Signs of Dyslexia: A Parent's Guide by Age

By Laura Lurns · Reviewed by Philip Weaver · Last reviewed 2026-09-28

What this list is, and what it is not

You may be asking a simple question. My child is this old and does these things. What does that add up to? Here are two answers before the list starts.

The ages are about school, not about the child. A five-year-old is asked to match sounds to letters. A ten-year-old is asked to read a science chapter and remember it. In our view, it is often the same difficulty at both ages. The schoolwork changes, and so does what you can see. In our view, a sign that shows up later does not mean a bigger problem.

No sign on this page is a finding about your child. In our experience, these are signs worth watching. A child who does four of them may have had thin teaching and nothing else going on. A child who does one of them, hard, for two years, may have a lot going on. A pattern over time tells you something. One sign on its own tells you little.

A list like this gives you words. You may have watched something for a year without words for it. Those words make a talk with a teacher more useful.

Before school starts

At this age, little of what you notice is about print. There is hardly any print yet. Most of what you notice is about sound.

• Rhyming does not come. Or it comes and does not carry over. The child can say a rhyme they know and cannot make a new one.
• Nursery rhymes and song words are hard to hold on to, even ones heard many times.
• Words come out with the pieces in the wrong order, like aminal or pasghetti. They stay that way longer than the family expects.
• Clapping the beats in a name does not click as a game.
• The letters in their own name are learned, forgotten and learned again.
• Speech came late, or is still hard for people outside the family to follow.

None of this is reading yet. That is why it is worth noticing. In our experience, one skill often turns out to be hard later. It is hearing the separate sounds in a spoken word. Cat is three sounds, not one. Much of this list is about that skill, before anyone calls it reading.

The first school years: sounds meeting letters

In our experience, this is when many families first hear the word dyslexia from someone else.

• Letter sounds are taught and do not stick. Not just one or two. Many of them keep slipping.
• Blending will not come together. The child says m, a, t correctly. Then they cannot hear that the three make a word.
• Sight words are practiced, tested and known. A week later they are gone.
• Reading is slow and often one word at a time. It still sounds that way after other children have started to read smoothly.
• The child reads the first letter and says a word that starts the same way. It means something else, like house for horse or when for where.
• The pictures carry a lot of the reading. Cover them and the reading changes.
• Writing shows it too. One word is spelled three different ways in one paragraph.
• Reading time brings more resistance than almost anything else. There is bargaining, tears, and a sudden need for water.

In our experience, that last one often gets written off as behavior. To us, the avoiding shows you how hard reading is for your child.

Later elementary: the reading works, and it is hard work

By now, many children in this picture can read. That is what makes this stage confusing. In our experience, it is often when a child nobody noticed earlier gets noticed.

• The reading is correct and slow. Practice so far has not sped it up much.
• They read a page, and nothing comes back. Read them the same chapter, and they can tell you all of it.
• Twenty minutes of reading leaves them worn out.
• Spelling is worse than the reading, often much worse.
• They use plainer words in writing than when they talk.
• Homework takes a long time. In our experience, much of that time goes to the words, not the thinking.
• Everyone says the child is bright. The report card does not agree.

In our experience, that last mix is common at this stage. The child is bright and working hard, and the grades do not match. In our view, being bright is no reason to stop looking at the reading.

Struggling to read says nothing about how smart your child is.

The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) wrote a new definition in 2025. The 2025 definition sets no bar for how bright a child has to be.

Middle school, high school and beyond

In our experience, the signs often change rather than go away. Trouble sounding out often turns into trouble with the amount of reading.

• There is more to read each year. Ways of coping that worked before work less well.
• Taking notes while listening is very hard.
• Their written work is much thinner than what they can say out loud.
• Spelling is still there. Our experience is that it stays visible longest. The studies we have do not answer how long spelling trouble lasts.
• They read what they must, and never for fun.
• They may look for audiobooks. A teen who avoids reading may still finish a long audiobook in a week.

In our experience, older students often find their own ways around the reading. That makes the difficulty harder to see, not easier. Look at the spelling, and at how hard a page is to get through. In our view, the signs often still show there.

The one with no age group: reversals

Reversed letters and numbers are things like b for d, or was for saw. In our experience, parents often ask about them. They are on none of the lists above.

We hold one reversal study (Brooks, Berninger and Abbott, 2011). We could read only its summary, so we use no figure from it. No source we hold fixes an age at which reversals stop being ordinary. None makes them a young-child thing either. So we do not support "reversals are normal at this age." We do not support "reversals after this age mean something" either. You will see both written with confidence.

On their own, reversals neither point to dyslexia nor rule it out. An older child who reverses letters has not been diagnosed by it. A younger child who reverses letters has not been cleared by it. Note them, and watch the reading and the spelling too.

In 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics and three eye-care bodies stated that vision problems do not cause dyslexia. The American Academy of Ophthalmology was one of the three eye-care bodies. The 2009 statement also said reversals are not part of dyslexia's definition.

Signs that are not about reading

These signs are worth writing down too.

• Stomach aches or headaches on school mornings that are gone by Saturday.
• The child calls themselves stupid, flatly, as if it were settled. Notice whether it is about one subject.
• They compare themselves to a brother, sister or friend, often and without being asked.
• A child who was happy about school is not anymore, and nothing else has changed.

None of these, on its own, points to a reading difficulty. To us, they often mean school is harder for this child than it looks. To us, a child who calls themselves stupid is telling you how hard school has been. In our view, it says nothing about how smart they are. These signs are worth acting on, whatever the cause turns out to be.

What to do with this list

If several of these sound familiar, the next step is not a verdict. It is to find out which job of reading is going wrong. Is it hearing the sounds inside words? Matching sounds to letters? Reading smoothly? Or understanding what was read? You can start on that question this week. A teacher can act on the answer.

You may be told to wait and see. Our position is to put support in place now, not to wait and see. No study we have tests wait-and-see as a plan for a learning difficulty. So we would not tell you to wait.