Dislexia

When daughter Susan was in middle school, she had identical twin friends named "Jenny" and "Michelle." I had the hardest time telling them apart for quite a long time. After spending lots of time with "Jenny," who was probably the one closer to Susan, I began to notice slight differences in the twins' personalities, facial expressions, tone of voice, preferences in fashion, etc. After being around Jenny so much, it was easy to tell Jenny from Michelle. There was no mistaking one for the other once I knew one of them well.

Now the girls are grown and I still have no trouble deciding who is who. I know each of them, wherever and whenever I see them. So it is with children and those letters that they confuse: b/d/p/q, for instance.

Very, very few children truly are dislexic. Most children just need to be taught to notice the salient features. Watching for children's confusions and teaching them to look at the features that make up a particular letter can help solidify that knowledge. Then, the others letters no longer get confused with the one that is well known.

I have worked with hundreds of children who have common confusions like the b/d/p/q or w/m or f/t - in my 14 years of experience in teaching struggling readers, I have never seen a true dislexic child. I guess there really is something called "dislexia," but I've never known a child who could not be taught directionality of letters and words.