If your child has dyslexia, some treatments can improve their ability to read and write. These programs also help kids catch up to their peers in school.
The younger the children when they start treatment, the better their odds of success. But even adults with dyslexia can continue to improve their skills with the right help.
Dyslexia treatments are targeted at each person. Your child will work with one or more specialists to develop a program that meets their unique needs.
How Is Dyslexia Diagnosed?
To diagnose dyslexia, a professional such as a school psychologist will consider several types of information and some tests. There isn’t one simple test to diagnose dyslexia.
They may consider background information from parents and teachers about the child’s development and any family history of learning disabilities, input from their pediatrician, and their medical history.
A speech/language pathologist or educational assessment specialist also may be involved in assessing whether your child has dyslexia.
Tests and assessments may check many things, including:
- Oral language skills
- Word recognition
- Reading comprehension
- Spelling
- Vocabulary
- Phonics (understanding the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds)
- Phonemic awareness (the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes, or individual sounds, in spoken words)
- Decoding (using knowledge of letters and sounds to read an unfamiliar word)
- Rapid automized naming (how quickly your child can name letters or other objects aloud)
Tests often assess code-based skills that are involved in reading, says Kristen McMaster, co-program coordinator of special education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development. “Each test might be just a couple minutes but will sort of tap into different aspects that will help the tester have insight into what the specific difficulties are,” she says.
This information will help match your child with the right dyslexia program.
Once you have a diagnosis, you can work with your child’s doctors, teachers, and educational specialists to create a learning plan.
Reading Programs
Kids with dyslexia have trouble matching letters with the sounds they make and words with their meanings. They need extra help learning to read and write.
Your child can work with a reading specialist to learn how to:
- Sound out letters and words (“phonics”)
- Read faster
- Understand more of what they read
- Write more clearly
A couple of reading programs are geared toward kids with dyslexia. They are:
Orton-Gillingham. This is a step-by-step method that teaches kids how to match letters with sounds and recognize letter sounds in words.
Multisensory instruction. This teaches kids how to use all of their senses — touch, sight, hearing, smell, and movement — to learn new skills. For example, your child might run their finger over letters made out of sandpaper to learn how to spell.
Regardless of which reading program is used, “the key thing, whether it’s in a private setting or in a school setting, is that they’re getting what we call structured literacy instruction,” McMaster says.
This means programs that are “very explicitly and directly addressing the code-based skills that are involved in reading, so phonemic awareness, phonics, helping to develop reading fluency, but typically a very structured approach that has direct, explicit instruction with lots of modeling, lots of breaking things down into very small steps,” and extended practice, she says.
Extra Help
Talk to your child’s school about getting help to address their unique learning needs. The law requires schools to set up special learning plans, called Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), for kids with learning disorders such as dyslexia. An IEP describes your child’s needs and how the school will help meet them. You and the school will update the plan each year based on your child’s progress.
Extra help for kids with dyslexia can include:
Special education. A learning specialist or reading specialist can do one-on-one or group sessions, either in the classroom or in a separate room in the school.
Accommodations. An IEP outlines special services your child needs to make school easier. These might include audiobooks, extra time to finish tests, or text-to-speech — a technology that reads words out loud from a computer or book.
School isn’t the only place where your child can learn. You can also help foster reading and writing skills at home. Read with your child whenever you can. Help them sound out words they have trouble with.
Learning Strategies
These tips can help both kids and adults with dyslexia:
- Read in a quiet place with no distractions.
- Listen to books on CD or computer, and read along with the recording.
- Break up reading and other tasks into small pieces that are more manageable.
- Ask for extra help from your teacher or manager when you need it.
- Join a support group for kids or adults with dyslexia.
- Get plenty of rest and eat healthy foods.
As your child gets older, they’ll learn how to manage their dyslexia. A learning disorder shouldn’t stop them from excelling in school, going to college, or later having a successful career.
Supporting Children With Dyslexia at Home and School
For children with dyslexia, their needs at school vary based on their individual situation. Along with working with your child’s school to create and update an IEP, you may want to talk with your child’s classroom teacher, special education teacher, or specialist to see how you can support them. For example, tutoring with a reading specialist might benefit your child.
Typically, if your child is identified for special education, they get at least some of their reading instruction from a special education teacher, but sometimes, a reading specialist or other specialist at the school may be working with them, McMaster says.
If you’re the parent of a child with dyslexia, you have the power to be their advocate, and it’s a good idea to be updates with any information your child’s school shares with you about their dyslexia, McMaster says. Understanding what the grade-level expectations are for reading can be helpful, she adds.
