Dyslexia Early Intervention: Why Waiting Is the Wrong Choice

By: Troy Hubbell - Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT) and CERI-certified Dyslexia Specialist, M.A., B.A

"They Just Need More Time": Why This Advice Hurts Kids with Dyslexia

'They just need a little more time' is some of the most common advice parents hear when their child is struggling to read or spell in the early grades. It is well-meaning, and often heartfelt, but when dyslexia is involved, waiting is almost always the worst thing you can do. Early intervention for dyslexia changes outcomes dramatically. Here’s why.

The Dyslexia Profile Schools Miss Most Often

I hear the same story from families who come to me for help with older kids again and again and again.  Their kid seemed like they could read in the early grades.  They had good comprehension.  That said, the parents could tell something was wrong.  When their kid tried to spell, the spelling was a mess.  Sometimes the words were spelled in a way that made no sense.  Other times they were missing letters.  Other times they had the wrong letter as though they were not hearing the sound properly (they weren’t).  Parents often report sensing that something was wrong, but being reassured that their kids were doing fine.  After all, many functional adults are not great at spelling.  It doesn’t seem to hold us back.  Often, schools were showing them reading scores that seemed to prove it.  Nearly always, families were given the same advice.

Do Kids with Dyslexia Just Need More Time to Learn to Read?

The short answer to this question is no.  The long answer is nnnnooooo.  Let me qualify that a bit.  It is absolutely true that kids learn to read and spell at different rates.  In that sense, some kids do need more time than others to learn to read.  That said, we all need the same fundamental set of skills in order to learn to read.  Students who struggle with foundational decoding skills but are able to comprehend are not doing fine.  They do not need more time.  If left unchecked, those foundational skill deficits will turn into serious reading challenges.

Bright kids will often use compensatory strategies such as guessing words from context to make it seem as though they can read.  These strategies can work in the relatively simple text that kids read in the early grades.  Some amazingly bright kids can even make compensatory strategies work relatively in the more complex text they see in 4th and 5th grade. Even for these kids, there is a ceiling.  At some point, the text will become too complicated.  If they can’t sound out the words, they will not be able to read it.  

The 3rd Grade Cliff: Why Dyslexia Early Intervention Can't Wait

The problem with giving kids more time is that the clock on reading skills is already ticking.  They don’t have time to waste.  Research tells us again and again that if we intervene before 3rd grade, we can teach nearly every kid to read.  After 3rd grade, we see that most kids who struggle with reading will never catch up (don’t panic, these are the kinds of kids I specialize in helping catch up anyways).

The reasons why are fairly simple.  By the time kids are in 3rd grade, we shift from learning to read to reading to learn.  The focus in 4th and 5th grade is on complex text and vocabulary.  If you still can’t sound out words, the instruction moves on without you.  Worse still, many teachers of older students, even upper elementary school teachers, do not have the skills to help struggling readers.  It isn’t the focus of their training or curriculum at that stage.  Even if they can see the problem, they may not know how to help.

Also, by the time we hit 4th grade, we should already have been accessing all kinds of text.  Read a random book in a first or second grade classroom.  You will be amazed at the volume of words you will see in those books that we simply don’t use in regular conversation.  The kids who learned to read quickly and easily spend their time in the lower grades perfecting their skills and increasing their vocabularies by reading.  The kids who struggled read less text, learned dramatically fewer vocabulary words, and got less practice because they were not able to read as much independently.  By 4th grade, the gap between struggling and proficient readers is so dramatic that it becomes incredibly difficult to ever close.  Even with good intervention, the proficient readers are still accessing complex language, more text, and growing their skills while the struggling group is still working to break down the barriers that prevented them from accessing this growth in the first place.  The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Yes, we can help older kids catch up in most cases, but by that time the need for help and the emotional toll of struggling with reading are often tremendous.  Students never need more time.  Early intervention is always better.  If we close the gaps for struggling readers when they are young, it never has time to grow into a bigger problem.

