Does My Preschool Kid Have Dyslexia?!

Is your preschooler dyslexic? Is it too young to know? In today's video, we're going to talk about some possible things to look out for.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja and this is Dyslexia Journey, where we help you support the dyslexic kid in your life. In a recent video, we talked about the indications that your elementary school-aged kid might be dyslexic, and we wanted today to talk about a different age group, which is preschoolers. So, in the United States, this usually means from around age 3 to age 5. Yeah, and so, some of you out there watching or listening to this might be thinking, wait, this is crazy.

Like, we don't, we shouldn't expect our kids to be reading at ages 3 to 5. Like, why or how would we even start to think about them being dyslexic at this age? And there is some truth to that. Like, obviously, we don't expect our 3 to 5-year-olds to be reading, and if they're not reading by age 5, that doesn't mean they're dyslexic. Like, there's, like, huge variation in development, particularly at that age, and a widely disparate sort of interest and ability in reading at that age.

So, the intention of what we're saying today isn't to make anyone, like, overly concerned about your preschool-age kid. Like, to emphasize, at this age, children should be playing. They shouldn't be, you know, focusing necessarily on academics or learning to read or anything like that. But with that all said, there are cases, like, where dyslexia might run in your family, and there might be some other indications that you may be worried about.

So, we did want to address that age group in this video today. And in that way, you can just start to form that picture as early as possible, which can be helpful for things like early intervention. So, we are not educational specialists, however, so we want to really make sure that if you are concerned, maybe you hear some of these indications and you're concerned, that you do go to an educational specialist to have your child evaluated.

And you can also look at our recent interview with Dr. Linda Silverman for a little bit more information about this. Okay, so let's jump into some possible indications that your preschool-age child might have dyslexia. And, again, these are not comprehensive. This is not a comprehensive list. And, also, if your child does exhibit one or more of these signs or indications, it does not mean they're dyslexic. These are just some guidelines of some things that you might want to be looking out for.

Okay, so, as in our episode where we talked about signs of dyslexia in elementary school age, kids, for this episode, we're going to divide it. First, we'll talk about some sort of language-specific indications, and then we'll talk about some more general signs. So, to start with the language-specific ones, the first possible indication is delayed speech. So, either talking, if your child sort of started talking later than average, or if they have maybe a smaller or more limited vocabulary than other kids their age.

And, again, not every child who starts talking later has dyslexia, and not every child with dyslexia starts talking later. So, this, by itself, is not necessarily anything to worry about, but if we look at the whole sort of combination of factors, this is one potential indicator. All right. So, indication number two that your child might be dyslexic is if they have trouble rhyming words. And so, there's a lot of this that happens in preschool.

You know, there's even kind of rhyming songs, but it tends to be somewhat emphasized, I would say. So, you'll probably have a lot of opportunity to notice if this is the case. And, you know, in our daughter's case, she did not have trouble with this. But number three is something she did have trouble with, which is being able to distinguish the syllables in words, being able to sort of break them up into their parts.

So, like the word elephant, to be able to say elephant, usually that's actually pretty difficult for a dyslexic kid to do. Okay. So, the fourth language-related sign that your three- to five-year-old might have dyslexia is difficulty pronouncing words. And so, we all think about sort of the stereotypical, like, kid who says posghetti instead of spaghetti. And, again, like, most kids do that. There are some words that a lot of kids just kind of mispronounce.

But I'd say if you sort of notice this, that your child is maybe doing this more than other kids, that might be a possible indication. Okay. Indication number five, that your preschool kid might be dyslexic, is trouble with saying they're ABCs. So, again, this is something that is often done in preschool. You know, it can start with that ABC song. And maybe your kid's even able to do it along with the ABC song, because that's a little different.

They're not necessarily connecting it as letters. It might, you know, it's going along with the music, so that can help them. Whether or not they're able to do that, if they try to say out their ABCs, they might have more trouble with that than a lot of the other kids. And maybe it might look instead like they're just not interested in doing it. So, it could look either way, like they actually, you're observing them having trouble with it, or that they don't want to do it.

And also, by sort of later preschool, I think there is some introduction of just sort of recognizing the symbols for the letters. And so, if your child is struggling with that as well, that could be a possible indication. All right, so for our next grouping of indications that your preschool kid might be dyslexic, the first one has to do with dysgraphia, which is difficulty writing. And that is associated with dyslexia, so that's why it's relevant here.

And so, what this might look like is difficulty with the pencil grip. You know, a lot of kids can struggle with that at first, but, you know, especially if it's persisting, like over time, you know, as you're working with it and using the little aids that they can put on the pencils and things like that. If they have difficulty doing that and or they have a very unusual pencil grip, then that could indicate dysgraphia, which again is correlated with dyslexia.

And then, more specific to the letters, unusual ways of forming the letters or difficulty forming the letters at all. Often, that can also look like, you know, how there's the different lines and, you know, like for a small letter P, you'd have the circle of the P and then it would come down below the line. Often, just kids with dysgraphia will have difficulty with that placement. So, like where does, it's about getting that placement below the line, for example, on the P can be very difficult for them.

Yeah. And so, our second sort of general, not specifically language-related indication that your preschool-aged child might have dyslexia is if they have trouble either following multi-step directions or, or kind of relating multi-step events or stories back to you. So, in terms of directions, if you think of sort of maybe an example, three-part set of directions would be, can you please pick up that toy, put it in the box, and close the lid on the box?

And a child with dyslexia might, and I emphasize might, have trouble sort of sequencing those three steps and performing them in order and remembering to do them all. And then the sort of converse of that is if your child is relating a story to you, either a made-up story or something that actually happened to them, they may struggle with kind of like a strict chronological telling of those events. They may sort of start by telling you what happened first, then get sidetracked by something else, and then jump into a different part of the chronology.

