Late, sloppy work & acting out can signal late to emerge reading disabilities
Some students do not struggle with reading until they get to the upper grades. Why is this? Some kids could master reading when the words were not complex. But when words began to have three or more syllables, they begin to struggle. Reading physically hurts, their spelling is poor, and it is hard to get their thoughts onto paper. Children at this age will start to do anything to avoid schoolwork and homework…excel and dedicate themselves to something non-scholastic (music or sports), become the class clown, rarely complete assignments and when they do, they look poorly done. Some students turn to bullying others to feel better or act out in class to get sent to the principal’s office or the nurse. Often the child is very bright and intelligent, confusing parents and teachers even more. The child can also suffer from anxiety or depression, and strongly worries that they could in fact be “dumb” and someone will find out.
What the research says…
Research conducted by the American Psychological Association, and published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, 2003, Vol. 95, No. 2, pp. 211-224 states that “mild and well-disguised reading difficulties may arise after fourth grade due to the increasing demands for greater accuracy and speed in decoding. Some children rely almost entirely on sight memorization of words, and thereby appear to be succeeding in learning to read for several years until this strategy becomes unwieldy. Even children who initially master decoding successfully, could nevertheless encounter difficulty when the words to be recognized and spelled become more phonologically and morphologically complex after the primary grades. When recognizing the words in connected texts is slow and effortful, fewer cognitive resources can be devoted to the high-level processes needed to attain an understanding of the text’s meaning.”
If your child is finding school more challenging, their standardized test assessment scores are decreasing, and both of you seem to be at a loss for why this is happening, take our dyslexia symptom checklist and see if your child could have mild dyslexia.
It’s never too late to improve reading!
Students reading at a grade or two below their current level will struggle in social studies, science, and language arts. Getting help now will make a difference in their self-esteem, their mental health, their grade point, and the college they choose. Give us a call if your child is struggling could check 10 or more symptoms on the dyslexia symptom checklist. Answers could be right around the corner, and your child is worth it!
