Dyslexia in Children: How to Handle It

Learning disabilities are not always diagnosed in school age children. Sometimes parents can notice a disability in their child, for instance, when he (or she) is a preschooler. According to the National Institute of Health, one in every seven people in the USA suffers from one or other form of learning disability. At first, little was known about these problems and children suffering from them were most often thought of as not motivated enough or lacking in attention. But today science has shown that learning disabilities are a type of neurological problem.
There are various types of learning disabilities and here are the details on the most common one.

Dyslexia

This is the most common learning disability which is classified under reading disability or Developmental Dyslexia. Children suffering from this problem have difficulty in recognizing alphabets or words. They often misspell words and have problem reading. It should not be confused with other reading problems that arise from poor vision or inability to understand what is being taught.

● How To Know If Your Child Has Dyslexia

Dyslexia does not manifest only in school going children; symptoms of this problem are present in pre-school children as well. Symptoms include delay in speech, learning words very slowly, mirror writing, i.e. writing letters in a reverse way, and difficulty in rhyming words while speaking or learning rhymes. In school going children, the problem often manifests itself as a difficulty in learning alphabets and letters, difficulty in decoding written words, poor spelling, problems in associating individual words with their correct meanings, etc.

● How Is It Diagnosed

Several professionals coordinate to detect whether a child has dyslexia or is suffering from any other problem. Some of these professionals are clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and school psychologists. The input from the child’s teacher is also very important in diagnosing this problem.

● How To Help Your Child

If your child has been diagnosed as dyslexic, there are varieties of ways you can help him. The school he is attending has a huge role to play in this regard. If the school has a special educator, he or she may be assigned to help him out. It is also very important to know what form of teaching; auditory, visual or kinesthetic, is going to work for him. Based on that, you can help your child in home by use of computers, visual aids or flashcards (if he is a visual learner), reading notes or materials aloud, listening to audio books or taped class notes (if he is auditory learner) and using activity-based study tools, studying with music in the background, memory games with flash cards (if he is a kinesthetic learner). If you think that the public school your child is attending is not helping him enough, then you can try nonpublic schools that are there for students with learning disabilities. You can also opt for Individual Education Programs (IEPs) in which teachers, parents and school administrators combine efforts to design a suitable education program customized to meet the needs of the child suffering from dyslexia.

Author Bio: For more information please visit our OSHA Training and First Aid Training websites.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: education program ,visual learner,Dyslexia,Learning disabilities ,Dyslexia In Children

Leave a Reply