Dyslexia. It's a word that is bandied about a lot these days along with ADHD, auditory processing disorder, illiteracy....

Sometimes it can feel like reading a medical manual. When you get to the end you feel like you have all the symptoms! In terms of your child and their difficulties, it can be difficult to figure out what is a symptom and what is not.

So let's go through a few conditions, we'll look at what they are, and some of the symptoms they can present. Please note your child might not present all the symptoms, and yet still have the condition. On the other hand, they may exhibit very few! This article is not a fail proof diagnosis, so please make sure that you consult a professional if you suspect any of these conditions.

We will start with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a range of difficulties that prevent a person from reading and writing to varying degrees. To really understand this we need to look at the reading process. In order to read , we need to take in information through our eyes, ears and muscles. That information is then processed by the brain to produce understanding of the words we are reading, or understandable words written onto a page. For various reasons, sometimes children have difficulties with the physical aspect of reading. They may need glasses, grommets or similar to correct theses difficulties. Often these are picked up by health checks, teachers or parents and no ill effect is experienced.

Dyslexia describes the range of symptoms that arise when something goes wrong with the processing part of reading. For some reason the brain might have difficulty with hearing all the sounds, controlling muscles to help focus eyes, connecting sounds with the letters seen on the page or getting sounds and letters into sequences. It might have problems with processing the information fast enough.

What will we see when that happens? Well you might see behavioural difficulties. These could be slowness in responding to instructions, forgetting what they were sent to do, or simply getting distracted too easily. The child might avoid handing in or doing homework, never get things finished or always be finding important things to do (like sharpen a pencil, or tie their shoes).  Another symptom could be often feeling sick, or headaches caused by anxiety or strain on their  bodies while trying to keep up. If they don't want to go to school, you need to find out what the problem is!

The behavioural symptoms could be as simple as always untidy, losing clothes and being dirty. You may also find your child to be great to talk to, fascinated in all kind of topics and yet their reading and writing just don't show that 'brightness'. Let's not forget things like, how well are they socialising with other children or how do they feel about themselves as a learner?

In terms of reading and writing, what will you see?
Well in writing, they may have great ideas but have trouble sequencing them or getting the words on paper. Their spelling may be random bearing no resemblance to the word they are writing. Then again there may be some logic to the spelling but they just don't seem to be able to remember the right way.

What could you expect when they read?
They may read in a monotone and  struggle over each word. They may read 'ok' but just not pick up the meaning of the text. They may also just put in extra words, take out words or substitute words when they come to something difficult.

That is a long list of symptoms isn't it? And sometimes they can be very subtle and difficult to spot. In classrooms where there are a lot of children they may go completely unnoticed.

The bottom line is, if your child isn't reading after about 6 months at school, if the progress or results at school don't match up with your child's personality and character at home or if your child seems to be stagnating in some aspect of literacy and not progressing and further then you should seek help!

The earlier you get help, the easier it is! It is easier to change the brain's processing patterns, easier to correct health issues and we don't have to overcome the self esteem issues that can put up such a huge barrier.

We would be very happy to talk with you and discuss any questions you may have. We promise you won't be 'wasting out time'. So please don't hesitate to ring us or email us and find out how we can help you and your child.