How can you help a child with dyslexia?

Health Child Care Parenting Tips General Topics

Dyslexia

It's a learning disability characterized by difficulty in reading. Children with this learning disorder have trouble reading fluently, accurately, reading comprehension and writing.

Signs of Dyslexia

The symptoms of this disorder may differ from one child to another.
The difficulty with accuracy and fluency in reading and spelling.
Trouble in decoding words.
Children avoid reading both; out loud and to themselves.
Kids find hard recognizing whether two words rhyme.
Children may get frustrated or even anxious when reading.
Kids find difficult recognizing letters and matching them to different sounds.
Struggle with learning new words.
Frequently has to re-read sentences and paragraphs.
Quickly forget how to spell many words he/she studies and can't recognize common sight words.
Children make too many spelling errors.
Fail to read at the expected grade level.

Now that you are familiar with what dyslexia is, it's time to learn how you can help your child with dyslexia?

What Should You Do?

An important part of the treatment is educating you about this learning disorder. Treatment for this problem consists of using educational tools to increase the ability to read, medicines and counseling are not appropriate for this disorder.

Get tips for teaching your child to learn sight words.
Find incredible ways to help your kids connect letters to sounds in day-to-day activities.
Search ways to enhance your child's reading comprehension.
Explore apps, chrome tools, and software to help with reading.
Search free audio books for your child.
Talk about the stories you and your child love to read together and ask questions like, “What do you think will happen next?”
Re-read your kid's favorite storybooks or school books. It might be a boring task for you, but it will help your child to memorize words and will enhance his learning capacity as well.
Know your child's strengths. Appreciate his/her strength and skills. Don’t let this learning disorder be the main focus.
Make sure your child spends some time reading alone, both aloud and quietly.
Play his/her favorite songs, rhymes, or even numbers to help remember things. If your kid is too younger to learn, use nursery rhymes and play silly rhyming games with him.
Play word games with your child.
Work closely with your child's school and ask the school authorities to set up an IEP that spells out your child’s specific needs and helps you track progress.
For older children, you can use technology to help them learn easily. With smartphone, tablets, computers, or you can say with the help of videos, your child may be able to learn quicker. Online dictionaries, text-to-speech software, and spell-checker tools can also make a huge difference in your child’s progress.
Celebrate your child's minor achievement or successes. Take him/her out for a lunch or amusement park after the completion of a difficult project or after a big test.
Staying organized is really difficult for your child if he or she is having dyslexia. Help your children break huge tasks into smaller ones. Then, co-operate with your child in his/her homework.
Don’t expect perfection from your children. Many times, average marks or close enough is equal to success.
Make your child understand what dyslexia is and what the causes of dyslexia are. Ensure that they understand it’s not their fault and you will support them throughout.
Let your child participate in activities he is good at. This can balance the struggles with schoolwork.
Tell your child “You love him” often.
Tell your child that many wildly talented and renowned names have (or had) dyslexia, like Albert Einstein and Whoopi Goldberg.

Conclusion

If your child is suffering from dyslexia, you may face many parenting challenges. But you need to be firm, patient and optimistic. Also, take out some time to help your child learn things besides his schoolwork. Plus, make him/her understand that he/she is not suffering from any major disease and he/she is skilled and smart in many ways.