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Parents and teachers always want to know how early can we identify dyslexia. Actually we
can identify dyslexia as early as, or I should say the at risk potential for dyslexia, as
early as age three when a child begins to be more competent om his use or her use of
language. The central difficulty with dyslexia is difficulty with language. And so if a child
is very slow in learning language, is between the ages of three and five, has difficulty
remembering things. For example, if you say go to the kitchen and get me the peanut butter.
If the child gets to the kitchen and forgets what he or she is after, this begins to help
us understand a difficulty with memory. So difficulty or very, very slow acquiring language.
And the language is usually has difficulty with the production of speech as well as with
the linking together of words, and what we call the structure or the grammar. Difficulty
remembering very common ordinary things, by the age of five most children know the names
of all their family members, they know their address and their phone number. When we see
five year olds coming to kindergarten who do not have those skills, that sends up a
red flag. When a child comes to school as early as first grade, we begin to see the
characteristics of dyslexia. Difficulty with learning the pairing or the matching of letters
with their sounds. What sound goes with the letter representation. If they have difficulty
with that, they then will have difficulty with what we call de-coding, or taking words
apart sound by sound. And at the same time they'll have difficulty with spelling, which
involves the same process. Taking words apart and coding the letter for the sound.