Liam is a seven-year-old boy just starting second grade. His teachers say he’s bright, attentive, and helpful. But after two years of school, Liam still can’t recognize his letters, and reading is as far away from his grasp as the moon. Liam isn’t alone. One out of every twenty children has his learning disability (LD).
A LD affects the way a student absorbs information. Like Liam, these children are bright and find ways to compensate for their disability. Dyslexia, a reading disability, is the most common LD affecting 80% of all learning disabilities. Dyslexia is a container term for all forms of reading problems. We speak of dyslexia when a child reads either too slowly or inaccurately. In most cases both symptoms will be true. More detailed symptoms include difficulty in decoding words, spelling errors, word mispronunciations, poor handwriting, and a fear of reading out-loud.
According to PACFOLD (Putting a Canadian Face on Learning Disabilities), “Canadians with a learning disability overwhelmingly achieved lower levels of literacy (71.6%) compared with 36.9% of the general population.”
Professor Linda Siegel, a leading dyslexia researcher at the University of British Columbia believes that any child displaying any symptoms of dyslexia should be assessed. For BC children to be successful in school and beyond, intervention is the key. Hazel McBride PhD and Dr. Siegel conducted research on adolescent suicides. A staggering 89% of those victims demonstrated significant deficits in spelling and handwriting.
Help is available. A brand new BC-based company, Dynaread.com, has developed a new dyslexia treatment, an online program that brings struggling readers of ages 7 and up to functional fluency. On their website https://www.dynaread.com/ the company offers a free dyslexia test, or online reading assessment that is scientifically accurate and reviewed by an academic.
There is no need for children like Liam to fall behind in school. The earlier they are diagnosed for dyslexia symptoms; the sooner remediation can take place.
Free lance author Michael Thal is a reading specialist and father of two daughters. You can visit his website at http://www.childcontrolled.com/.
