Children's Health

Dyslexia Is Forever

Despite improvements in the diagnosis and management of dyslexia, many adolescents and young adults with the disorder continue to have reading problems. continued...

Shaywitz tells WebMD the next step is to "better understand the neural circuitry for reading and determine how this circuitry develops over time in poor readers."

The International Dyslexia Association says few dyslexics exhibit all the signs of the disorder. Some common signs include the following:

• Lack of awareness of sounds in words, sound order, rhymes, or sequence of syllables.
• Difficulty decoding words -- single word identification.
• Difficulty encoding words -- spelling.
• Poor sequencing of numbers or of letters in words, when read or written -- for example, b/d, sing/sign, left/felt, soiled/solid, 12/21.
• Problems with reading comprehension.
• Difficulty expressing thoughts in written form.
• Delayed spoken language.
• Imprecise or incomplete interpretation of language that is heard.
• Difficulty in expressing thoughts verbally.
• Confusion about directions in space or time (right and left, up and down, early and late, yesterday and tomorrow, months and days).
• Confusion about right or left handedness.
• Difficulty with handwriting.
• Difficulty with mathematics -- often related to sequencing of steps or directionality or to the language of mathematics.
• Similar problems among relatives.