Too often I hear of parents who go to an expert and come back with the news that the expert had done some tests and pronounced “Yes, your child is dyslexic”. But what does that mean? It just means your child struggles to read. You already knew that. The only thing that should be of interest is why your child is struggling to read. Once you know why you are halfway to finding a solution.
The term 'dyslexic' has been used so much, people have come to think of dyslexia as a specific condition, like asthma. But it isn’t really like that. Dyslexia is a symptom, just like wheezing.
You know that wheezing can have different causes. Just one of them is asthma. I am sure you have heard your child wheeze because of a heavy cold too. So going to an expert and being told your child is dyslexic is like being told by the doctor, after much deliberation, that your child is wheezing!
But, once you know the type of dyslexia your child has, and the cause of their reading difficulties, you can check the potential solutions as well. In fact, once you familiarise yourself with all the different types of dyslexia, finding a solution can become easier.
So here are the most common reasons why your child might be showing signs of dyslexia.
Some 80 per cent of struggling readers show an auditory deficit. When a normal reader looks at the text, the visual cortex fires up and then the signal passes to the auditory cortex on the left hand side of the brain. So it is now processed as if it is speech. And then it moves to the pre-frontal 'thinking' area of the brain where it is analysed.
We all have strengths and weaknesses and ways of learning and thinking that we favour. They are usually approximated to visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and digital.
If a child is visually intelligent then it will be natural to process the text in a visual way. So they memorise the letters and words as if they are pictures. On a brain scan you will see the visual cortex fire and then the signal passes symmetrically on either side of the brain to the pre-frontal cortex. The auditory processing is bypassed.
Signs of dyslexia: If your child has an auditory deficit, you will see a lot of sight-memorisation and guessing. You will also probably see some reversal of letters and words.
The exciting part of the human brain is the cerebrum, which is the outer layer. It does all the thinking that is our speciality as human beings. But half of your neurones are in the little cerebellum, at the core of the brain above the brain stem.
The cerebellum takes all your sensory inputs (except for smell) and sorts out what is important and what can be ignored. And it also takes all your motor-neurones and controls them to give the infinitely subtle movements that we can achieve.
When a ball is flying through the air and you hand reaches out to the exact spot to intercept it, your cerebellum has had a good day. However, like any part of the body, it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes it can be a bit inefficient. That leads to a lack of focus, because too many sensory inputs are breaking through to your cerebrum. And it can lead to poor muscle control. In extreme cases that will be obvious.
The reason is that as you read this sentence, your eyes are doing little jumps (known as saccades) along the line of the text. If your cerebellum is not working well, that becomes very hard.
Signs of dyslexia: A mild case of childhood dyspraxia can lead to reading difficulty. Another sign of dyslexia is when a child can read a single word, but hates looking at lines or blocks of text.
If this text were red on a blue background, you would have great difficulty reading more than a few words. The text would seem to shimmer or move around. Some people get exactly the same effect with black text on a white background.
Signs of dyslexia: If this is the case, you will hear your child complain of the 'text moving around'.
This is perhaps the most baffling sign of dyslexia. Sometimes you will find someone who can read out text quite proficiently and then completely fail to take any meaning from it. If you read the same text to them, they will understand it fine. There are two possible explanations for it.
Signs of dyslexia: This type of dyslexia is easy to spot because you will hear your child reading text out competently and yet he or she will be unable to answer even simple questions about it.
Sitting still and focusing on a book for a few minutes are critical to learning to read. We only recommend 10-15 minutes in a session, but even that can be testing for a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
There may be absolutely no underlying reason for difficulty with reading except for the fact that the child finds it very hard to concentrate on reading as a daily routine.
Signs of dyslexia: Of course, ADHD is easy to spot. Your child will be constantly on the move and this can affect their reading.
When you are learning to read it is a very intensive activity. That is why we recommend not doing more than 10-15 minutes.
A child with a relatively limited active memory capacity will find it substantially harder than otherwise. The effort used to process all the letters and phonemes and decode the words will leave no capacity left for analysis of the sentence.
Signs of dyslexia: What you will see is a strained ability to work through the text, but no ability to follow the story. This then makes the whole exercise meaningless and boring to the child.
If any of these dyslexia types are familiar, then check the corresponding solution for that type of dyslexia by clicking here to read part two of the article.
David Morgan is the founder and CEO of Oxford Learning Solutions, who publish the Internet Coaching System called Easyread.
