Written by the Inclusive Developmental and Therapy Center therapy team · medically reviewed by Dr Muhammad Suffyan, MB BS (GMC 8023727) · Last reviewed July 2026
Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that makes learning to read and spell far harder work than it should be for a child of that age and ability. It happens because the brain finds it difficult to hold and pull apart the individual sounds inside words, so matching letters to sounds never quite becomes automatic. If your child is bright, curious and full of ideas but hits a wall the moment reading or writing appears, you are not imagining it — and it is not your fault or theirs.
Dyslexia has nothing to do with how clever a child is. Dyslexic children are found right across the range of ability, and many are wonderfully creative, chatty and quick-thinking. It is not caused by laziness, by poor parenting or by weak teaching, and it is not a problem with the eyes. It is simply a different way of processing the sounds of language.
In a Multan home where children are learning to read in both Urdu and English, dyslexia is easy to miss. The struggle gets put down to “English is his second language”, or to a child being weak in studies, and years slip past. A useful clue: dyslexia usually shows in both languages, because the underlying difficulty is with sound rather than with vocabulary — though it can look milder in whichever language has the more regular spelling. If sounding out words is hard in Urdu as well as in English, that is worth taking seriously.
Dyslexia is lifelong, but that does not mean your child is stuck. With structured, step-by-step teaching and plenty of encouragement, dyslexic children learn to read and spell, and go on to do well at school, at university and in every kind of work. Starting earlier makes it easier, but genuinely useful support can begin at any age.
What are the signs of dyslexia in children?
- Before school (3–5): rhyme and sound games are hard — not noticing that “cat” and “hat” rhyme, or struggling to clap out the beats in a word.
- Before school (3–5): slow to learn the letters of their own name, the alphabet, colours, or the days of the week in order.
- Early school (5–7): reading is slow and effortful, and they stumble over words other children of the same age read easily.
- Early school (5–7): they guess words from the first letter or from the picture rather than reading them accurately.
- Early school (5–7): letters and numbers are still reversed or muddled (b and d, was and saw) well after most classmates have stopped.
- Any age: spelling is a real battle, and the same word may be spelt two or three different ways on a single page.
- Any age: they lose their place, skip lines, or have to reread a sentence several times before it goes in.
- Any age: they are articulate and full of knowledge when talking, yet all of that seems to vanish the moment it has to go on paper.
- Any age: reading and writing get avoided — homework ends in tears, tummy aches appear on school mornings, or every excuse is found not to pick up a book.
- In both languages: sounding out words is hard in Urdu as well as in English, which points to a difficulty with sound rather than to second-language vocabulary.
- A family pattern: a parent, sibling, aunt or uncle had the same trouble with reading or spelling — dyslexia often runs in families.
How is dyslexia helped, and what can you do at home?
- Structured, multisensory teaching — often called structured literacy, or Orton-Gillingham-based — is the approach that helps dyslexic children most. Reading and spelling are taught in small, logical steps using sight, sound, movement and touch together, so every letter-sound link has more than one way to stick.
- Systematic phonics, revisited until it is secure rather than rushed through. Each sound-and-letter link is checked and over-learned before the next is added — this is the part with the strongest trial evidence behind it.
- Little and often beats long, exhausting sessions. A focused ten to fifteen minutes every day does far more than an hour once a week, and it is much kinder on a tired child.
- What a session with us looks like: a short warm-up on sounds already learned, one new letter-sound pattern taught by saying it, tracing it and building words with it, then a short passage that uses only patterns already covered, then a two-minute spelling check. Calm, one-to-one, and short enough to end on a success.
- What tends to change first: confidence and willingness. Children usually stop fighting the book before their reading speed shifts. Accuracy comes next, then fluency. Spelling is normally the slowest to move, and that is expected rather than a sign it is not working.
- What you can do tomorrow morning: ten minutes, same time each day, three steps. Read three lines of something easy. Play one sound game — what does “ship” start with, and what is left if you take that sound away? Write two words from memory. Then stop while it is still going well.
- Keep the knowledge growing while the reading catches up. Audiobooks, reading aloud together and good videos let a dyslexic child stay with rich, age-appropriate stories and facts instead of being stuck on books far below their thinking.
- Cut the copying. Copying from the board or from a textbook is slow, draining and teaches very little — ask the school for a printed copy, and let your child show what they know by telling you, drawing it, or recording an answer.
- Protect self-esteem above everything else. Praise the effort and the strategy, keep reading a warm shared time, and never let your child overhear that they are lazy or stupid — confidence is what keeps a dyslexic child trying, and it is the first thing to break. Do not make them read aloud in front of the class or in front of guests if it frightens them; take turns at home instead, a line each.
- Get the school on side. Talk to the class teacher, share the written plan, and ask for the small practical things: extra time, marking that overlooks spelling in subjects that are not English, and a seat where the board is easy to see.
