HOW CAN A SPEECH THERAPIST HELP WITH DYSLEXIA?

Many people have heard about dyslexia before, but fewer truly understand what being dyslexic really means.Dyslexia is a phonological disorder that affects your ability to read and understand printed words.

Because it typically manifests during childhood and has a wide range of symptoms, it’s important to start speech therapy as early as possible so that your child can overcome their dyslexia and not fall behind.

At APLC, we offer speech therapy for kids that can help children with dyslexia manage their condition.

A child psychologist often provides dyslexia diagnostic services.

This diagnosis process will require supporting information from a multidisciplinary team of professionals, including usually a speech therapist.

Such supporting information typically includes a thorough background history from you, their parent, reports from their school teachers and the assessment results from a speech therapist.

Your speech therapist will assess your child by carrying out a pediatric speech therapy evaluation to test different areas many children with dyslexia face challenges with.

These test areas include:

Short term memory
Listening comprehension
Ability to adapt language and identify synonyms, antonyms, etc.
Sequencing ability
Vocabulary
Grammar
Word retrieval skills
Reading fluency and recall
Reading comprehension

The purpose of this assessment is to gain the relevant information necessary for a dyslexia diagnosis.

It is thorough and designed to consider all possible symptoms that dyslexia can manifest.

Since dyslexia is mainly a phonological challenge, speech therapists are an integral part of your child’s intervention.

This is because speech therapists are experts with phonological errors and have lots of experience teaching children which sounds go together.

Even if your child is only having difficulty reading, not speaking, a speech therapist can teach them to improve their overall phonological systems.

This will help them understand how sounds go together to make words, which will improve their reading ability.

Children with dyslexia may also experience language learning challenges, which a speech therapist can also address.

Your speech therapist will first assess your child thoroughly to understand the areas to work on.

Our speech therapist will create a personalized program to improve the areas your child needs the most help with.