Dyslexia Symptoms

The word "dyslexia" means "difficulty with words or language", and is frequently used to refer to a child — or adult — who seems much brighter than what his reading and written work suggest. The symptoms or signs below indicate that a child has dyslexia and therefore needs help:

• Children with dyslexia often confuse letters like b and d, either when reading or when writing, or they sometimes read (or write) words like "rat" for "tar," or "won" for "now."

• Another sure sign, which needs no confirmation by means of any form of testing, is elisions, that is when a child sometimes reads or writes "cat" when the word is actually "cart."

• The child who reads very slowly and hesitantly, who reads without fluency, word by word, or who constantly loses his place, thereby leaving out whole chunks or reading the same passage twice, has a reading problem.

• The child may try to sound out the letters of the word, but then be unable to say the correct word. For example, he may sound the letters "c-a-t" but then say "cold."

• He may read or write the letters of a word in the wrong order, like "left" for "felt," or the syllables in the wrong order, like "emeny" for "enemy," or words in the wrong order, like "are there" for "there are."

• He may spell words as they sound, for example "rite" for "right."

• He may read with poor comprehension, or it may be that he remembers little of what he reads.

• The child may have a poor and/or slow handwriting.