- A learning assessment pinpoints where to begin. We look at reading, spelling, the sounds inside words, memory and how quickly a child can name things, then write an Individualised Education Plan with targets you can actually check. Where a formal diagnosis is wanted for a school or an exam board, an educational psychologist is the right person for that step.
- What would make us look further before blaming reading alone: understanding that lags behind decoding; a child who mishears or says “what?” a great deal, which means hearing should be checked; headaches, eye-rubbing or losing the line vertically, which means vision should be checked; or difficulty that spans learning, language and daily living together rather than reading on its own.
If reading and spelling are a daily battle at home, do get in touch — you do not need a diagnosis first, it is never too late to help a child, and the right kind of teaching makes a lasting difference at any age.
This is a general, made-up example rather than a real child. Imagine a seven-year-old who chatters happily about dinosaurs and asks brilliant questions, yet freezes when asked to read a simple sentence, guessing at words and spelling the same word two different ways. Homework often ends in tears. A learning assessment shows a clear dyslexic pattern, and structured multisensory lessons begin — ten minutes a day at home, one-to-one teaching each week, audiobooks for everything else. The first thing to change is that he stops hiding the reading book. Accuracy follows over the months after that, and the spark comes back to schoolwork.
An illustrative, general example — not a real child. Every child is unique; the only way to know what yours needs is a proper assessment.What the research tells us
Everything we do is grounded in published research, not just opinion. Here are a few findings from trusted, independent sources:
A meta-analysis of 22 randomised controlled trials, covering around 1,900 children and adolescents with reading disabilities, found that explicit phonics instruction was the only treatment approach whose effect on reading and spelling was statistically confirmed. Reading fluency training, auditory training and coloured overlays did not show a significant effect.
— Galuschka, Ise, Krick & Schulte-Körne, PLOS ONE (2014). View sourceResearchers developing an Urdu pre-reading assessment note that bilingual children are disproportionately under-identified for oral-language and pre-reading difficulties, partly because they are assessed only in English — so a genuine reading difficulty gets mistaken for a difference in language proficiency.
— Bhalloo & Molnar, Frontiers in Education (2025). View source
Other areas we help with
Dyslexia: questions parents ask
At what age can dyslexia be spotted?
Early clues — trouble with rhyme, slow letter learning, muddled sounds — can show from around four. Dyslexia itself is usually identified from about six or seven, once a child has had proper reading teaching and is still clearly behind. You do not have to wait for a label to start structured reading help. A learning and developmental assessment can begin as soon as you are worried.
Does dyslexia mean my child has low intelligence?
No. Dyslexia sits completely apart from intelligence. Dyslexic children are found right across the range of ability, and many are highly able, creative and articulate. The difficulty is specific: holding and pulling apart the sounds inside words, for reading and for spelling. Thinking, reasoning and ideas are not the problem — getting them onto paper is.
My child reads Urdu but struggles in English — is that dyslexia?
Possibly, but it needs checking properly. Dyslexia usually shows in both languages, because the difficulty is with the sounds in words rather than with vocabulary in one language — although it can look milder in whichever language has the more regular spelling. If reading is smooth in Urdu and only English is hard, that more often reflects English exposure. Our guide to raising a child in a bilingual home explains what is normal.
Is my child dyslexic, or just weak in studies?
“Weak in studies” describes what you see; it does not explain it. The pattern that points to dyslexia is uneven — a child who talks well, reasons well and remembers everything read aloud to them, yet reads slowly and spells poorly however much they practise. Difficulty that spreads across understanding, language and daily skills together is a different picture; see slow learners and intellectual disability. An assessment tells the two apart.
What is the difference between dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia?
Dyslexia mainly affects reading and spelling. Dysgraphia affects writing — both forming the letters and getting ideas onto the page. Dyscalculia affects numbers and maths. They are separate difficulties needing separate teaching, and a child can have one, two or all three. Each is identified by looking closely at that skill, not by one overall test.
Do coloured lenses, overlays or eye exercises help dyslexia?
There is no good evidence that they do. A meta-analysis of randomised trials found that phonics teaching was the only dyslexia treatment with a statistically confirmed effect on reading and spelling; coloured overlays and auditory training did not show one. Do have your child’s eyes and hearing checked, because both matter for learning — but reading itself has to be taught, not corrected optically.
Will my child’s school accept this, and do you give a written report?
Yes — you get a plan you can hand over. After a learning assessment we write an Individualised Education Plan in plain language: what your child can already do, what is hard, and the specific targets being worked on. Most schools will make small, practical adjustments once they have something concrete in front of them, and we are happy to work with your child’s school directly.
My child reverses letters like b and d — does that mean dyslexia?
Not on its own. Reversing letters and numbers is completely normal in the early years while children are still learning to write, and most grow out of it by around seven. It becomes a flag for dyslexia when it carries on well beyond that stage and appears alongside other signs — slow, effortful reading, and spelling that stays shaky no matter how much practice goes in. Our plain-language guide to dyslexia walks through the whole picture.
Worried about your child? Let’s talk.
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