How to find out if your child has dyslexia

If your child has dyslexia, or you suspect he or she may have, it is very important that you realise that this does not mean your child is incapable of learning - he or she simply learns differently.

So while a child with dyslexia may struggle with reading and writing he or she will at the same time excel in other areas, usually those involving the creative and imaginative abilities. These children are therefore often great storytellers and artists. They tend to visualise their ideas and excel at practical tasks.

How can parents tell if their child is dyslexic?

There are many indications of dyslexia in children; some are language related whilst others are non-language indicators and more to do with the child's physical abilities.

Early signs of dyslexia

Signs of dyslexia can appear in children as young as four years old. Perhaps the child struggles with learning nursery rhymes and rhyming words, such as mat, cat, sat. The names of familiar objects may be substituted for similar words, for example ‘table' for ‘chair', or ‘lampshade' for ‘lamppost'.

Think back to when you child was a baby. Did he or she miss out the walking stage and go straight to crawling? A child who does this is commonly known as a ‘bottom shuffler' or ‘tummy wriggler' because they ‘crawl' around in this way rather than on the usual hands and knees.

Non-language indicators of dyslexia

What about physical activities - does your child find activities, such as skipping, hopping or catching, throwing and kicking a ball difficult? The child may possibly have trouble getting dressed efficiently and placing their shoes on the right feet.

You may deem the constant confusing of left and right insignificant, or see it as being unusually clumsy, but these are common signs of dyslexia.

Indicators of dyslexia in schoolwork

As the child reaches primary school evidence of dyslexia will become more noticeable in their schoolwork. They will have difficulty reading and spelling, either not understanding what he or she has just read or putting letters the wrong way round when writing. For example your child may habitually spell ‘was' for ‘saw' and vice versa.

Another sign of dyslexia, when reading, is a failure to recognise words which they have read further up the page.

Dyslexia will also cause the child to take longer than most children when putting together written work or when taking notes, as they have problems processing language at speed. This will cause a struggle when planning and writing long assignments, gathering ideas and organising work. The child may show difficulties in remembering things such as the order of days of the week, months of the year and so forth.

Once in secondary school you will notice that the child still reads inaccurately and finds spelling difficult. The constant confusion of time, dates and places will continue to be a problem and your child will often need to have instructions and telephone numbers repeated.

The danger of discovering dyslexia at this age is that by now your child may have internalised his struggles and show poor confidence and self-esteem.