Dyslexia is a general term for a learning disability in reading. A learning disability in reading is simply a relative weakness in a type of thinking and learning that affects your ability to read.

All of us are born with different innate strengths and weaknesses. Some people seem to be natural athletes, while others pick up music incredibly fast. Jigsaw puzzles are easy for some people and make other people crazy. Are you someone who can find your way without a map, or someone who gets lost even with one?

These strengths and weaknesses are the basic materials we start with. Some things will be easier than others. However, they don’t determine our future and they don’t mean we can’t learn the things that are relatively hard for us. They are our starting point.

Sometimes, one of our weaknesses occurs in an area that is fundamentally important for success in school or in life. Jigsaw puzzles are not this sort of thing. If you’re bad at jigsaw puzzles, there are very few tasks at school or jobs in the world of work that will be hard for you. Reading, on the other hand, is part of almost everything that happens at school and in the world.

People often talk about dyslexia as though it were a disease, like measles or the flu. But unlike a disease with a known cause, dyslexia can have many causes and can manifest in many different ways. The only thing that all of these disorders have in common is that they make it hard to decode, comprehend and/or spell written words.

There are numerous tiny pieces that get put together to read words. Let’s consider this sentence:
I would like to have a black cat.

In order to successfully read that sentence, you need to be able to recognize the various letters. When you’re first learning, at least, you need to be able to associate each letter with a sound. You have to recognize where a word starts and stops. You have to be able to put the sounds together (think about it – does K-A-T really sound all that much like “cat?”). You need to recognize rules that change those sounds, like the silent “e” in like and that “ck” only has one sound.

But that’s not all. You have to recognize the word “would” and know what it says, or be able to figure it out from context, because it can’t be sounded out phonetically. You need to understand that “would like” indicates the subjunctive tense, meaning that the person doesn’t have a black cat at the moment. You need to be able to remember the beginning of each word when you get to the end, and the beginning of the sentence when you get to the end. And this isn’t even a complete list!

As you can see, many things can get in the way of this whole process going smoothly. A weakness in the type of thinking that contributes to any one of these steps will interfere with reading, and any one of these, if severe enough, can be considered a form of dyslexia.

There are many different factors that can contribute to a learning disability in reading. In some cases, there may be a genetic component. Parents with learning disabilities are more likely to have kids with similar challenges. Health issues during pregnancy or in infancy can also result in learning issues. Frequent ear infections during the first three or four years of life may contribute to reading disabilities because children may not have been able to hear language well as they were learning to speak and listen.

Some learning disabilities have no obvious cause, and others have more than one. Dyslexia is not anyone’s fault.

The short answer to this is no. There are lots of reasons someone might have trouble learning to read that have nothing to do with dyslexia. In order for a learning disability to be diagnosed (please see the “testing and evaluation section”), there are a number of things that need to be ruled out as causes for the difficulty. These include:

• Problems with vision and/or hearing.
• Cognitive impairment (low IQ)
• Pervasive developmental disorders (autism spectrum disorders)
• Mental illness
• Lack of good, consistent instruction in reading
• Lack of opportunities to practice reading skills
• Lack of understanding of the language that is being read or in which instruction is being given

There are several other disorders which fall under the general category of anxiety disorders. These include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. These are diagnosed in children, but are not usually what people are discussing when they talk about their children being anxious. If your child is showing any signs or symptoms that are of concern to you, you should check with your doctor or a mental health professional.