Diagnosis of Dyslexia

The diagnosis of dyslexia will originate from a child psychologist. The schools in our area do not use the term dyslexia when diagnosing learning challenges.

They will label it as a developmental delay, learning disability, or auditory processing. Many people believe that with dyslexia students actually see letter and words backwards. This is not true. It is not a vision problem. Dyslexia is a processing problem within the brain. This condition is not cured; it is overcome.

Types of Dyslexia

There are three types of dyslexia: dysphonetic, visual and global. Global dyslexia is a combination of dysphonetic and visual (dysidetic) types. Global dyslexia is more difficult to remediate.

Like any other diagnosis, students fall within a continuum of dyslexia. Some students with a mild case of dyslexia may not see any significant difficulties until later in life. Sometimes these students will succeed with extra effort and extra support. These students will typically not be diagnosed until later in life. Likewise, students with significant dyslexia needs strong remediation to learn to read. Typically, these students have difficulty learning letter names and sounds while in pre-school or kindergarten.

Research

Research has repeatedly proven that students with dyslexia need a strong systematic phonics approach approach to reading. Reading more is not always the answer. Research demonstrates through MRI’s that dyslexic students actually read with a different part of their brains. Students with dyslexia will read using strong contextual clues, instead of decoding the word correctly. This produces a tremendous amount of guessing of unknown words. The student will many times use a synonym as a substitute for the actual word that is being read.

Our Program

We have developed a simple systematic phonics approach to help students with dyslexia. Our program has helped many students with this diagnosis.

We do not diagnose dyslexia. Further testing by a child psychologist is the appropriate way to determine the specific diagnosis. Several psychologists in the Tulsa area refer clients to us with the diagnosis of dyslexia.

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More information

Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz is an excellent book for parents to read. Be wary of other false information concerning dyslexia. Colored overlay sheets, vision therapy, and making word representations with clay are some of the unsuccessful programs. They are a waste of precious time and money. Be ware of programs that promise to fix dyslexia. You overcome it, not cure it.