How can parents help at home?
If your child has dyslexia, you can help them at home by reading aloud with them. When they're old enough, you can read together or have them read aloud to you.
McMaster recommends another way to read with your child: “The parent might read a page of a book, and then the child reads that same page. So, they kind of go back and forth so the child sees a good, fluent model and then gets to practice reading themself.”
While reading is important, it’s also important not to let dyslexia “take over and define the child’s existence” so everything is focused on reading difficulty, McMaster says. Try to align your child’s books with their interests. If they’re interested in sports, read about sports, she says.
Along with reading, you can practice phonemic awareness, to build your child’s skills in letter-sound relationships, in fun ways. “If they’re in the car, they could be doing rhyming words or saying the sounds they hear in words,” such as the separate sounds in the word “cat,” McMaster says.
Having trouble reading can affect your child’s self-esteem. So, talk with them about it, make sure they understand that their difficulty with reading is not a failure, and show your love and support.
For parents, joining a support group may be helpful because these groups can connect you with other parents of children with dyslexia and advocate for children with dyslexia. These groups may be local or broader in scope. One example is Decoding Dyslexia, a parent-driven group.
What’s the Outlook for a Child With Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a lifelong condition that can’t exactly be cured, but many children can learn to read and write well with support.
The effects of dyslexia vary from person to person. Some children and adults have more trouble with reading and language than others.
If dyslexia goes undiagnosed, children may struggle in school. If dyslexia is diagnosed by second grade, children have more time to include reading and learning plans that can help. The sooner your child can get support, the better.
“Sometimes, I hear from parents that their child reads just fine right now, but they’re noticing spelling problems,” McMaster says. “If there is any concern, the earlier it can be identified and dealt with, the better, because the longer we wait, the higher the expectations for reading in school,” and kids can fall further behind if they don’t get the support they need.
Dyslexia can affect a child’s self-image because they may believe they’re not smart or capable. But there’s no link between intelligence and dyslexia. People with dyslexia can excel and be gifted.
“Many people with dyslexia are very successful in life, and so it’s not that they’re sort of doomed to failure. But it’s just so critical that they get the help they need,” McMaster says.
Dyslexia Treatment for Adults: What Changes After Childhood?
If someone is diagnosed with dyslexia when they’re an adult, some of the same approaches that are used with children can be helpful for them, McMaster says. This includes specialized reading and writing instruction from someone who is specifically trained to work with people with dyslexia.
This may include instruction on how to decode unfamiliar words, read multisyllabic words by blending the parts together, and recognize irregular words that don’t follow predictable patterns.
“Later in life, adults have typically learned to read one way or another, maybe not in the most efficient ways,” McMaster says. For example, they may recognize words by sight rather than by decoding them. “A lot of times, they just build up a lexicon of words that they recognize and then use context and things, but those are not the most efficient ways to tackle text, especially if it’s difficult.”
Adults who haven’t gotten support for their dyslexia may struggle with vocabulary, comprehension skills, spelling, and writing, so they may have a hard time expressing themselves.
If dyslexia causes trouble reading and writing at work, measures such as assistive technology and text reading systems might help. The Americans with Disabilities Act provides a right to request reasonable accommodations on the job.
Takeaways
Dyslexia can make reading and writing hard. But if children get diagnosed early on, they can get the support they need to learn to read and write well. This support typically is a structured approach that includes direct instruction on reading and writing from a specialist who’s specifically trained to work with people who have dyslexia. In school, this may be a special education teacher or a reading specialist. With treatment, many people with dyslexia overcome much of their difficulty with reading and writing.
Dyslexia Treatment FAQs
What is the best treatment for dyslexia?
The best treatment for dyslexia varies depending on the person’s needs. But typically, treatments involve direct instruction from a trained specialist as part of a structured approach.
How can I improve dyslexia?
You can improve dyslexia through specialized reading and writing instruction from a specialist who’s trained to work with people with dyslexia.
How can I teach a dyslexic child to read?
Some approaches to teaching children to read don’t work well for children with dyslexia. Structured literacy instruction, which teaches children how to decode words in a systematic way, can help them learn to read.
Can dyslexia be cured?
Dyslexia is a lifelong condition, and it can’t be cured. But the right support can help overcome the symptoms of dyslexia.
Is dyslexia linked to ADHD?
Dyslexia and ADHD are separate disorders, but they sometimes occur together. An estimated 30% of people with dyslexia also have ADHD. One condition doesn’t cause the other, though.
Can a child outgrow dyslexia?
A child can’t outgrow dyslexia, but if they get the support they need, they can improve their reading and writing skills significantly.