Every parent wants their child to do exceptionally well at school. As a parent, you want to give your kids the opportunity to reach their full potential, don’t you? And this point drives home especially when your child has a learning difference, like dyslexia. Here’s how to help kids with dyslexia at home.
A good first step is supporting their literacy skills development through kids’ computer programs or apps that accomplish this.
There will be some parents who’d love nothing more than to work directly with their kids on spelling, writing, homework, and reading. Others might be a little reluctant to take on teaching roles because it does require a special set of skills.
But nevertheless, there’s still a lot of things that parents can do to support and reinforce learning at home. Any parent can learn how to help kids with dyslexia at home, even if you don’t have to directly tutor your child.
All About Dyslexia Learning
Dyslexia is not an illness, but it is something that a child can have for life. Nevertheless, if you have the right approach to learning, challenges associated with dyslexia can be overcome. In fact, kids with dyslexia have other strengths. that include creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and many others.
As a whole, dyslexic kids learn easily when information is delivered in multisensory ways, at the child’s preferred pace, opportunities for repetition, and lots of positive reinforcement.
However, finding the “right approach” is to understand that dyslexia is unique for each child — for each individual.
How to Help Kids With Dyslexia at Home
To parents learning how to help kids with dyslexia at home, we’re proud of you! Everyone can only do the best in supporting their child’s learning. What’s most important for these kids is to know that they’re loved, and supported outside of school.
Aside from enrolling your kids in a great reading program that helps kids with learning differences, here are some additional things that you, as a parent, can try.
#1 Help them engage in reading
Ask your kids a couple of questions:
- What is happening?
- Do you need to find out anything?
- What do you already know?
- Do you understand the main idea of the story?
- Have you read something similar before?
- What’s your plan for answering these questions?
- Can you divide this story into parts?
- What are some of the hard parts?
#2 Let your kids work independently
Encourage your children to ask their own questions, and tackle their work independently. Also consider the fact that you might have to follow-up afterward.
Ask your kids about your plans, how you can rewrite things to make it less messy, if it’s your best work, or if your kids can explain things to you and show you how to do it.
#3 Nurture their thinking skills
Help your kids and encourage their thinking skills that support your child until they become active and independent, rather than be a passive learner.
Nurture their curiosity, and discuss the topic or problem involved in the homework or reading. Listen to them as well, and share each other’s point of view. This can be fun and you can spend quality time with each other.
#4 Break materials down to bullet points
Parents can help kids break assignments down into more manageable chunks. You can separate out the questions on a worksheet by drawing circles around different groups. Encourage your child to learn a little bit with each day that passes.
#5 Build a positive self-image
Appropriate praise and rewards is a good place to start, and it means a lot to a child, especially if it comes from their parents. Take the opportunities to acknowledge their efforts, and emphasize those positives wherever you can.
Dyslexic kids have good and bad days like everybody else. They may have to try harder than other kids to keep up with their school work, and it can be tiring while eating away at a child’s self-esteem.
Remind them of their strengths and help them keep things in perspective when they’re having a terrible day.
Dicker Reading Method program is now online, learn more about online reading tutoring now!
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