The world your child lives in is very different to what it was like when you were growing up and is continuing to change.

If your child has dyslexia, you can make a difference. Successful people with dyslexia have said that their success is largely due to the practical and emotional support they received from their parents. Every good parent will certainly want to be part of their children’s success story.

Your child will get a better education if there is a strong connection between home and school. As a parent, you can provide that connection by being actively involved with the school, knowing the teachers, and talking with your child about what they're studying and learning.

While getting to know your child, it is important to notice some signs of dyslexia. Some of the common signs of dyslexia include but are not limited to:

• Problems with labels, rhymes, sequences.
• Letters or numbers reversed or confused b/d/p/q, n/u, 13/31.
• Being slower to process and needing repeated exposures to retain learning.
• Retrieval issues – learns something one moment, gone the next.
• Large gap between oral and written capabilities.
• Poor sense of direction – difficulty telling left from right.
• Reluctance, embarrassment or avoidance around reading out loud.
• A preference for face-to-face meetings/phone calls rather than email correspondence, and for charts/graphs over text.
• Frequent misspelling of words and mixing up words which sound similar (recession/reception), in speech or written work.
• Poor handwriting, punctuation and grammar.
• Misunderstanding or misinterpretation of managers’ instructions.
• Problems meeting deadlines, despite working hard.
• Fine motor coordination may be problematic, e.g. tying laces, doing up buttons.

Please note that these lists are indicators, and not diagnosis. Rethinking dyslexia and your child may involve being actively engaged in what out-of-school program may help boost your child’s self-esteem (for example, music classes, art, debating, or sport), having fun with your child at home or in the car playing chess, word games, reading together, and making explanations. While language games and reading won’t ‘prevent’ dyslexia, they help by promoting an awareness of the sounds letters make and how language works. Remember to praise and encourage your child, even if they guess wrong.