Early Signs of Dyslexia (Before School Even Starts). Don't be Called a Late Bloomer.

Do not let ANYONE fool you. There are signs you can look out for even before the start of elementary school.

Early intervention makes a DIFFERENCE! This is the case for most everything in life and dyslexia is no outlier. The earlier you can discover the challenges and intervene with the correct help, the better chance your child has to:

1. NOT GET FRUSTRATED and LOSE CONFIDENCE

2. ENJOY SCHOOL and LEARNING

3. CLOSE ANY GAPS of READING DIFFICULTY

Dyslexia is a disorder that primarily impacts the skills involved for accurate and fluent reading and spelling. When explaining to a child, I have often said that dyslexia means that your brain has a hard time keeping all the sounds in your mind when you are trying to read a word. This can make reading hard and tiring.

Of course, it is more apparent (and obvious) around 5-6 years old when kids begin learning to read and even more apparent in 3rd grade when reading transitions from learning to read to reading to learn. BUT......if you are educated on the signs, it can be recognized in preschool. And kids should be screened starting in kindergarten at school.

Some of the signs most easy to observe EARLY on are the following:

• Trouble learning nursery rhymes.

• Trouble recognizing letters or remembering the alphabet.

• Likes listening to stories and books, but limited to no interest in letters and sounds.

• Trouble recognizing patterns in words, i.e. cat sounds like hat, but not hog, etc.

• Trouble remembering new words.

• Muddles words.

• Forgets names of colors, friends, teaches, etc.

• Substitutes words.

• A history of slow speech development.

These are just some of the early signs. The biggest signs for our family were trouble with rhyming and a LOVE for books, but limited interest in letters. My children have always LOVED books and were all three very early talkers. I remember asking Dane's preschool teacher why he had a hard time with remembering the letters in his name as I thought it was strange (this was before I knew of dyslexia) and she told me he was a boy and probably just a "late bloomer". When he got into kindergarten, I found it so interesting that he could memorize entire books and "read" them to you like he was reading, but he could not recognize letters. When I expressed concern, again, I was told he was a "late bloomer." I wish I had known this information earlier, which is where my passion lies in sharing it with others.

Please keep in mind that dyslexia is strongly GENETIC. A child with an affected parent has a 40-60% risk of developing dyslexia and this risk is increased when other family members are also affected. So there is a HUGE genetic component.

This is HUGE! If you know dyslexia runs in your family, keep this in mind when your child is developing to be more aware of signs so you can intervene early.

Please share this info so we can be more educated as a society on what to look for. Let's not let these sweet, smart an capable kids become frustrated or told they are "late bloomers" when we can help them with early intervention. Help me pass this along to others.