READING
AND SPELLING DISORDERS
Many of the children that we see through our
practice show signs of reading and spelling
difficulty. In school, many children move
very quickly from "learning to read",
to "reading to learn." However,
a child may experience difficulty in reading
or spelling at any point in his academic life.
A child may appear to be learning phonics
normally, but may struggle when encountering
longer words, with many syllables. Some children
appear to decode adequately, but do not seem
to remember much of what they have read. Because
reading smoothly with comprehension requires
good auditory processing and language skills,
speech and language pathologists are often
critical players in helping to determine if
your child has a reading or spelling disorder.
If you answer "yes" to any of the
following questions, you may want to consider
having your child evaluated for a reading/spelling
disorder;
- Did your child develop speech and language
skills later than other children his age?
- Is there a family history for reading
or spelling difficulty?
- Does your child confuse letters that
look and/or sound similar? (i.e." versus
"d", "t" versus"
d", "m" versus "n",
"f" versus "th" )
- Does your child struggle with following
novel, multi-step spoken directives without
the help of gestures (i.e. "go and
get your backpack, take out your math book,
and do all of the problems of addition on
page 82.")
- Does your child read correctly, but have
difficulty in telling you specifically what
was read, or in answering questions about
story detail?
- When speaking or writing, does your child
struggle with naming things quickly and
accurately?
- Does your child to seem to rely primarily
on memorization skills, versus being able
to sound out words?
- Does your child confuse small words like
"for", "of", "from"?
- Does your child recognize words when
reading, and then not seem to recognize
the same word again later on the same page,
book, or day ?
- Does your child struggle with writing
from the blackboard or in taking notes?
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