In honor of Dyslexia Awareness Month, let’s talk about how we can prevent reading difficulties before they happen—by identifying young children who are at risk. The best time to identify a potential reading challenge is before a child receives formal reading instruction. This may sound crazy, but research proves it, and the longer we wait to find out a child’s risk profile, the more risk that child faces. Dr. Nadine Gaab, one of the creators of an early dyslexia screener, coined the term “dyslexia paradox” to describe the unnecessary harm we cause our young learners. Simply put, the dyslexia paradox is the discrepancy between when we currently diagnose dyslexia and when research has shown the optimal window for early intervention is. Typically, we introduce formal literacy instruction and if a child is still struggling by the end of second grade, or the middle of third grade, we start thinking about possible diagnosis and intervention. But at this point we have already missed the optimal time for intervention. And intervention in fourth grade takes four times longer than interventions in kindergarten. Even before children learn to read, we can assess their “risk profile” by assessing key literacy milestones that are proven by research to be most predictive of later reading success. These areas include:

1. Phonological awareness: rhyming, sound isolation, blending, sequencing, and sound manipulation
2. Rapid Automatized Naming: a student’s ability to retrieve information in a rapid and automatic manner
3. Sound Symbol Correspondence: knowledge of letter names and sounds they make
4. Oral Language Comprehension: a student’s vocabulary, sentence comprehension, and ability to follow multi-step directions

While we can’t diagnose a child in preschool with dyslexia, we CAN assess the degree to which they are at risk for struggling once they do start formal reading instruction. It is critical to provide specific interventions in the area that the child shows high risk in. Whether it is phonological awareness, vocabulary, sound symbol correspondence, or some combination of these, waiting to deliver support to the child will only make the learning process more difficult and time-consuming for the child. Research also suggests a genetic component with reading difficulties; if a parent struggled with learning to read, there is a 50% chance that the child will also struggle. Gathering family history is an inexpensive and important component of any screener.

By pairing early screening with the appropriate interventions, we can prevent reading difficulties from occurring, and lessen the severity of difficulties that do occur. We have the power to prevent children from ever entering into a cycle of reading frustration and failure. We have the power to change lives.

To learn more: early dyslexia screening