Anonymous
05/21/2026 14:37
Subject: Re:How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Anonymous wrote:It might be worth getting a screening from a developmental ophthalmologist. They do more in-depth evaluation of eye movements (saccadic leaps) and eye coordination. There are some issues that can really make reading harder.
But otherwise it is a matter of teaching the kids not to jump ahead/ jump around on the page. My dyslexic kid used a ruler or sometimes even a card with a slit in it to only reveal 1 line at a time when she was tired. ADHD medicine helped too.
Her OG tutor gave her a pink colored overlay that showed a single line. The color didn’t do anything for her, but it made her happy and she liked using it. Thank goodness for tutors who really understand their students.
Later she wore “reading glasses” that were pink with rhinestones and had wide sidearms to block peripheral vision while she worked. Because she said she would really rather look at anything other than the words sometimes.
Vision therapy to treat learning disabilities lacks any scientific evidence and is not considered a legitimate way to treat dyslexia. The gold standard for treating dyslexia is Orton-Gillingham.
Anonymous
05/21/2026 06:47
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Anonymous wrote:My son will never describe what he see's on the page. But even at 16 he hates to read anything, at home he prefers audio. I wish he would describe it.
He may not “see” anything differently than you do. The way letters and words flip around is a product of a brain that hasn’t been trained to pay attention to letters and letter sequence. It is very unnatural for some people! There is even graphic out there that shows why (absent reading) the trait can be a visual strength. Google “dyslexia still a chair” and think it will come up).
Your 16 year old presumably has had interventions that hopefully have built the letter recognition and sequencing to automaticity, but that doesn’t mean reading has become easy or pleasurable. He may not be able to describe the reading experience because he has nothing to compare it to - it just feels hard.
Anonymous
05/20/2026 10:21
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
My son will never describe what he see's on the page. But even at 16 he hates to read anything, at home he prefers audio. I wish he would describe it.
Anonymous
05/14/2026 19:24
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Anonymous wrote:My kid says that the only sees parts of words at a time. For example, if she looks at the word “teacher” she only sees “tea” or “er.” She says she can’t make her eyes see all of the letters at once so she does a lot of guessing based on context. She makes lots of mistakes where she’ll read something like “teacher” as “teaches,” “teach” or “teak.”
She says that tutoring isn’t really helping her because she already knows and understand the phonics rules, but when she moves her eyes across a sentence she literally can’t see a whole word at once. If she reads very very slowly, she can sound things out….but she’s too impatient and eager to understand the text to move at that pace.
A pediatric eye doc said her vision is fine.
Does anyone else experience reading this way? Her tutor seems to think this is common and is just continuing to teach her the phonics rules using OG methods.
This is why and how Orton Gillingham is built and works. It’s multi sensory. Sometimes maybe switching teachers - not all actually apply it well or might not click with your kid. LIndamood Bell is another multisensory program built on the same science. And there are a couple others. But it’s the only evidence based way of specifically teaching for dyslexia although many kids who have dyslexia end up learning to read by memorization and old school “whole word” reading like many of us did back in the 80s (I say this as someone with dyslexia and kid with moderate dyslexia who has gone though it all)
Anonymous
05/07/2026 22:40
Subject: Re:How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
It might be worth getting a screening from a developmental ophthalmologist. They do more in-depth evaluation of eye movements (saccadic leaps) and eye coordination. There are some issues that can really make reading harder.
But otherwise it is a matter of teaching the kids not to jump ahead/ jump around on the page. My dyslexic kid used a ruler or sometimes even a card with a slit in it to only reveal 1 line at a time when she was tired. ADHD medicine helped too.
Her OG tutor gave her a pink colored overlay that showed a single line. The color didn’t do anything for her, but it made her happy and she liked using it. Thank goodness for tutors who really understand their students.
Later she wore “reading glasses” that were pink with rhinestones and had wide sidearms to block peripheral vision while she worked. Because she said she would really rather look at anything other than the words sometimes.
But otherwise it is a matter of teaching the kids not to jump ahead/ jump around on the page. My dyslexic kid used a ruler or sometimes even a card with a slit in it to only reveal 1 line at a time when she was tired. ADHD medicine helped too.
Her OG tutor gave her a pink colored overlay that showed a single line. The color didn’t do anything for her, but it made her happy and she liked using it. Thank goodness for tutors who really understand their students.
Later she wore “reading glasses” that were pink with rhinestones and had wide sidearms to block peripheral vision while she worked. Because she said she would really rather look at anything other than the words sometimes.
Anonymous
05/07/2026 07:20
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
I think the important thing to know about letters and syllables flipping around is that it indicates the brain is still working on recognizing that certain letters go together in clusters, and that the order of letters is important. The brain is still treating letter order as not salient. It’s like if a kid says they just don’t see place value in a math equation. That is their true experience, and the solution is to help them understand place value and then practice until their brain does automatically see it and recognize it as important.
