Dyslexia Symptoms In Kindergarten Children

What is Dyslexia?

Before we get into the symptoms of dyslexia in kindergarten children, it is worth spending a min on understanding Dyslexia. Dyslexia has had many descriptions over the ages and has changed as people have come to understand more and more about dyslexia. A basic description of Dyslexia would be that it is a disability that specifically deals with learning. Dyslexia is of a neurological origin. It is worth pointing out and noting that it is NOT a disease and being dyslexic has nothing to do with being intelligent.

Children who are dyslexic can be spotted early, as early as kindergarten. In fact, it is the earliest stage at which dyslexia should be diagnosed as dyslexic children can be trained to learn and grasp words. This would help them tremendously as they grow. Being able to read, form words, understand text, participate in discussions and lead a healthy normal life is all possible even if you are dyslexic.

Kindergarten children with dyslexia have difficulties with accurate and fluent (or both) recognition and utterance of words. These difficulties result from deficiency of the phonological factor in language which in turn hampers the growth of vocabulary and knowledge among children at the kindergarten stage. Keep in mind that Dyslexia is not an ethnic or racial disorder. It can happen to both boys and girls, alike. It is not gender specific in anyway.

Symptoms of dyslexia in kindergarten children

Children in kindergarten, who have dyslexia, will show the following symptoms or signs

• Delayed learning of tasks such as tying shoe laces or telling the time in a watch or clock.
• These children start talking very late as compared to children of their age group.
• Confusion regarding their right and left side or be confused with arithmetical signs.
• It is difficult for them spell in a phonetic manner.
• They have difficulty with reading and spelling.
• They may face difficulty in letter reversal, such as ‘D’ or ‘B’.
• They may not be able to recognize similar or closely related words, such as ‘Town’ or ‘Down’, ‘Mine’ or ‘Dime’.
• They may not recognize ‘Inversions’, such as –‘d’ or ‘b’, ‘m’ or ‘w’ and ‘u’ or ‘n’.
• They may also have problems with transposition of words. For e.g. ‘house’ and ‘home’ , ‘come’ or ‘go’ and ‘give’ or ‘take’.
• They may take a lot of time in learning vocabulary.
• They may face difficulty is organizational, planning and time management skills.
• They will grip their pencil in an awkward fashion.
• May not able to recollect or remember facts.
• The might even have poor fineness in motor coordination or struggle to perform sequential motor tasks, such as tying or untying shoe laces.

If your child is showing any of the signs then you can bring these points for discussion with your child’s teacher and ask them to evaluate your child for a learning disability. This is done by schools at no cost and your child’s teacher would be best person to help you assess your child’s condition.

Please bear in mind that children at the kindergarten level do tend to reverse words and letters as they begin learning. It is completely normal for a child at the kindergarten level to do that. However, this tendency of mix ups usually disappears by the time the children reach the 2nd grade.

Can a Dyslexic Learn or be Taught?

The answer is, YES! A dyslexic child can be taught to read, write, spell and even pronounce and understand words and their formation. Dyslexia does require an early diagnosis and assessment. Then, these children can be phonologically trained and taught to absorb and process information in a manner that will make them understand words and sounds.
They will definitely take up more time as compared to other children. However, if children are identified as dyslexic at the kindergarten level then they can have additional help and this goes a long way to help them have fewer problems as they grow up.