Recognizing and Understanding Dyslexia

Richard Selznick PhD is the Director of the Cooper Learning Center in New Jersey. He is also the author of “School Struggles,” to be published in July 2012, and “The Shut-Down Learner: Helping Your Academically Discouraged Child.”  In this essay, Dr. Selznick offers some pointers to parents whose children are struggling with ;earning to read.

Dyslexia is defined as a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding (phonics) abilities. These difficulties typically are the result of weaknesses that are seen in the phonological (sound) system of the language.

Take, for example, Sarah, an 8-year-old third-grader recently assessed at the Cooper Learning Center who was found to have dyslexia:

For Sarah, reading was a laborious chore, something that she avoided at all costs. Tensions were high each night around homework time. Our assessment of Sarah showed that she had great trouble with decoding (phonics) and that she frequently substituted words while she read (e.g., “pricopinny” for “porcupine”), which interrupted the flow of meaning in the text. The results of the testing and Sarah’s history suggested that she was dyslexic, yet there were no signs of reversals or upside down reading.

Helping Sarah’s parents understand that Sarah had a legitimate problem was essential. Like most families in these situations, Sarah’s parents needed to lighten up on the homework-time tension, yelling and pressure about reading. They needed to understand that Sarah’s difficulties were not the result of her not trying hard enough.

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