Not all children with comprehension problems are dyslexic: Mona Qaiser

Dyslexia should be diagnosed with proper screening, says therapist at Remedial Education and Assessment of Dyslexics.


Ema Anis April 15, 2011

Mona Qaiser, a therapist at Remedial Education and Assessment of Dyslexics (READ), speaking on The Morning Show on Express 24/7 said that not all children with reading or writing issues are necessarily dyslexic.

“You can write a ‘b’ for a ‘d’ till age seven and not be dyslexic,” she said. “Dyslexia needs to be diagnosed with proper screening.”

READ is an institute established by Shad Moarif who’s an educational psychologist from Harvard University, and it helps children with a specific learning and comprehension difficulty known as dyslexia.

“When children come to our institute, we first screen them for dyslexia and then assign one teacher to each student,” Qaiser elaborated while talking about her institute. “Lessons are tailored according to the need of the child.”

When asked about dealing with slow learners, she commented that READ does not deal with slow learners. “Slow learners fall into a different category. Dyslexic children are not slow; they are very intelligent.”

She also said that some dyslexic children might have short-term memory loss or attention problems.

COMMENTS (1)

Luqman Michel | 12 years ago | Reply You said "“You can write a ‘b’ for a ‘d’ till age seven and not be dyslexic,” I agree with that statement and would like to copy paste something on this from my blog: Children learn a lot of things as they grow. We teach them about all the things around us. For instance we tell them that a car is a car when the child sees it from the front. We call it a car when we see it from either side. Again it is called a car when we see it from behind. If we are standing on a tall building and see a car below us we tell the child that it is a car while seeing the top of the car. Similarly a book is a book regardless of from what angle we see it. The child goes to kindergarten when he is 5 or 6 years old and begins to learn his alphabets. He is now taught the letter ‘b’. He has no problem learning that. The confusion arises when the letter ‘b’ is turned the other way around and he is taught that this is the letter‘d’. It sounds almost the same as the letter ‘b’ and he also remembers that a car is a car regardless of the angle he sees it from. A few days later the teacher turns the letter upside down and calls it ‘p’ and finally turns ‘p’ to face another direction and calls it ‘q’. I have seen many children, dyslexic or otherwise who are confused by some of these letters including m/w and words such as was/saw and numbers 6/9. They outgrow this confusion usually by end of primary 2. As such it is not correct to classify a child as dyslexic just by this criterion alone. Luqman Michel http://www.parentingdyslexia.com
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