October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month

Oct. 5, 2011 - PRLog -- Pride Learning Center, an Orton-Gillingham reading clinic for school-age children struggling with dyslexia, wants to heighten public awareness of dyslexia warning signs, so that children can be professionally diagnosed sooner and then seek the specialized instruction that will enable them to become successful students academically.   Founder Karina Richland, whose teaching and researching experience have made her an expert in the areas of dyslexia and learning disabilities, reveals what to look for in regards to this often misunderstood learning disability.

“Dyslexia is the most common learning disability that affects 1 in every 5 children,” states Karina Richland, Founder and Managing Director of Pride Learning Center.  “Most children with dyslexia go undiagnosed for years.  With early detection, proper intervention, and certain accommodations in school, dyslexics can improve their reading, writing and spelling skills significantly and succeed academically.”

Warning Signs in School-Age Children

•   Child uses memory skills in reading not decoding strategies
•   Reads a word on one page but doesn’t recognize it on the next page
•   Confuses look alike letters like b and d, b and p, n and u, or m and w
•   Makes many reversals
•   Substitutes a word while reading that means the same thing but doesn’t look at all  similar, like “trip” for “journey” or “mom” for “mother.”
•   When reading leaves out or adds small words like “a, the, to, are, of”
•   Reading fluency is poor because the child spends so much energy trying to figure out words
•   Avoids reading as much as possible
•   Misspells many words
•   Writes illegibly
•   Appears lazy, unmotivated, or frustrated

“Children with dyslexia have difficulty in learning to read despite traditional instruction, at least an average intelligence and an adequate opportunity to learn” adds Ms. Richland.  “Dyslexia does not mean a child sees letters backwards, has poor eyesight or a brain disorder.  Dyslexia is not an eye problem.  It is a language-processing problem, so learning language-processing skills is the most important tool a dyslexic will need.”

For more information, visit www.pridelearningcenter.com

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Pride Learning Center provides one-to-one reading help for students with learning differences, including dyslexia, auditory and/or visual processing disorder and/or ADHD. Pride's reading program is based on Orton-Gillingham research and is multisensory.