The child (or adult) isn’t imagining it when they say things flip around, but the letters aren’t visually moving - instead the brain doesn’t process the order of letters accurately. It kind of shrugs and goes “eh. Same difference.” We need to teach it that no, it’s actually important. It takes patience and time and lots of practice.
The child (or adult) isn’t imagining it when they say things flip around, but the letters aren’t visually moving - instead the brain doesn’t process the order of letters accurately. It kind of shrugs and goes “eh. Same difference.” We need to teach it that no, it’s actually important. It takes patience and time and lots of practice.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 21:50
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
My dyslexic daughter had it harder than that, that pieces of the word seemed to move around on her, sometimes syllables would flip, or more often, consonant clusters would separate or flip so masthead would be matshead, or product would be porduct.; I'll always remember once husband was suhband
She still struggles with it sometimes, even as she's a much stronger reader... like today, imbecile was attempted as imbecliss...
She was diagnosed with 'moderate dyslexia' fwiw
She still struggles with it sometimes, even as she's a much stronger reader... like today, imbecile was attempted as imbecliss...
She was diagnosed with 'moderate dyslexia' fwiw
Anonymous
05/04/2026 08:15
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Anonymous wrote:That is very typical. I am dyslexic and teach dyslexic people to read. She has figured out that she can guess and get many words close enough, so her brain is skipping the decoding task that is so labor intensive. She needs to retrain her brain (and her habits) to actually decode the words. Eventually she will very likely recognize thousands of words automatically, but it will take her many more repetitions of decoding the word before that happens compared to a non-dyslexic person. That end-game is called orthographic mapping, and it is when a person has the exact spelling/look/order of the word so firmly established that they recognize it instantly.
It is tedious to get to that point, with lots exposure to letters and small parts of words, but it isn’t magic.
This describes my son. During his neuropsych eval they said that if we had tested him at a younger age, he would have met criteria for dyslexia (can't sound out words/horrible speller since he can't hear all of the pieces of the word.) But we did testing late middle school and he had memorized words/figured out words based on context so he was a decent reader by then.
Anonymous
05/03/2026 13:49
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Anonymous wrote:That is very typical. I am dyslexic and teach dyslexic people to read. She has figured out that she can guess and get many words close enough, so her brain is skipping the decoding task that is so labor intensive. She needs to retrain her brain (and her habits) to actually decode the words. Eventually she will very likely recognize thousands of words automatically, but it will take her many more repetitions of decoding the word before that happens compared to a non-dyslexic person. That end-game is called orthographic mapping, and it is when a person has the exact spelling/look/order of the word so firmly established that they recognize it instantly.
It is tedious to get to that point, with lots exposure to letters and small parts of words, but it isn’t magic.
Not OP, but very interesting. Thank you.
Anonymous
05/03/2026 13:07
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
This is one reason why screen reading has been so challenging for dyslexic kids. With books/worksheets, they can literally use fingers/pens to tap at/point at the words so they can read the whole thing. That's harder to do with screens.
Anonymous
05/03/2026 12:48
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
That is very typical. I am dyslexic and teach dyslexic people to read. She has figured out that she can guess and get many words close enough, so her brain is skipping the decoding task that is so labor intensive. She needs to retrain her brain (and her habits) to actually decode the words. Eventually she will very likely recognize thousands of words automatically, but it will take her many more repetitions of decoding the word before that happens compared to a non-dyslexic person. That end-game is called orthographic mapping, and it is when a person has the exact spelling/look/order of the word so firmly established that they recognize it instantly.
It is tedious to get to that point, with lots exposure to letters and small parts of words, but it isn’t magic.
It is tedious to get to that point, with lots exposure to letters and small parts of words, but it isn’t magic.
Anonymous
05/03/2026 12:47
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Mine says words move around the page.
Anonymous
05/03/2026 11:36
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
Which OG method program is her tutor using? How long has she been studying with the tutor?
Anonymous
05/03/2026 11:31
Subject: How does your dyslexic kid describe her experience reading?
My kid says that the only sees parts of words at a time. For example, if she looks at the word “teacher” she only sees “tea” or “er.” She says she can’t make her eyes see all of the letters at once so she does a lot of guessing based on context. She makes lots of mistakes where she’ll read something like “teacher” as “teaches,” “teach” or “teak.”
She says that tutoring isn’t really helping her because she already knows and understand the phonics rules, but when she moves her eyes across a sentence she literally can’t see a whole word at once. If she reads very very slowly, she can sound things out….but she’s too impatient and eager to understand the text to move at that pace.
A pediatric eye doc said her vision is fine.
Does anyone else experience reading this way? Her tutor seems to think this is common and is just continuing to teach her the phonics rules using OG methods.
She says that tutoring isn’t really helping her because she already knows and understand the phonics rules, but when she moves her eyes across a sentence she literally can’t see a whole word at once. If she reads very very slowly, she can sound things out….but she’s too impatient and eager to understand the text to move at that pace.
A pediatric eye doc said her vision is fine.
Does anyone else experience reading this way? Her tutor seems to think this is common and is just continuing to teach her the phonics rules using OG methods.