Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein had it. Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Jay Leno all deal with it. Great leaders Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson managed to run countries with it. Dyslexia may make learning a bit more difficult, but it can be overcome. And the earlier the diagnosis, the better.

Though dyslexia is often thought of as the disease that makes you reverse letters, there’s much more to it than that. People with dyslexia process the information related to language in a different part of their brains than those without dyslexia. They may have difficulty connecting a letter to the sound it makes, or combining sounds together to form words. With that basic difficulty, it becomes impossible to make sense of an entire sentence or paragraph. Approximately 20% of people in the U.S. suffer from some form of reading disability, and 85% of those people have been diagnosed with dyslexia.

Children often aren’t diagnosed with dyslexia until they begin to learn to read and write, but symptoms can often be detected even earlier.

Dyslexia may be a problem if:

1. Your child delays learning to talk longer than normal
2. He has trouble pronouncing words correctly
3. He is unable to rhyme words by preschool
4. He is slower at basic pre-school concepts such as letters, numbers, colors, etc.
5. Your child has difficulty writing or learning to recognize his name or other short words
6. He seems unable to connect the identification of a letter with the sound it makes.

As he or she begins reading and writing instruction, you may notice that:

1. He has difficulty with handwriting
2. He is forming letters backwards
3. He puts letters out of sequence while reading or writing. For instance “dog” becomes “god.”
4. He exhibits a higher level of frustration than is typical

Dyslexia runs in families, so if you or your spouse or siblings have been diagnosed, be aware that your child is more likely to have it, as well.

Kids who struggle to learn to read often also struggle with self-esteem issues. They can tell that their peers are bounding ahead of them, and often feel inadequate and stupid. Other children in their class can also tell that they are struggling, and kids aren’t always nice. Getting the proper diagnosis so that your child can be taught different learning strategies is very important – the sooner the better. Negative feelings about reading and learning can be formed very early and have a huge impact on a child’s educational experience.

Diagnosis of dyslexia is typically done with an evaluation completed by a reading specialist or psychologist. Your family doctor may be able to help you identify symptoms, then recommend further diagnosis from a specialist.

With proper diagnosis and intervention, most children are able to learn to read and go on to develop learning strategies that they carry with them throughout their formal education.