What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia, also known as developmental reading disorder, refers to a child’s difficulty with reading, writing, and spelling due to the brain’s decreased recognition of symbols (such as letters and numbers).

What causes Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is hypothesized to be a genetic disorder, as it is frequently found among family members. The brain has difficulty recognizing and processing written language, though it is not a result of visual difficulties.

How do I know if my child has dyslexia?

A child may exhibit the following symptoms: difficulty understanding written and spoken language, difficulty rhyming, difficulty matching sounds of letters to symbols of letters, and difficulty identifying written words. A child may also have math or writing difficulties.

How can I help treat my child’s condition?

It’s treated through a variety of strategies, depending on your child’s specific needs. The emphasis of treatment will be to develop tools for your child to help them read and write. Your child will be eligible for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) through the public schools to help identify tools and methods that support your child in the learning environment. Additionally, your child may benefit from individualized tutoring for extra support.

Our Approach at North Shore Pediatric Therapy

At North Shore Pediatric Therapy, our therapists play an important role in teaching children with dyslexia to read. Therapists use a multisensory approach to incorporate all learning pathways: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile. Additionally, the Orton-Gillingham method is used to build phonemic awareness skills, phonics skills, fluency and comprehension. North Shore Pediatric therapists are able to help children with a wide range of reading problems from dyslexia to kids who just want extra support with one-on-one direct instruction. Through our Reading Center, children can increase their rate of reading, reading comprehension, letter/sound correspondence, various literacy aspects and word decoding and gain confidence from this reading instruction.