Common Signs of Dyslexia
By: International Dyslexia Association (2000)
Dyslexia is a language-based disability that affects both oral and written language. With help, children with dyslexia can become successful readers. Find out the warning signs for dyslexia that preschool and elementary school children might display.
Facts about dyslexia
Startling facts about dyslexia and related language-based learning disabilities:
- Fifteen to twenty percent of the population has a reading disability.
- Of students with specific learning disabilities who receive special education services, seventy to eighty percent have deficits in reading. Dyslexia is the most common cause of reading, writing and spelling difficulties.
- If children who are dyslexic get effective phonological training in kindergarten and first grade, they will have significantly fewer problems in learning to read at grade level than do children who are not identified or helped until third grade.
- Seventy four percent of the children who were poor readers in the third grade remained poor readers in the ninth grade. This means that they couldn't read well when they became adults.
- Individuals inherit the genetic links for dyslexia.
- Dyslexia affects males and females nearly equally, and people from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds as well.
Common signs: Preschool
The following difficulties may be associated with dyslexia if they are unexpected for the individual's age, educational level, or cognitive abilities. To verify that an individual is dyslexic, he/she should be tested by a qualified testing examiner.
- May talk later than most children
- May have difficulty pronouncing words, i.e., busgetti for spaghetti, mawn lower for lawn mower
- May be slow to add new vocabulary words
- May be unable to recall the right word
- May have difficulty with rhyming
- May have trouble learning the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, colors, shapes, how to spell and write his or her name
- May have trouble interacting with peers
- May be unable to follow multi-step directions or routines
- Fine motor skills may develop more slowly than in other children
- May have difficulty telling and/or retelling a story in the correct sequence
- Often has difficulty separating sounds in words and blending sounds to make words
Common signs: Kindergarten through fourth grade
The following difficulties may be associated with dyslexia if they are unexpected for the individual's age, educational level, or cognitive abilities. To verify that an individual is dyslexic, he/she should be tested by a qualified testing examiner.
- Has difficulty decoding single words (reading single words in isolation)
- May be slow to learn the connection between letters and sounds
- May confuse small words – at/to, said/and, does/goes
- Makes consistent reading and spelling errors including:
- Letter reversals – d for b as in, dog for bog
- Word reversals – tip for pit
- Inversions – m and w, u and n
- Transpositions – felt and left
- Substitutions – house and home
- May transpose number sequences and confuse arithmetic signs (+ - x / =)
- May have trouble remembering facts
- May be slow to learn new skills; relies heavily on memorizing without understanding
- May be impulsive and prone to accidents
- May have difficulty planning
- Often uses an awkward pencil grip (fist, thumb hooked over fingers, etc.)
- May have trouble learning to tell time
- May have poor fine motor coordination
Excerpted from: ABC's of Dyslexia. (2000). International Dyslexia Association.