What are the symptoms of Dyslexia

Not every sign or symptom of the dyslexic profile presents itself in each dyslexic person, although there is usually evidence of a sufficient cluster of these to lead to a diagnosis. It should be noted that dyslexia tends to run in families, so there may be a history of it. Asking parents however may not be enough, as often a parent will not have recognised it when he/she was at school. Many only realise the condition once their children are diagnosed.

Before School

• History of slow speech development.
• Difficulty learning nursery rhymes.
• Finds phonological difficulty with the selection of the odd one out e.g. cat: pig : fat.
• Slow in name finding.
• Some dyslexic children enjoy being read to, but show no
  interest in letters or words. Others have no patience for sitting and listening.
• Difficulty with two or more instructions at one time (due to weak memory system) but well able to carry out tasks when presented in smaller units.
• Difficulty keeping simple rhythm.
• May not crawl but walks early.
• Persistent difficulty in dressing.
• Difficulty with shoe laces, buttons, clothes the right way around.
• Difficulty with catching, kicking or throwing a ball.
• Difficulty with hopping and skipping.
• Excessive tripping, bumping into things and falling over things.
• Obvious good and bad days for no apparent reason.

At Primary School

• Personal organisation poor.
• Poor time keeping and awareness.
• Difficulty in remembering what day of the week it is, birth date,
  seasons of the year, month of the year.
• Difficulty in learning to tell the time.
• Difficulty remembering anything in sequential order, e.g. days of the week, the
  alphabet, tables, foreign languages.
• Poor reading progress, particularly on look-and-say methods. Inability to blend letters together.
• Difficulty in establishing syllable division, beginnings and endings of words synthesis and analysis of words.
• Hesitant and laboured reading, especially when reading aloud, often misses out words or adds extra words or fails to recognise familiar words.
• Making anagrams of words, e.g. tired for tried, breaded for bearded.
• Undetermined hand preference.
• Confusion between left and right.
• Poor handwriting with many reversals and badly formed letters.
• Difficulty in picking out the most important points from a passage.
• Poor standard of written work in comparison with oral ability.
• Losing the point of the story being written or read. Messy work with many crossings out and words tried several times e.g. wippe, wype, wiep, wipe.
• Persistent confusion with letters which look similar, particularly b/d, p/q, n/u, m/w.
• Confusion with number order, e.g. plus and minus. A word spelt several different ways in one piece of writing. Badly set out written work, inability to stay close to the margin.
• Seems to dream, does not seem to listen.
• Easily distracted.
• Limited understanding of non-verbal communication.
• Fine motor skills may be poor leading to weakness in the speed, control and accuracy of the pencil.
• May become the class clown, disruptive or withdrawn
  (these are cries for help).
• Employs work avoidance tactics (sharpening pencils, looking for books etc.)
• Rests head on desk or right over to one side when colouring or writing.

• Performs unevenly day to day.
• Excessive tiredness due to the amount of concentration and effort
  required.