What are the Signs of Dyslexia
All children are different, but there will be significant clusters of the following:
Signs of dyslexia before school:
- Possible history of slow speech development
- Difficulty learning nursery rhymes
- Difficulty hearing the odd-one-out, e.g. cat, mat, pig, fat
- Slow in name finding (thinking of the word you want to say)
- Little early interest in letters and words
- Often accused of not listening or paying attention
- Difficulty following more than two instructions at a time
- Difficulty keeping a simple rhythm
- May not crawl, but may walk early / late milestones
- Finds buttons, laces, zips a problem
- Sometimes clumsy or disoriented
- Obvious ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days for no apparent reason
Signs of dyslexia in school age
- Poor personal organization
- Poor time keeping and awareness
- Difficulty telling the time
- Difficulty remembering what day it is, own birthday, days of the week,alphabet, tables and other things in sequential order
- Poor reading progress
- Reads a word on one page, forgets it on the next
- Poor ability in blending letter sounds together
- Difficulty establishing beginnings and endings of words, synthesis and analysis of words
- Hesitant or laboured reading, often missing out words or word parts, adding or substituting words
- Makes anagrams of words, e.g. tried for tired; bread for beard
- Muddles words in sentences – ‘can’t get it down on paper’
- Poor handwriting with reversals and badly formed letters
- Messy work with many crossings out and several attempts at spellings
- Work badly set out on the page
- Written expression not compatible with oral ability / work often not finished
- May lose the point of a story
- Very poor spelling
- Confusion with number order, e.g. hundreds, tens and units
- Confusion with number symbols
- Seems to ‘dream’ or ‘switch off; is easily distracted; may be regarded as lazy
- May become the class clown, disruptive or withdrawn (cries for help)
- Throws tantrums or else cries easily (frustration or tiredness)
- Low self-esteem / confidence
- Employs avoidance tactics (sharpening pencils, looking for books etc)
- Performs unevenly or inconsistently day to day
- Sometimes excessively tired
- Surprises you because in some ways s/he is bright and alert