Dyslexia is a blanket term which describes a learning difficulty related to reading. The term is not an exact definition of the problem.
Dyslexia Symptoms may include:
- Letter reversals
- Letters and words appearing to move on the page
- Difficulty in understanding the meaning of words
- Difficulty in reading comprehension
- Difficulty in recognizing sight words
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The causes of dyslexia are one or more weaknesses in the foundational learning skills. Skills such as
- Visual Tracking
- Visual memory
- Auditory discrimination
- Visual Discrimination
The combination of these weaknesses causes difficulty in reading and related tasks.
The good news is that these skills can be strengthened
Does your child have difficulty reading? Maybe Dyslexia?
Watching your child struggle with reading is very painful, especially when one intervention after another, each of which promises so much hope. The result seems to be only in limited gains and not true academic success. It’s hard to know where to look for more help, or even what to expect. You know the famous success stories of people with dyslexia who grow up to achieve amazing results, but you fear they are above the norm. You do not even know if ever your child will get through school.
Perhaps you are not even sure if your child has dyslexia. You know his/her skills in reading are not progressing the way your or his teachers expect. When you try to help him/her learn reading, it’s like progressing through a fog. Perhaps your child gets the skills for the day—sort of—but there’s little to no retention of it all the next day. Maybe your child shows an unusually large vocabulary, remembers everything a person says, but still struggles with reading. What should a parent do in this case?
Is dyslexia a bad thing?
Dyslexia is a common disorder, and it can be quite frustrating from the parent’s perspective. No parent wishes to watch their child struggle. Moreover, for the child, it’s still worse. Many children will struggle with fears of being stupid. Perhaps, it is aggravated by peer teasing or their own sense of the teacher’s perception of the disorder.
A parent may feel alone in the struggle and unsure of what to do. When the school team appears to be less supportive than ideal it really downs the parent. Or maybe worse when school is oblivious to the fact that this disorder is present in your child. It can be truly frightening to face a school that thinks your child is simply a poor student. But you know in your heart that your child has many abilities, is quite clever, and needs to be given the chance to succeed.
Moreover, for children, it can be still more frustrating. They know they have the ability to understand and yet they sit in school, staring at texts, feeling stupid. Nobody enjoys doing things that they feel they are not good at. There is a high risk they may begin to feel they are not good at school, which means not enjoying school. You may watch your child’s natural love of learning slowly shrivel up and die. This is a terrible, heartbreaking, and unnecessary process. But everything’s not lost! There are ways to cope with that problem.
Dyslexia can be treated
If you are exploring this website, chances are you have already determined that what has been done is not enough for your child. It’s okay, even good, to make it to this point in your journey, because now is when you can do something. The good news is, educational research has resulted in a great deal of knowledge about how we learn. Now we know the foundational skills necessary to learning to read. And we are aware of the true mental processes behind dyslexia.
The long and short of it all is, no child needs to live with dyslexia. It’s possible and necessary to face dyslexia with the latest techniques and research. We long to offer your child those techniques. Science has already proven that we can become smarter in the areas of our brain that we regularly exercise. We understand what areas of the brain are to be influenced in order to get your child moving beyond dyslexia.
What is the process of treatment?
Sadly, the traditional system has not been designed for the child with dyslexia. When a child struggles with reading, traditionally the teacher begins to teach and re-teach phonics and sight words. If the child has all the background skills to progress at this point, the child will learn and catch up. However, this is exactly the wrong for a child with dyslexia.
This child has not yet developed the skill of stilling images in the brain, directionality, spatial skills, perceptual skills, and specific gross motor skills. The problem may also lie in the cross dominance. Many of these skills are developed through exercises that may feel totally unrelated to reading and yet they are truly precursory to reading. Only when all these skills are in place will a child begin to succeed in all areas of reading including phonics and sight words.
Help out your child!
Do not let your child get stuck in a system that has not succeeded yet in addressing his needs. Be proactive, take the initiative, and make yourself the expert on your child and his/her needs. This is what parents do in every other area of life for their children. So do not hand this one area over to outsiders, simply because someone else tells you to. Get involved. Get help. We want to empower you and your child to see success. We want the world to see the many, many incredible gifts of your child.
You can downnload our free dyslexia assessment just click here.