Book Review: Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz, M.D.

Nursery rhymes are the best indicator of a preschooler’s future ability to read. Children who love nursery rhymes learn to read easily. Children who don’t like nursery rhymes or other rhyming games will struggle to learn to read. Struggling children can be taught to read, but it does take more effort from both child and teacher.

Dr. Shaywitz’s book, Overcoming Dyslexia, is so packed with information that I will touch on only the most general ideas of dyslexia in this post, including a few ways to spot a reading problem. Next week, I’ll be reviewing a book with lesson plans for a struggling reader.

The ideas in this book will help any child who is struggling to read, whether or not he has dyslexia. (There is not a lot of agreement on how to diagnose dyslexia.) Read this book while the school argues about whether or not your child is entitled to extra help.

Dyslexia is a problem at the level of sounds. It has nothing to do with a person’s ability to think, reason or understand. A dyslexic students can get A’s as long as someone reads the textbook to them. Dyslexia affects only the person’s ability to translate spoken language into separate sounds and attach letters to those individual sounds.

Learning to read requires a child to pull a word apart into sounds. Weakness in the ability to pull a word apart leads to weak reading skills. That’s why rhyme is such a good indicator of how fast a child will learn to read. Being able to rhyme means being able to pull the word apart. To identify that cat, hat and mat rhyme, the listener has to be able to take off the first sound, and realize that the last two sounds are the same.

Imagine a nearsighted child getting her first pair of glasses and saying, “I never knew that building was made of red bricks. I thought the wall was just one big smear of red paint.” Dyslexics hear words as one big smear, rather than as separate bricks. Fortunately, the ability to hear sounds as separate bricks can be taught and learned. It takes more effort for both the teacher and the student, but a dyslexic student can learn to read.

The best way to spot a reading problem is to have your child read aloud to you. Pay attention to the types of mistakes your child makes. Does she skip all the function words (an, the, on)? Does she guess? Do all words that start with the same letter get the same guess (like reading “those” for though, then, they, their)? Does she skip the middle of big words (automobile becomes autobile)? Does she read fast and ignore her own mistakes even when the mistake reduces the sentence to nonsense? Does she figure out the word from context and substitute a simpler word (like saying ‘mom’ when the text says ‘mother’)?

Ask your child to verbally pull a word apart. Say “stale.” Now say it without the “t” (sale). Now replace the “s” with an “m” (male).

Ask your child to identify the number of sounds in a word:
How many sounds are in “go?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “though?” Two sounds.
How many sounds are in “cheese?” Three sounds.

Please note that while some dyslexic children transpose letters, most do not. A child who does not transpose letters may still have dyslexic tendencies and need help.

If your child is having difficulty reading, do not delay. Dyslexia does not improve over time if ignored. Struggling readers do not catch up. Most will eventually learn to read, but they will not catch up to their peers, and their fluency will remain poor. No one ever regrets starting too early to resolve a reading problem.

Extra one-on-one teaching is vital. The tutor should use a method that specifically addresses reading difficulties, not just more of the same classroom techniques that work fine for most children, but leave behind children with a reading problem. (Whole-word and sight-word reading techniques should be dropped immediately. They exacerbate a reading disability.)

Part I of Overcoming Dyslexia explains the nature of dyslexia, and how reading looks in the brain. Dyslexics have normal brains. MRI scans show that all the regions of the brain are present and work fine. However, dyslexics use a different area of their brain to read than fluent readers do. When taught properly, a dyslexic child shifts his reading from the “slow reading” part of the brain to the “fast reading” part of their brain. MRI scans taken before and after tutoring showed the shift in reading location.

Part II explains how to diagnose dyslexia. This section contains lists of milestones for reading, broken down by age. These chapters help you identify whether your child is normal, or is behind the curve.

Part III explains how to teach a dyslexic child to read. While there are very good concrete suggestions, most of this section is still general. It doesn’t contain lesson plans. It does review several of the reading programs available to schools. This section assumes that the school will be happy to step up and give your child individual attention, even if that requires spending thousands of dollars on new curriculum.

Part IV explains how to take a dyslexic child from being able to read slowly to being able to read fluently. Do not stop once the child can laboriously read accurately. Bringing the child all the way to fluency is possible. Fluency is necessary, given the amount of information adults are expected to read.

As I mentioned, this book is so full of useful information that it’s impossible to do more than hint at it in a book review. If your child has trouble reading, this is the book you want to read to understand your child’s problem. Next week, I’ll review a book with specific lesson plans for teaching a child with a reading problem.