Delayed Speech: Not speaking any words by the child’s first birthday. Often, they don’t start talking until they are 2, 2½, 3, or even older. Mixing up sounds in multi-syllabic words: For example, aminal for animal, bisghetti for spaghetti, hekalopter for helicopter, hangaberg for hamburger, mazageen for magazine, etc. Early stuttering or cluttering. Lots of ear infections. Can’t master tying shoes. Confusion over left versus right, over versus under, before versus after, and other directionality words and concepts. Late to establish a dominant hand: May switch from right hand to left hand while coloring, writing, or doing any other task. Eventually, the child will usually establish a preferred hand, but it may not be until they are 7 or 8. Even then, they may use one hand for writing, but the other hand for sports. Despite listening to stories that contain lots of rhyming words, such as Dr. Seuss, cannot tell you words that rhyme with cat or seat by the age of 4½. Difficulty learning the names of the letters or sounds in the alphabet; difficulty writing the alphabet in order. Trouble correctly articulating R’s and L’s as well as M’s and N’s. They often have “immature” speech. They may still be saying “wed and gween” instead of “red and green” in 2nd or 3rd grade. Family history of dyslexia.

Handwriting issues (dysgraphia) Slow, choppy, inaccurate reading. Can read a word on one page, but won’t 
recognize it on the next page. Difficulty with spelling. Confusion with word recall (um, that thing, um, the one that does ____). Often can’t remember sight words or 
homonyms. Dreads going to school. Trouble with following multi-step directions. Difficulty learning address and phone number. When they misread, they often say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape, such as house-horse or beach-bench. They may insert or leave out letters, such as could–cold or star–stair. Mixes sequence of letters: who–how, 
lots–lost, saw–was. Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking. When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn’t look at all similar, such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep. Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of. Omits or changes suffixes, saying need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately. Becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time. Reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension. Extremely messy bedrooms, lockers, desks, and backpacks.

Limited vocabulary. Misspells even when copying something from the board or from a book. Extremely poor written expression 
- large discrepancy between verbal 
skills and written compositions. Avoid writing whenever possible. Write everything as one very long sentence. Difficulty mastering a foreign language. Poor grades in many classes. North, South, East, West confusion; Adults with dyslexia get lost a lot when driving around, even in cities where they’ve lived for many years. Often have difficulty reading or understanding maps. Doing long division; To successfully complete a long division problem, you must do a series of five steps, in exactly the right sequence, over and over again. They will often know how to do every step in the sequence, but if they get the steps out of sequence, they’ll end up with the wrong answer. Touch typing; Learning to touch type is an essential skill for people with dysgraphia. But it is usually more difficult (and requires much more effort) for a dyslexic child to learn to type since the keys on the keyboard are laid out in a random order (which requires rote memorization). Rote memory of non-meaningful facts. Memorizing non-meaningful facts (facts that are not personally interesting and personally relevant) is extremely difficult for most dyslexic children and adults. In school, this leads to difficulty learning science and history facts (Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, memorizing dates, names, and places.)