As a parent of a dyslexic daughter and a tutor for students with dyslexia, I realize there are many resources and loads of information intended to help parents identify whether their child may be showing signs of this particular learning difference. However, I also realize when you are a parent of a young child, you are in the day-to-day with your preschooler and possibly unsure how to apply the advice to your particular child. Since my daughter is now an adult with dyslexia, I am now able to reflect on her preschool years.
Hopefully by sharing some of my hindsight with you, our story will offer encouragement and bring some inspiration as well. I now realize an early clue for a reading struggle came when my daughter, Katy, was approaching four years old, and I wondered if she was “kindergarten ready.” A bit of research on my part brought me to the conclusion that physically she was right on track; however, in terms of academic readiness, she was not quite there. For instance, she was not actually able to identify primary colors. She loved all the colors and knew all their names; she just wasn’t identifying items specifically with their corresponding color. Instead, she would awaken each morning and choose her “color of the day”. On Monday everything might be yellow, then on Tuesday it was blue’s turn. Wednesday was assigned green, and so forth. Interestingly, I was not worried or suspicious about her flighty color conundrum. I remember thinking, Katy is creative and always out for a good time; therefore, her free-spirited approach was just another dose of her personality. It never occurred to me to question whether this was a learning milestone. I was a young mother and, in truth, we were kind of growing up together in many ways. In fact, I believed without a doubt that I could get creative with my daughter, help her learn the correct color labels all while making learning fun. I figured it was my job to help her learn them and up to this point I had not done my job well, so I better step up my game. That’s just what I did. I coupled some good-old fashioned grit with my own clever imagination which resulted in an idea to not only make it fun for Katy, but to also leave a lasting impression in her memory. Using a method from her “play book”, I chose a color of the week. For instance, the first week our targeted color was primary blue. I put up a blue piece of construction paper on the kitchen wall and, every time we walked in the kitchen, we touched the paper and said, “blue.” We decked out our wardrobe in blue that week, we ate blue food, used the blue paint and crayons, and read books about blue things like the ocean, whales, or the sky. Sure enough, after a few weeks of intense focus on one color at a time, Katy mastered their identification. At the time it had not dawned on me that teaching this brown-eyed “mini-me” was going to continue taking extensive time and creativity. Of course, that was over 20 years ago, and much has changed in terms of resources available for struggling readers and how to most effectively support them. The good news is that if you think your child is showing the symptoms of dyslexia or any learning difference, there is help and support available for navigating their needs and setting them up for success. Check out the resources found on this website or reach out to me directly. I’d love to hear from you. Remember, you’re not alone!