Is Bad Spelling Always a Warning Sign of Dyslexia?

Not all bad spelling is a serious red flag, but you don’t need to be an expert.  Providing a reading intervention to a kid who doesn’t need it will never cause harm.  Failing to intervene with a kid who does need it can be catastrophic.  The rule of thumb is fairly simple here.  I will describe which kinds of errors are the most concerning in the next paragraph, but learning to identify these kinds of errors isn’t strictly necessary.  When in doubt, intervene.  Always.  There is never a good reason to not provide help.  It will never hurt anything.  It can only ever help.

Spelling Errors That Signal Your Child Needs Dyslexia Support

No matter how bright a kid is, and no matter how good their compensatory strategies are, there is one skill that will always tell you whether or not they can truly read.  That skill is spelling.  That doesn’t mean that every kid who isn’t great at spelling has dyslexia.  That said, there are certain kinds of spelling errors that are very telling.

The first kind of error that should raise alarms is when kids spell words in ways that make no sense.  For example, for the word because they may spell “ucade” or something equally as unintelligible.  What is happening in these cases is that they know the word is difficult to spell, but they don’t know how to sound it out.  They therefore try to memorize the letters in the word like a list. Memorizing spellings is not a good strategy for reading or spelling.

The second kind of error that should raise concerns is when kids spell words with missing sounds.  For example, a student with dyslexia might try to spell the word smell as “sell, sel, sl, sml” or any number of other errors.  These errors all have one thing in common.  There is a sound missing. Read those words out loud.  Then read this misspelling of the same word: “smel”.  The error in the previous sentence is a much less concerning error.  The student clearly heard the /s/ /m/ /e/ and /l/ sounds.  They simply did not know to double the letter “l”.  When you read “smel” you still say the correct word.  The earlier errors are not just missing letters.  They are missing whole sounds.  This is an indication that a student is not properly hearing all of the sounds in the word, and is one of the hallmarks of dyslexia.

The 3rd kind of error that should raise concerns is when kids spell the wrong sound.  For example, imagine that a child is trying to spell the word “smell” but they instead spell it “small, smal, smill, smil, snel”, etc.  In this case, all the sounds are represented, but there is a problem.  Smell is spelled with the short /e/ sound like in elephant.  These spellings show that the student hears a vowel sound, but is not able to isolate that sound well enough to know which vowel they are hearing.  That last example similarly shows that the student knows that a sound is coming through their nose, but not which sound (/m/, /n/, or /ng/) that comes through their nose they are hearing.  This is another hallmark of dyslexia.

The common theme in the 3 kinds of errors is difficulty with a skill called phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to isolate and manipulate the individual sounds in words.  In English, we spell words by representing those sounds with letters.  If you can’t properly and quickly identify the sounds, there is no efficient way to know which letters to write for spelling or which sounds to say for reading.

The Case for Dyslexia Early Intervention: Act Now, Not Later

Most experts agree that the real lesson to learn from this information is that early structured reading instruction and early dyslexia screening are vital.  We can identify kids at risk for reading difficulties as early as the middle of kindergarten, and at that age, we can almost always help.  Even if we are wrong, and a kid would have been fine without a reading intervention, it can never cause harm to provide one.  Good early instruction is the best medicine.

Unfortunately, if we always provided good early instruction, my job wouldn’t exist.  Schools do the best they can with what they have, but they are underresourced, undertrained, and understaffed.  As a result, they often notice the kids with truly profound reading challenges, but miss the kids who struggle with some basic skills but otherwise seem to be doing ok.

If you think your kid is struggling, don’t wait.  Don’t give it more time.  Act now.  You can’t cause any harm, and you may save them a ton of heartache down the road.

If you or anybody else you know is struggling, we are here to help. We provide on demand online dyslexia tutoring and dyslexia therapy, executive functioning supports, IEP support, school advocacy, and any other support we can.  We want to see your kid thrive.  You are not alone.  Reach out to us. We provide expert dyslexia support any time, anywhere.  We are here to help.

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