THINKING & LEARNING DIFFERENTLY
3
=
+ x
1 7
6 4
Dys-what-ia? Understanding dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia WORDS AMANDA COLLINS BERNIER
C
HANTEL MACK FIRST NOTICED something different about her youngest child when she was just a toddler. While most kids master their colors around age 2, her daughter struggled to learn them until she was almost 5. Later came difficulty with spelling, reading and writing. Then, when her daughter started school, things got even more challenging.
But Mack knew her little girl was smart. “Her common sense was always better than my other kids,” the Fort Worth mom of three says. So when in second grade her daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia, it all made sense. Dyslexia, a learning difference characterized by difficulty reading, is the most commonly diagnosed learning disability, affecting as many as one in five people by some estimates. But it is just one of the ways the brain may work and process differently. For a child to struggle at some point with reading, writing and math isn’t out of the ordinary, but to struggle persistently— despite their effort—could be a sign of learning disability like 14
may 2024 | DFWCHILD
C
T H
A
o
J K
J
P
dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia. Though they share some similarities, these learning differences present and impact children in unique ways. Here are some of the differences and nuances of each. WHAT IS DYSLEXIA? Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty learning to read and also affects spelling. “One of the most consistent challenges in dyslexia is difficulty learning to isolate individual sounds in spoken language, referred to as phonemes,” explains Dr. Sheryl Frierson, medical director of the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at Scottish Rite for Children in Dallas. This difficulty in picking out individual sounds in spoken words makes it challenging to connect which letters correspond to spoken sounds. “Another complication is that the rules for letter-sound correspondence are specific to each language, so Spanish letter-sound rules are different than English letter-sound rules,” Frierson shares. WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF DYSLEXIA? • Trouble learning letter names and remembering the sounds they make • Difficulty “sounding out” words when reading • Difficulty learning to correctly spell words when writing • Struggling to read and spell common sight words • Difficulty memorizing math facts • Confusing letters that look or sound similar • Trouble separating individual sounds in words • Trouble blending sounds to make a word WHAT IS DYSGRAPHIA? This learning disorder is characterized by slow and/or illegible
ISTOCK
9