Last Updated on July 19, 2022 by Editorial Team
MEDICALLY REVIEWED BY NUMBERDYSLEXIA’S MEDICAL REVIEW PANEL ON MAY 29, 2020
Today, we are going to talk about the symptoms of Dyslexia. How to identify the early signs of dyslexia?
But first, we must know what exactly Dyslexia is?
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading. Kids with dyslexia have trouble connecting the letters they see to the sounds those letters make. Dyslexia affects the part of the brain involves in processing language and graphic symbols.
What are we gonna do about it?
Don’t worry. Just being a little cautious towards child behavior can help a long way in his/her future. Early you identify the signs, faster the child will be able to adapt to a new learning process and overcome the struggle. It’s important to keep a daily check of the child’s learning pattern. Lookup for his/her stuff such as homework, class test sheets, etc. to investigate any possible signs of dyslexia. If found, don’t panic. Consult a qualified school psychologist or special education worker right away.
What signs we should look for?
Dyslexia is still an under-researched and understudied subject. Thus, there is no definite list of symptoms. The symptoms may vary from person to person. Severity may alter as the child grows. Please note that not all children may show all symptoms, and kids might occasionally have trouble with reading. But children with dyslexia will struggle a lot more than other kids who are the same age.
Below given checklist can give you a better idea of dyslexia signs at different age timelines.
Signs and symptoms of Dyslexia in Children
Preschool or Kindergarten
- Kids with dyslexia will be slower in learning new words. He/she will struggle to distinguish similar-looking simple words such as cat, mat, sat, etc.
- Preschoolers with dyslexia lag behind their peers in language skills. They take a longer time to write, speak, and read than their friends.
- As it takes longer for them to process words correctly, the response is generally late.
- One can’t expect strong word processing skills at this age but a kid with dyslexia will find trouble in recognizing letters even in his/her own name.
- Unable to follow directions when lengthy commands threw to them.
School age
As the child reaches the school, the signs dyslexia may become prominent. At this age, he/she may :
- Difficulty reading text aloud. They will often have trouble sounding out words while they read.
- trouble in writing even simple words, like dogs, ships, class, etc. They misspell these repeatedly. Notebooks filled with teacher’s corrections. They generally have very messy handwriting.
- take long pauses while reading. Dyslexics may hesitate and use a lot of “um’s” when speaking.
- mess up similar-looking words, such as our and hour, year and ear, etc.
- trouble in differentiating speech sounds. They may find it difficult to connect letters with the sounds they make — “duh” for “d” or “en” for “n”
- skip words and letters while reading comprehension.
- have a hard time following a series of instructions. They may mess up sequence and hesitate to start over.
Signs and symptoms of dyslexia in adults
As well as the problems mentioned above, the symptoms of dyslexia in older children and adults can include:
- While reading skills have developed over time, dyslexics still require effort in reading lengthy comprehension and are generally slower than their peers.
- Adults with dyslexia will try to avoid reading and writing whenever possible.
- Poor essay writing skills. They are unable to express their thoughts in the writing even though they are knowledgeable about the subject.
- They try to avoid difficult words or words that can be mispronounced.
- They use a lot of “um’s” as they can’t remember the words or have trouble coming up with the exact word.
- In general, dyslexic individuals suffer extreme fatigue when reading
Other symptoms
Other than mentioned above, some symptoms are related to the behavioral and personality aspects of the child. Some traits shown by dyslexics are turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At one, the child may struggle to remember even simple words, but on the other, he/she may show excellent long term memory abilities for experiences, locations, and faces.
- A person with dyslexia has a strong strive for perfection. They notice even minute details of the project and would put effort to make it as balanced as possible.
- They produced very high quality written content in which they are knowledgable if spelling mistakes are ignored.
- Dyslexics are out of the box thinkers. Their point of perspective can’t really be judged by academic scores.
- They demonstrate excellence when focused on a highly specialized area, such as medicine, law, public policy, finance, architecture or basic science
- They really enjoy solving puzzles and have a high curiosity about new things.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,