Reply to Outside of School Resources and IEP for newly diagnosed dyslexia

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Someone diagnosed dyslexia in a five year old who hasn't started kindergarten yet? That is incredibly concerning. I would hold off on pursuing tutoring or extra supports and instead see how your child does in kindergarten reading instruction. [/quote]

I know you mean well, but you are wrong. Dyslexia is neurobiological. You can identify a dyslexic brain in an FMRI at 18 months. The core deficit in dyslexia is phonological, basically the ability to hear and separate individual sounds in the unbroken stream of speech. It is such a tiny thing, but it is essential to reading. If you can teach that skill before the child is taught phonics they have the possibility to learn to read “normally”. If they go into phonics instruction with the core deficit unremediated they can’t learn phonics. You need to be able to segment the speech sounds before you can’t map them to letters.[/quote]

No, I'm not. For background, I am a psychologist and diagnose learning disabilities. First, just because something is neurobiological does not mean it can be identified at any age with brain scans. While there are certain neurological differences that we can see on scans, these differences are not diagnostic. This is true for many diagnoses (e.g., autism, depression). Second, phonological processing is core to dyslexia. However, early deficits in phonological processing may indicate children who are at risk for dyslexia, but are not enough to diagnose dyslexia. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading. If someone is not yet at an age where they can be developmentally expected to read (and have also not been in school yet), they cannot be reliably or validly diagnosed with dyslexia. [/quote]

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