The National Institute of Health reports that up to 15 percent of the U.S. population might have dyslexia.  As one of the most common learning disabilities, dyslexia has been the subject of much research.

Testing for dyslexia is a good idea if your child is having problems with schoolwork or reading and writing comprehension.  You may want to test your child for dyslexia if the child’s teacher recommends it as well.  There are many signs and symptoms of dyslexia, and your child may show a few or many of them.  Testing for dyslexia early can prevent several problems later in education and behavioral issues.  The tests administrated to diagnose dyslexia are based off of a child’s age; therefore, your child can be tested at any age.  

How to Figure Out if Child Has Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that affects many children and adults.  The proper recognition of dyslexia can help children and adults manage their learning disability and even help them succeed in many areas of their life.  However, failure to recognize dyslexia early on can cause much stress and emotional heartache for the child, parents, and teachers.

What Is Dyslexia?

If you or your child has difficulty reading due to a learning disability such as dyslexia, you understand how important it is to get treatment quickly; the faster you can improve skills, the faster you can catch up in the classroom or at work.

BrightStar Learning is introducing the BrightStar Reader, a revolutionary new tool to help problem readers in just 8 weeks.

Technology is revolutionizing the way therapy and treatment modalities can be provided.  Webcams and the Internet are making it possible for therapists to help individuals with special needs all around the world, and Lexercise is one organization that offers online help for individuals struggling with reading, writing, and spelling.

Lexercise offers a free dyslexia test to see if your child is having difficulty with reading and processing words, and they offer a full evaluation to develop an individualized treatment plan.

Comprehension TherAppy is designed to help people with aphasia and alexia (acquired reading disorder). It comes with three modes: Listen, Read, or Listen and Read. The 500 + photographs of nouns in the Listen section were selected by speech-language pathologists. Verbs and adjectives can be purchased and downloaded as well.

A font has been developed by a Dutch graphic designer, which will make letters easier to read and comprehend for people with dyslexia. Designer Christian Boer is dyslexic himself. He created a font called Dyslexie to keep letters "tied down," helping readers not to flip them in their minds. He did this by changing the letters to make the undersides bolder, letting gravity do the work of keeping them right side up. He also made letters more distinct and spaced wider apart. Some letters are angled slightly to keep them from looking like others.

I am an elementary school reading specialist in a large public school system, so I have the opportunity to work with a large range of reading needs on a daily basis. For me, dyslexia is one of the most intriguing reading deficiencies I have studied. The children I serve with dyslexia range from first grade to fourth grade and are always some of my brightest students. They listen and learn all of our reading strategies with their peers and then have to process in their brain what that will look like for them when they read.

Dyslexia is typically diagnosed in children when they are around second or third grade in school. A team from Children’s Hospital Boston reports that they have discovered signs of dyslexia in children as young as 4 or 5 years old by studying their brain scans. This could be monumental news for families, who "often know that their child has dyslexia as early as kindergarten but they can’t get interventions at their schools," says Nadine Gaab of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children’s.

A documentary directed by James Redford (son of Robert Redford) uses animation and live interviews to explore the complex world faced by those who have dyslexia. In the film titled The D Word: Understanding Dyslexia, the audience follows Dylan, a high school senior, through both his struggles in school and his preparations to attend college. Mixed in with Dylan’s story are testimonials from prominent figures in the business world (Richard Branson), politics (Gavin Newsom, Lt. Governor of California), and others who have overcome dyslexia to find success.