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HOW EARLY CAN DYSLEXIA BE DIAGNOSED

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

MY SEVEN YEAR OLD SON WAS DIAGNOSED AT 6 WITH LANGUAGE BASEDLEARNING DISABILITIES. HE IS IN AN ADAPTIVE FIRST GRADE CLASS THIS YEAR AND WITH MORE ONE ON ONE INSTRUCTION IS DOING OKAY. THEY HAVE NOT DIAGNOSED HIM WITH ANY SPECIFIC LANGUAGE BASED LD BUT HE SHOWS SIGNS OF DYSLEXIA. WHEN IS A CHILD USUALLY DIAGNOSED WITH IT AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE COMMON SYMTOMS? ANY INPUT WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 04/09/2004 - 12:04 AM

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I have had a number of students with the diagnosis of dyslexia. This is just my opinion and I am certainly not an expert….

If your childs doctor told you your child had a vision problem, it would not really be helpful. “Vision problem,” could be any of a hundred things, and without a specific diagnosis, won’t help anyone. Dyslexia is such a vague term, that unless you have a very specific diagnosis, that ‘label’ won’t help. If you have good insurance, I would take them to a clinic/hospital/facility where they spend the time to dignosis the specific problem is.

In school, I am given enough time to find out if a child has a SLD, but all to often, identifying the specifics is seldom acheived. I would hope that bigger schools wo may have a diagnostician may be able to determine specifics, but the term DYSLEXIA, is far to vague to be helpful.

I hope that helps. Good luck, and you are certainly asking the right questions!

Submitted by des on Fri, 04/09/2004 - 3:07 AM

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I’ve heard it can be dxed as young as 5 1/2. The phonological awareness is not there, and there are other traits such as speech language delay (could be due to other causes), speech language differences, difficulites with sequencing and rote memory.

Take a look at Susan Barton’s Bright Solutions for Dyslexia site:
www.brightsolutions.us
It is somewhat commercial but there is still a good bit of serious info for nothing. Also schwabblearning.org and resourceroom.net
As well as this site.

—des

Submitted by Janis on Sat, 04/10/2004 - 2:27 AM

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Yes, dyslexia means reading disorder basically, so the official diagnosis of dyslexia is not all that essential. You want a multi-sensory structured language reading program whether you call it language-based LD or dyslexia, so the terminology really doesn’t matter.

Janis

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