How to prevent dyslexia

You may ask, "What about those phonics-only readers who struggle as much as sight-word readers?"

       I have never met any. They are rare, the exception – not the rule. Obviously if thy exist, they have not been given complete synthetic phonics, the right tools to understand the English language. Actually, true phonics readers don’t develop dyslexia.

        I had a co-worker who claimed she was dyslexic even though her elementary school used Hooked On Phonics® as its teaching method. She said she mixed up numbers and such, yet she was now successfully working on Amended 1040X tax returns as an IRS seasonal worker (yes, I have done that job, too). But what she didn’t seem to realize was that, the phonics had cured her. She read well and fluently, and was an intelligent woman.

        Being a tax examiner for amended returns is one of the hardest positions at the IRS, and she could read and understand the complex instructions in the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM). She was definitely not a sight-reader nor had reading problems. One thing I have  noticed is that young phonics readers do not mix up numbers with letters, but many young sight-readers do. Interesting phenomenon. And sight-reading can cause dyslexia in many children.

         If my coworker still had a problem with numbers, which I doubt, it may have been because of the math-teaching method her school used. The reform math uses methods similar to whole language. (And Common Core makes all this much worse.)

        There are incorrect ways to teach phonics, which is why I stress to not only teach it early, but to also teach it correctly. Early reading the right way, The Godfrey Method. When my youngest daughter came to a big word and paused, I reminded her to break it up into 3 or 4 pieces (syllables) and to read each piece. Once that was done, she easily put it together. She felt happy that she did it herself and gets more confident with each new word. She also saw the common sound patterns of the word and made connections to other words. She could not do that with the whole language reading method.

        There are several charts of monosyllable words for beginners in Vol. 2 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! for parents to use with their young children.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwlHowtopreventdyslexia