Living with Dyslexia – Meydan.TV

“Parents often find out that their child has dyslexia when the child is six or seven years old, I mean, probably in first or second grade in secondary school, when the child is learning to write and read,” Lola Preobrazhenskaya tells Meydan TV. She is a children’s psychologist, a special education teacher, and the director of the children’s game and psychological support center “White Rabbit” in Prague.

However, she says, by monitoring one’s child at an even earlier age, parents can identify whether the child has dyslexia as early as age two or three.

“If your child does not start speaking by age three, that is a red flag. One has to sound the alarm even at age two and a half and take classes with a speech therapist to prevent further manifestations of dyslexia,” the children’s psychologist explains. “Then, we pay attention to whether the child is able to distinguish sounds in words. Does the child understand what sound or letter the word starts with? These kinds of neuropsychological exercises can also help. We take and connect the thumb with all other fingers on the hand and check that the child can repeat the exercise after us. Besides, these kinds of children are often unable to remember sequences. For example, days, weeks, and months. This can be checked in small children, too.”

Lola Preobrazhenskaya also points out that more often than not, people have a genetic predisposition for dyslexia.

“Scientists have long been saying that dyslexia is hereditary,” the psychologist says. “There is the theory that dyslexia is more common in men than in women, and it has something do with testosterone.”

Maharram accepts the idea that dyslexia could be hereditary in his family, too.

“I think that my father had dyslexia, too, because he read slowly and was a rather illiterate person, but it is just that nobody called it dyslexia back then. People called such people lazy or absent-minded,” he says. “But my brother is doing even worse than me in terms of dyslexia. He still reads very poorly. My son is eight, he reads better than does my brother, who is 32 years old. My brother still reads letter for lettes, and he just cannot write, he is terrible at writing.”