CLUES TO DYSLEXIA IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
From OVERCOMING DYSLEXIA by Sally Shaywitz
IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
The earliest clues involve mostly spoken language. The very first clue to a
language (and reading) problem may be delayed language. Once the child
begins to speak, look for the following problems:
The Preschool Years
• Trouble learning common nursery rhymes such as "Jack and Jill"
and "Humpty Dumpty"
• A lack of appreciation of rhymes
• Mispronounced words; persistent baby talk
• Difficulty in learning (and remembering) names of letters
• Failure to know the letters in his own name
• Difficulty learning to talk*
• Difficulty pronouncing words correctly or expressing ideas clearly*
• Difficulty listening and following directions*
• Difficulty remembering names, symbols, or lists*
Kindergarten and First Grade
• Failure to understand that words come apart; for example, that
batboy can be pulled apart into bat and boy, and, later on, that the word
bat can be broken down still further and sounded out as: "b" "aaaa" "t"
• Inability to learn to associate letters with sounds, such as being
unable to connect the letter b with the "b" sound
• Reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters;
for example, the word big is read as goat
• The inability to read common one-syllable words or to sound out even
the simplest of words, such as mat, cat, hop, nap
• Complaints about how hard reading is, or running and hiding when it
is time to read
• A history of reading problems in parents or siblings.
• Difficulty in learning the alphabet*
• Difficulty sequencing and/or forming letters or numbers*
• Difficulty learning to read, write, and spell*
• Poor sense of time or space, before and after, left and right,
months and days*
• Messy handwriting*
• Skips words in a sentence and doesn’t stop to self correct**
• Can’t remember words-sounds out the same word every time it occurs
on the page**
• Frequently guesses at unknown words rather than sound them out**
In addition to the problems of speaking and reading, you should be looking
for these indications of strengths in higher-level thinking processes:
• Curiosity
• A great imagination
• The ability to figure things out
• Eager embrace of new ideas
• Getting the gist of things
• A good understanding of new concepts
• Surprising maturity
• A large vocabulary for the age group
• Enjoyment in solving puzzles
• Talent at building models
• Excellent comprehension of stories read or told to him
CLUES TO DYSLEXIA FROM SECOND GRADE ON
From OVERCOMING DYSLEXIA by Sally Shaywitz
Problems in Speaking
• Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar, or complicated words; the
fracturing of words–leaving out parts of words or confusing the order of the
parts of words; for example, aluminum becomes amulium
• Speech that is not fluent–pausing or hesitating often when speaking,
lots of um's during speech, no glibness
• The use of imprecise language, such as vague references to stuff or
things instead of the proper name of an object
• Not being able to find the exact word, such as confusing words that
sound alike: saying tornado instead of volcano, substituting lotion for
ocean, or humanity for humidity
• The need for time to summon an oral response or the inability to
come up with a verbal response quickly when questioned
• Difficulty in remembering isolated pieces of verbal information
(rote memory) — trouble remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random
lists
Problems in Reading
• Very slow progress in acquiring reading skills
• The lack of a strategy to read new words
• Trouble reading unknown (new, unfamiliar) words that must be sounded
out; making wild stabs or guesses at reading a word; failure to
systematically sound out words
• The inability to read small "function" words such as that, an, in
• Stumbling on reading multisyllable words, or the failure to come
close to sounding out the full word
• Omitting parts of words when reading; the failure to decode parts
within a word, as if someone had chewed a hole in the middle of the word,
such as conible for convertible
• A terrific fear of reading out loud; the avoidance of oral reading
• Oral reading filled with substitutions, omissions, and
mispronunciations
• Oral reading that is choppy and labored, not smooth or fluent
• Oral reading that lacks inflection and sounds like the reading of a
foreign language
• A reliance on context to discern the meaning of what is read
• A better ability to understand words in context than to read
isolated single words
• Disproportionately poor performance on multiple choice tests
• The inability to finish tests on time
• The substitution of words with the same meaning for words in the
text he can't pronounce, such as car for automobile
• Disastrous spelling, with words not resembling true spelling; some
spellings may be missed by spell check
• Trouble reading mathematics word problems
• Reading that is very slow and tiring
• Homework that never seems to end, or with parents often recruited as
readers
• Messy handwriting despite what may be an excellent facility at word
processing–nimble fingers
• Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language
• A lack of enjoyment in reading, and the avoidance of reading books
or even a sentence
• The avoidance of reading for pleasure, which seems too exhausting
• Reading whose accuracy improves over time, though it continues to
lack fluency and is laborious
• Lowered self-esteem, with pain that is not always visible to others
• A history of reading, spelling, and foreign language problems in
family members
In addition to signs of a phonologic weakness, there are signs of strengths
in higher-level thinking processes:
• Excellent thinking skills: conceptualization, reasoning,
imagination, abstraction
• Learning that is accomplished best through meaning rather than rote
memorization
• Ability to get the "big picture"
• A high level of understanding of what is read to him
• The ability to read and to understand at a high level overlearned
(that is, highly practiced) words in a special area of interest; for
example, if his hobby is restoring cars, he may be able to read auto
mechanics magazines
• Improvement as an area of interest becomes more specialized and
focused, when he develops a miniature vocabulary that he can read
• A surprisingly sophisticated listening vocabulary
• Excellence in areas not dependent on reading, such as math,
computers, and visual arts, or excellence in more conceptual (versus factoid-
driven) subjects such as philosophy, biology, social studies, neuroscience,
and creative writing
