Most dyslexics will exhibit more than 4 of the following traits and behaviors. These characteristics can vary from day to day. Contact us for referrals to professionals for diagnosis.

General

• Appears bright, highly intelligent, and articulate but unable to read, write, or spell at grade level.

• Labelled lazy, dumb, careless, immature, “not trying hard enough,” or “behavior problem.”

• Isn’t “behind enough” or “bad enough” to be helped in the school setting.

• High in IQ, yet may not test well academically; tests well orally, but not written.

• Feels dumb; has poor self-esteem; hides or covers up weaknesses with ingenious compensatory strategies; easily frustrated and emotional about school reading or testing.

• Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, story-telling, sales, business, designing, building, or engineering.

• Seems to “Zone out” or daydream often; gets lost easily or loses track of time.

• Difficulty sustaining attention; seems “hyper” or “daydreamer.”

• Learns best through hands-on experience, demonstrations, experimentation, observation, and visual aids.

• Trouble memorizing home address, phone numbers, numbers or letters (the alphabet) in a sequence.

• Trouble copying from memory

• Difficulty sequencing or memorizing a sequence of steps

• Difficulty learning foreign language

• Trouble memorizing times tables past 5

• Difficulty telling time with the hands of a clock
  
  

Vision, Reading, and Spelling

• Complains of dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading.

• Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations.

• Reading or writing shows repetitions, additions, transpositions, omissions, substitutions, and reversals in letters, numbers and/or words.

• Complains of feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing, or copying.

• Seems to have difficulty with vision, yet eye exams don’t reveal a problem.

• Extremely keen sighted and observant, or lacks depth perception and peripheral vision.

• Reads and rereads with little comprehension.

• Spells phonetically and inconsistently.

• Trouble differentiating math signs (+, -, X. /)

• Incorrect use of or no capital letters used, skips punctuation.

• Difficulty remembering sight words (they, does, were) or homonyms (their, they’re and there.)

• Skips or misreads prepositions (at, of, to, is).

• Ignores suffixes (reads talk instead of talked, begin instead of beginning.)

• Difficulty reading printed music.

• Slow reader, reading proficiency below grade level.

• Guesses the word based on shape or context, reads a word correctly on one page, then incorrectly on the next.
  
  

Hearing and Speech

• Has extended hearing; hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.

• Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking.

• Mixes up sounds and syllables in long words, difficulty with rhymes.

• Says aminal instead of animal or pasketi for spaghetti.
  
  

Writing and Motor Skills

• Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip is unusual; handwriting varies or is illegible.

• Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports; difficulties with fine and/or gross motor skills and tasks; prone to motion-sickness.

• Can be ambidextrous, and often confuses left/right, over/under.

• Skips punctuation. 

• Letter or number reversals past the end of grade 1.

• Difficulty learning cursive.

• Difficulty copying from the board.