OnTrack Reading

If you’ve read The Dyslexia Puzzle from the beginning, you probably have some idea whether your preschooler is at risk of being dyslexic, either because of your experience with one or more of your older children or because of a recognizable family history of reading problems.

Some More Clues that Your Child Might be Dyslexic

You might already have noticed that your preschooler has missed certain developmental milestones, or failed to go through the crawling phase, or doesn’t possess the language skills of other children his age. For instance, he might not be able to come up with words that rhyme as easily as do his friends.

When you read with your preschool child you might be noticing that he shows little interest in the print itself, or much less interest than your older children did. If he does show an interest, he just doesn’t seem to retain the various clues about the phonics content that you’ve been providing your child from time to time.

The First Course of Action: Find a Developmental Optometrist

As soon as you notice this, you should locate a developmental optometrist in your area, if you don’t already know of one, and begin taking your child there for regular vision examinations. I am not going to presume to be able to tell you what they will recommend in terms of whether and when to start vision therapy, but personally, I would want my child to be around six or seven years old and reasonably settled down before undergoing vision therapy. Your particular developmental optometrist might disagree strongly with me, so your decision will depend on how convincing he or she is.

Next: Read, Read, Read to Your Child!

I would also read to my potentially dyslexic child a lot, more than to my other children in fact, because he will be doing less exploration of books on his own since print won’t make sense to him. I would try to avoid situations where my child can memorize the story and then parrot it back to me. During this phase, it’s important not to give your child the impression that reading is about memorization of the words on each page. Remember, he’s likely to have a very difficult time determining how print works, so memorizing every single word of an easy, even though fairly long, book is going to seem the easiest way to tackle what he considers reading. This is a false impression that can be very difficult to change once it’s taken root.

Consider Delaying Formal Schooling Unless the Curriculum Emphasis is on Child Development

I would also delay the start of kindergarten unless the curriculum was very strong on advancing developmental skills. Many current public school curricula are too academically demanding on five-year-olds with dyslexic tendencies. The pressures of federal and state testing has caused kindergarten curricula to be redesigned so that much more reading is taught than used to be the case. These are the sorts of curricula that convince some unfortunate graduates of kindergarten that they’ve already failed school.

However, if your school of choice is on the order of a Waldorf School, where child development remains a high priority and where a child’s personal interests are encouraged, go ahead and start formal schooling. I’ve seen third and fourth graders from Waldorf schools in our area who were really struggling to learn to read, but whose sense of self respect remained intact because the schools had not been pressuring them to read since kindergarten. This is not an endorsement of Waldorf Schools, incidentally. It’s just my personal observation of the effect of their approach on some children with dyslexia. Similarly, if your school offers a four-year-old pre-kindergarten that is strong on practicing developmental skills, consider it. But if the curriculum is geared toward teaching reading to four-year-olds, reconsider.

Summarizing

My intent would be to hold off schooling a bit if possible, while exposing my child to tons of literature at his comprehension level, and then get any vision problems diagnosed by the developmental optometrist addressed by age six or seven. Again, your particular OD (optometrist) might recommend starting earlier. I would then make absolutely certain that my child was getting the teachers most likely to still be teaching phonics in the classroom. If I couldn’t find such a teacher, I would bone up on phonics and make sure that my child gets the phonics exposure he will almost certainly need.

And, after all that, he might still struggle. But his self respect should be decent yet, his vision skills should be in place and he will understand the phonics of the English language. Not a bad start compared to the alternative routes that most dyslexic preschoolers take.

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