Blog Entry 1: Tips for Parents of a Dyslexic Child

1.  Read to your child. Even when they get older. As children get older, parents normally expect the child to read aloud at bed time (taking turns with the parent). This might not be a good idea. A priority for parents of a dyslexic child is for the child to develop a love for books. Listening to someone reading gives most of the benefits of reading (The child still creates images and worlds in their imagination as described by the author). An older child could be asked to follow in the book as the parent reads.

2.  Audio books can be very helpful. Let you child follow in a book while listening to the audio book. If a child gets a setwork book for school. Let them listen to the whole audio book before the school year starts.

3.  Understand that you child is trying hard. It’s not their fault.

4.  Do positive reinforcement. Tell your child things like; be aware that you might have to be patient with other children as your brain works 100 times faster than theirs. Here are some examples you can give to your child:

• You will see a solution to a problem immediately while the other children will have to linear-sequentially work through the problem.
• You are a visual-spatial thinker, so you will understand visual things much easier. (For example, a dyslexic person can easily understand the helical structures of DNA.)
• Your creativity is greatly enhanced. (For example, if a dyslexic person has to make a sculpture from a piece of wood they actually see the object in the piece of wood and remove the unneeded wood).

5.  Understand that on top of everything English is a difficult language for spelling. One of the reasons for this is, because the British empire was so widespread it imported many words form different languages. For example; entrepreneur, (French), kindergarten (German), patio (Spanish), origami (Japanese), typhoon (Chinese), pajamas (Hindi) etc. This was just one word from each language, there are many others for example; beret and buffet are also French.

6.  Look for their strong points (the magic). For example, dyslexic children are very creative. They are also normally very good at sports such as athletics and dancing. The reason being because a dyslexic person can position their mind’s-eye above their body.

7.  Remind you child about the long list of famous and highly successful people that have dyslexia.  It is worth noting that many famous people (like entrepreneurs and scientist etc) are so successful because of their dyslexia.

8. All parents of dyslexic children should read Ron Davis’ book “The Gift of Dyslexia”. The book has a lot of good information, including practical exercise you can do with your child to help them read and write better.