It is important that the dyslexic child is identified as early as possible, and there are many indicators which may point to problems of a dyslexic nature even in the pre-school child.

It is important to realise that dyslexia may vary from mild to severe, and that by no means will all symptoms affect all dyslexics.

The following list picks out some of the things to look out for:

• A history of dyslexia or undiagnosed problems of a dyslexic nature in the family.(About one in four children of a dyslexic parent is himself or herself dyslexic.)
• Slow speech development
• Difficulty following instructions - particularly more than one at a time
• Confusion of left and right
• Difficulty dressing - buttons and laces
• Slow progress with reading - hesitant - particularly when reading aloud and may lose place, read the same line twice or miss out a line
• Problems blending letters e.g. s-t-r = str
• Difficulty remembering sequential information e.g. a telephone number, multiplication tables, the alphabet, the days of the week or the months of the year
• Difficulty naming objects
• Confusion with similar letters or words - m/w, n/u, p/q, b/d, off/of, bread/beard - or fails to recognise familiar words
• Uses capital letters indiscriminately especially B
• Problems with longer words - unable to break down into syllables or syllables missed out
• Poor comprehension skills
• Poor handwriting - letter reversal - persistent b-d reversal etc.
• Fails to recognise punctuation when reading
• Significant discrepancy between oral and writing skills
• Poor auditory skills - fails to discriminate between similar sounds
• Untidy work - lots of crossing out with repeated attempts to correct wrong spellings.
• Work is poorly set out - fails to keep to lines or margins
• Different spellings of the same word in a single piece of work
• Dyslexics use so much concentration and effort that they are often over-tired
• Seems to be able to do a task one day but not the next