How to Help a Dyslexic Child

Dyslexia is one of those problems which easily lead to frustration and start a vicious cicle:

Frustration -> Losing Desire to Learn -> More Mistakes -> Frustration

So what can we, the friends, parents or teachers, do to help children who suffer from dyslexia?

First of all, strengthen the child's self-esteem. Focus on the things he's good at. Maybe even start with things which have nothing to do with writing or reading at all.

Rule of thumb: Praise the child even for small successes but do not chide him for his mistakes!

Dyslexia is a learning disorder. It has nothing to do with being lazy or dumb. Thus, it doesn't help to force the child to do excercises over and over again as long as he doesn't understand the rules behind them.

The most important part: Talk to the child!

You need to find out how he thinks, which rules he understands and where exactly his problems are. No two dyslexic children have exactly the same problems. Question everything he writes, his mistakes and, even more important, the words he wrote correctly. Check whether it was learning by heart, pure chance at guessing or real understanding which led to the correct spelling.

Lead by example!

Dyslexic children often have no interest in reading. No wonder, it means hard work and even more frustration for them. However, reading can play a great part in learning how to spell correctly. Try to awake your child's interest in reading. Children are curious by nature, and books are such a great source of enjoyment and knowledge. Thus said, read yourself. Show him that reading can be a pleasure by doing it yourself. Look for books which might be interesting for him and offer to read them aloud. After a time, you can take turns. The child's turns should be very short in the beginning while your turns are longer so that the child really gets an incentive to read: "If I read this short sentence, my mother/father/friend will read the whole next page to me." Slowly, as the child gets better, make his turns longer. However, always watch out that he still has fun. By no means, make reading a strain or a duty!

Answer questions!

Whenever the child comes to you to ask how a word is spelled/read aloud, help him. Show him that asking for help and posing questions is good and that you are willing to help him. If the child asks you about topics of interest to him but you can't tell him much, show him where he can find more information: in the library, in the internet, in books you have at home.

When you manage to turn the frustration into desire to learn again, you have won. Granted, the child will still need help and will most likely always have problems with reading and writing, but you have turned the vicious circle into a positive circle:

Desire to Learn -> Spending Time Reading and Writing -> Rewards (better grades, information, pleasure) -> Desire to Learn

Reading - Only a Hobby or More?

Your child is sitting in his room, totally absorbed by the book he's reading, while chaos reigns all around him? He is reading although you told him to tidy up his room? He knows more excuses for reading on than for anything else?

Congratulations! You are blessed with a book-loving child. Nowadays, this becomes ever rarer. Many children love their computers, Xboxes, Nintendos and the like. If you give them a book, they might even look for the switch to turn it on.

You might wonder why I congratulate you if your child forgets his duties while reading. Well, that’s simple. Reading is the most precious gift. A child that loves reading will most probably be more creative than other children. He has a great imagination. He can concentrate for hours on one and the same task. Furthermore, his ability for language, for grammar and spelling, and his vocabulary will increase considerably through reading.

Now, do you still wish your child wouldn’t read that much?

The greater problem is how to wake up the love for books in a child that doesn’t have it naturally. There are so many children nowadays who have never read a single book in their whole life. The best way to get your children to read is so easy: Read to them when they are young. Buy them books with topics that interest them and fit their age. Read a lot yourself. Children tend to copy what their parents do.

And then, when you have a book-loving child, don’t lose patience when he forgets his duties over his books. Just think of all the benefits of reading and get yourself a nice book too.

Learning Languages While Reading

Yes, it is possible. You can improve your language skills without actually studying it. How? Now, that’s simple. All you have to do is read in the language you want to improve.

What do you say? That doesn’t sound easy? You are afraid you won’t understand much of what you read?

Ok, let’s have a look at the requirements you need in order to achieve this:

Grammar

You need to have some basic grammar understanding. With basic, I mean that you should know at least the different tenses (you don’t need to be able to use them all on your own yet, you only need to recognize them) and the personal pronouns (and the object forms for direct and indirect as well as possessive objects).

Sentence Structure

You should know how a sentence is structured, that is you need a basic understanding of main clauses and subordinate clauses and of conjunctions.

Vocabulary

You need a basic vocabulary in order to understand at least part of what you read without a dictionary. This vocabulary should include question words, above mentioned conjunctions, the most commonly used verbs, the most commonly used adjectives and the most commonly used nouns. To learn them, you can look at your local library if they have some books on basic vocabulary in your target language.

When all these requirements (and, come on, they are not that difficult to achieve) are met, you only need a book which interests you and a good dictionary.

Have fun reading (and learning)!