/she hears and has problem in further processing.
• Difficulty in recognizing reversals of letters such as ‘b’ and ‘d’, reversal of words such as ‘saw’ as ‘was’, ‘no’ as ‘on’.
• Fails to notice and hear similarities and differences in letters and words.
• Confusion between directional words such as up, down, in and out.
• Inability to dress properly, such as correctly putting putting on shoes and tying shoelaces.
• Inability to catch, kick or throw a ball.
• Difficulty in remembering tables, alphabets and formulas.
• Poor sense of direction like left and right.

How to Cope with Dyslexia

The best way to treat a child with dyslexia is to educate oneself about its symptoms. Treatment at the early stage can help the improve the child's learning abilities. Special education plays a vital role in helping a dyslexic child overcome learning disabilities. With the help of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) one can detect specific disabilities and implement appropriate teaching methods to improve the academic performance of a child. Treatment of dyslexia includes guided oral reading, where the child reads aloud with guidance from the teacher or trainer. To treat a child with dyslexia, one may follow the steps mentioned below:

• Spend some time talking with the child.
• Story telling may also help a child overcome hearing difficulties.
• Playing games that involve physical skills such as football, skipping, hopping and jumping can help a child overcome dyslexia.
• Playing memory games can help them in remembering tables and alphabets.
• Make reading an enjoyable task for them. Teach your dyslexic child to point to the words while reading.
• Play rhyming games and sing songs that emphasize alliterations and rhyme.
• Play word games to teach the similarities between reversal words and sound of letters. This will help your child to learn the phonemes with amusement.
• Praise the child at every step of improvement that he/she shows and avoid criticism at mistakes.
• Consult with the school teachers and find out what provisions the school undertakes to help your dyslexic child.
• Build your child’s confidence and make a timetable for your ward. This can help the child overcome time management difficulties.
• Provide a dry erase board and color pencils. This will help the dyslexic child to mark his/her mistakes.

Dyslexic children need love, affection and proper care from their parents. Parents should realize the limitations of a dyslexic ward and should help him/her to excel in other areas of interest.