Recognize the early symptoms of dyslexia?

Many times, as parents, we do not begin to see the first symptoms of dyslexia that our children have been showing. My son was diagnosed at the age of six. It was then that I began to study more about dyslexia. The more I read and researched, the more I realized that the clues started at a young age. Although six is ​​still considered early for diagnosis, I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about my ignorance.

These are some of the signs I missed:

* Difficulty retrieving words: my son used to say “have you seen my blue thing?” To which he would always have to answer. “What thing?” What I did not understand or did not know how to grasp was that my son was demonstrating the difficulty that some dyslexics have with the retrieval of words. Instead of having to think about the word, he used generic words like “thing” or “things.” He also tended to describe an item in detail, without having to remember a specific word. For example, if you couldn’t find the word car. I would describe it as “the thing with wheels, which we get into and we go.”

* Difficulty rhyming words: Around the age of three, many of my son’s friends were happily playing on the playground, singing rhyming words. Sometimes they were real words, and other times they were nonsense words, but they still rhymed. Although my son said a few words here and there, he did not show the pleasure that other children had in creating these rhymes. Because the dyslexia part can include difficulty isolating the sounds of words, it is often difficult for these children to isolate the initial sound to change it into the rhyming word.

* Directional Words: Directional words can include right, left, up, down, before, after, yesterday or today. I can remember that at the age of three, my son would tell me things he did. The phrase would sound something like: “I went swimming tomorrow and I had a lot of fun.” I thought this was cute and a comment for a three year old. However, it was another red flag that I ruined.

* See every word for the first time: When my son entered and progressed in kindergarten, it is no wonder that reading became a frustrating event in our home. Very often, my son would find a word in a book that he needed to probe. He could do this successfully, then he would turn the page and come across the same word. However, instead of recognizing the word you just read, it is as if you have never seen the work before. This is an extremely common trait among children with dyslexia.

* Sight Words: “Sight Words” are very important in today’s curriculum. Visually recognizable words are small words that are often used in written language. For example, be, what, are, with etc. The idea is that reading will be much smoother if a student can look at these words and know them by sight, rather than having to pronounce them. These can be extremely difficult for the dyslexic student. The nightly homework in kindergarten included training, how fast my son could read a 30-word list. The goal is 30 words in 30 seconds. My son tended to average around a minute and 30 seconds.

All children can show one or more of these signs at some point. It does not mean that everyone is dyslexic. However, if I had known what to look for, each of these signals should have been ringing a bell in my head along the way. In hindsight, by the end of kindergarten, I should have had enough evidence for my son to be tested. I allowed myself to fall for the “give it a little more time” excuse. If you suspect that a child has dyslexia or any other type of learning disability, you must act immediately.