Raising a Dyslexic Child: How to Deal with your Child's Learning Disability

Helping your children learn to read is an extremely important part of their schooling, especially when they are in kindergarten and first grade. When my daughter started in the first grade I noticed that we were spending way more time than should have been needed to finish the homework she had been assigned. Also, she still didn't understand it.

By first grade the school systems expect your children to be on a certain grade level, my daughter was not and incidentally she ended up being held back in the first grade again. This news was much worse for me to take in than it was for her. I couldn't understand why it was so hard for her to read, especially after all of our hard work.

During the beginning of her second year of first grade my mother came to visit. I explained the situation and why my little girl was held back. It was actually my mother who first discovered the signs that my daughter might be dyslexic. At this time I was unfamiliar with dyslexia and was in tears because I hadn't thought of it before.

I immediately went into the school and demanded that she be tested for dyslexia. I was then informed that they did not test for dyslexia until the second grade. How appalling, what if she never made it to the second grade? The fight was on; I bugged them until they consented to test her.

Low and behold, she tested positive.

This is where the question comes into play "what is dyslexia?" Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects a persons' ability to read. Actually 'dys' means 'difficulty' and 'lexia' means 'words'. This is a learning disability that affects millions of people all over the world.

There are some other signs that may be associated with dyslexia which many people are not aware of. I know I wasn't. Some difficulties that dyslexics' may suffer from could be concentration, placement of letters and numbers, perception, memory, verbal skills, abstract reasoning, and hand eye coordination.

It could be that a dyslexic person may only have one of these symptoms, or they could possibly have all of them. My daughter suffers only from letter and number placement, poor concentration, and memory issues.

Some times self esteem could become a problem. This stems from the misconceptions that dyslexics are lazy, trouble makers, class clowns, or mentally ill.

Self esteem issues can also be caused from the loss of confidence when experiencing failure in school or from being bullied.

Thank goodness my daughter has a pretty good sense of self esteem. We are a military family and need to move often, so she doesn't seem to have problems making friends.

Once she had been diagnosed the school transferred her to the only school in the district that had a program at the school for her. I can tell you this; I was truly amazed once she entered this program. Within three months she could read. Relief had washed over me, only a few months before I had been so worried about her being held back again.

We also had to go through the heartbreaking problem of having to tell her that she has dyslexia. Explaining dyslexia to a child is not as easy as it may seem. You can't just say "baby, you have dyslexia." And assume they will know what it is. We took the approach of making it a good thing.

Dyslexic people are very intelligent people. We told her about Albert Einstein being dyslexic, as well as George Washington, Walt Disney, and even "The Fonz." These were easy for her to associate with, being that she was only six. Now she knows that Tom Cruise, Alexander Graham Bell, Cher, and even Eddie Izzard are just a few dyslexic people that have made great things or great careers for themselves.

Inevitably, being a military family the time came when we needed to move. In the new state where we moved, the school did not have a program for dyslexia, none of the schools did. Oh no, another fight for my daughters education. They told me the only thing they could provide her with would be extra reading classes.

In the program she was in before, they had a special word decoding that they practiced. I asked them about this, they hadn't heard of it. What were we going to do? I knew it was proven that dyslexic children could stay on level if they received the help that they needed, but I also knew that 74% of children that read poorly in third grade will read poorly in the ninth grade.

My husband and I decided that we would just have her do the extra reading and work with her at home. There was not really any other choice; we could not afford to pay for private tutoring.

Two years later, forth grade, yet another school and another state. She still seems to do well in classes. Sometimes she stays right on grade level and sometimes she gets below. When she gets below, we crack down and she studies even harder.

Some people may ask how you get dyslexia. Well, the disability is neurobiological and genetic. Research has shown that individuals inherit the genetic link for dyslexia, which means that you inherit it from an immediate family member. If you are a parent with a dyslexic child, remember that more than one of your children can be dyslexic.

The websites listed below are great resources for information about dyslexia. They are filled with facts about dyslexia, support for parents, child and family members. You can even find help with finding school programs, and lists of dyslexia correction centers. Now days you can even buy software and other products to help your child learn more appropriately with their disability, you can find some of these on these sites as well. I certainly wish that I had known of these websites when my daughter was first diagnosed.

If you suspect that your child may have dyslexia please get them tested for it. The websites I have listed also have links for online assessment testing for dyslexia. The younger that your child is diagnosed, they can receive the help and support that they need to lead to a very successful future.