That's actually really common, I think, among dyslexic kids of all ages, and it might start to show itself in the preschool years. So, number three in our more nonverbal indications that your preschool kid might be dyslexic, we've somewhat mentioned already, which is to be on the lookout for it if you have family members who you either know are dyslexic or you suspect may be dyslexic. These could be family members who always had trouble reading, who didn't do as well in school as it seemed like they should have, or maybe who avoid reading, something like that.

Okay, and our fourth indication, our sort of nonverbal indication that your preschool-aged child might have dyslexia, is if they have trouble learning to tie their shoes. And this is interesting, I think we did mention this in an episode a while back, but this is actually correlated with dyslexia. So, if they have trouble learning to tie the sort of regular standard shoelace knot, they, more often than not, may come up with their own way of doing it, their sort of unique way of doing it.

Dyslexic kids are often creative and problem solvers, so they'll probably figure out a way to do it. But if you look closely, they're probably not doing it sort of the standard way.

And then, kind of similar to that, the fifth and sort of last indication that we're going to talk about today, that you're dyslexic, that your preschool-aged child might have dyslexia, is if they have confusion between left and right. So they, again, this is correlated with dyslexia, sort of directional confusion, left-right confusion. They may have trouble understanding that their left hand is always their left hand, regardless of what way they're facing, for example.

So, that's where it might show up. Or you might just notice that they just don't really pay attention to right and left, in terms of matching those terms to the actual right and left sides of their body. And that's actually a good transition to the next part we're going to talk about, which is more of something we'd consider strengths, which might be indications that your preschool child is dyslexic. Because when you mentioned about, you know, that they might have trouble, like, knowing their left hand is always their left hand, depending on where they are in space, that sounds like such a weakness.

But you could think of that in a different way as being a strength, because often they're able to rotate things really easily in space, right? And so, that's actually a skill, and it's the same thing that's causing the confusion with left and right, that they're not necessarily understanding that that part of it is static. So, to get to the strengths that we have listed for you today, that might be indications that your preschool child is dyslexic.

So, our number one indication that's a strength is strong storytelling ability. So, it just might really indicate their strong and rich imagination, with a lot of vibrancy to the story. And in addition to imagination, often there might be a lot of details to the story, showing it like a very visual sense. And again, as we go through these strengths, a lot of children have these strengths, dyslexic or not. And so, again, just like with the sort of language-related and general more weaknesses, any one or two of these indications doesn't mean your child has dyslexia.

These are just, like, taken as a whole, we want you to sort of be aware of. If you're kind of going through and saying, you know, yes to all of these for your child, then you might want to dig in a little bit further. Okay, so the second, I guess, strength that might be exhibited by a potentially dyslexic preschooler is a really strong memory, a really good memory. So, we've talked about this in other episodes because this exhibits itself really at all ages, that dyslexic kids have exceptionally strong memories on average.

Memories for both things in the physical world, so always knowing where things are, and sort of, you know, 3D spatial orientation, as well as memory for story and for things that they've heard or watched or been exposed to in other ways. So, indication number three, that's also a strength, that your preschool kid might be dyslexic, is if they show a high level of empathy. So, again, lots of kids may have this as a trait, but it does seem to be correlated with dyslexic kids, that they might surprise adults with their strong understanding of emotion and their empathetic responses to others.

And this came up in our interview with Dr. Linda Silverman that we did recently, and she has definitely noticed this correlation in the sort of hundreds of dyslexic kids that she's worked with over the years. So, we can link to that as well. Okay, so the fourth strength that a potentially dyslexic preschooler might exhibit is advanced problem-solving skills. And this is, I mean this in sort of a, they're going to show a high level of creativity, and maybe outside-the-box thinking in their problem-solving.

So, it's not just that they can figure out sort of standard logic puzzles. They will often be sort of not stymied by a particular puzzle or a particular problem that they face in the world, and they'll just kind of figure out a creative solution that you as an adult might not have thought of, even. All right, so a fifth and final example of a strength that a preschooler might show who's also dyslexic is the strong visual-spatial abilities.

And here, we're specifically talking about puzzles and visual games. So, they may be quite good at them in general, and if you watch, they may also show some of what Nick was just talking about in a creative way of putting the pieces together and coming up with a solution. Okay, so to wrap up here, dyslexia in preschoolers is subtle. Like, we don't necessarily expect anyone to be actually sort of identified or diagnosed as dyslexic at the early ages of three to five.

And again, to emphasize, as a parent, we shouldn't expect our preschool-aged child, whether dyslexic or not, to really be interested in reading or academics at that age. Like I said at the beginning, a three to five-year-old child should really just be playing and, you know, building things and, you know, they might enjoy story and that kind of thing. We should definitely be reading to them, but we shouldn't expect them to be reading yet at that age.

And so, again, our purpose in doing this particular episode is just to make you aware of some of these indications that can show up early, and it's just something to kind of maybe just keep in the back of your mind as your child then does enter elementary school and is faced with, you know, actual academic work that is going to, perhaps, if they have dyslexia, is going to start becoming more challenging for them.

Yeah, and it's important, I think, the earlier we can have it in the back of our mind and just have that awareness of what might be going on, because it's still unfortunately true that it really can take a long time before a lot of dyslexic kids are diagnosed. And so getting just the early start on the awareness is very important. And definitely, the earlier that you catch it, for anyone with dyslexia, the earlier that they're identified and that kind of dyslexic-specific remediation and work can be done with them, then the better off they're going to be in the long run.

Thanks for watching. Hopefully that was helpful. Let us know in the comments if you have any other thoughts on this topic. Thank you.