Symptoms

The symptoms of dyslexia can show as early as a child’s preschool years. If you are a parent or a teacher then you should be looking out for the following signs in children. Moreover, signs can appear in teenagers and adults too as dyslexia may have remained undiagnosed in their childhood. However, in some cases Adult onset dyslexia usually occurs as a result of brain injury or dementia.

Preschool years:

Late talking
Learning new words very slowly
Problems forming words correctly, such as reversing sounds in words or confusing words that sound alike such as “tip” “pit”
Problems remembering or naming letters, numbers and colors
Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or playing rhyming games

Mispronouncing familiar words and constant ‘baby talking’

Primary school to middle school:

Problems processing and understanding what is heard
Difficulty finding the right word or forming answers to questions
Problems remembering the sequence of things
Difficulty seeing (and occasionally hearing) similarities and differences in letters such as confusing “b” as “p”
difficulty in phonological awareness: Inability to sound out the pronunciation and breaking down of an unfamiliar word
Difficulty in spelling-highly frequent spelling errors
Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing
Making errors while reading that are completely irrelevant to the content such as will say “kitten” instead of the written word “cat” on page on page with an cat illustration on it.
Slow writing speed and poor handwriting

struggling with phonemic awareness meaning they are able to recognise that that words are made up of smaller units of sound (phonemes) and that changing and manipulating phonemes can create new words and meanings such as they face difficulty in differentiating between words like “hot” and “hat”

Teenagers and adults:

A childhood history of reading and spelling difficulties
While reading skills have developed over time, reading stil requires great effort and is done at a slow pace
Slow reading of most materials—books, manuals, subtitles in films
Avoids reading aloud
Have to read a text over and over again to understand it.

Remember that the symptoms and the severity of the symptoms may be variable among individuals. Dyslexia’s levels of severity are :

Mild: Difficulties are faced, but can be compensated. Working around them is possible with the right accommodations or support.
Moderate: significant difficulties are faced that you need specialized instructions and help. You may also acquire specific interventions or accommodations.
Severe: Difficulties faced are so pronounced that they continue to be an issue even with specialized interventions, accommodations and other forms of treatment.