What Does Speech Therapy Have To Do With Dyslexia??? 3 Ways A Speech Therapist Can Help
Did you know that a speech therapist (aka SLP, Speech-Language Pathologist, Speech Teacher, etc) plays a big role in treating and diagnosing reading disorders such as Dyslexia?!
If the answer is “no,” then rest assured you're not the only one! I only recently found out the role that SLP’s play in diagnosing and treating dyslexia a few years ago, and I AM an SLP! However, the past few years has provided me with much experience in the schools in this area. I have been through MANY trainings on how SLP’s can use their knowledge of sounds and language to help children with dyslexia.
In this blog post, we will review the different roles SLP’s play in the lives of children at risk of or already diagnosed with a reading/learning disorder. But first, let’s talk about what dyslexia is.
DEFINITION
Dyslexia (sometimes labeled as a Specific Learning Disability, especially in the school setting) is a reading disorder that causes trouble with word recognition, spelling, and decoding. With dyslexia, these difficulties usually come from a deficit in the phonological component of language (involves the rules for combining sounds). At its core, dyslexia is a language based learning/reading disorder. And what is an SLP’s area of specialty? Speech and LANGUAGE, which puts SLP’s right in the middle of it.
It is also important to note that having a literacy disorder or dyslexia does not make a person “dumb.” In fact, most people with dyslexia have average or above average IQ scores. There are even people who are considered to be “gifted” and have dyslexia. Many well known celebrities have also struggled with dyslexia as well.
SPEECH THERAPISTS ROLE
Prevention/Identifying Those At Risk
Children are at an increased risk for a reading disorder if they have one or more of the following:
Speech Delay/Disorder
2. Language Delay/Disorder
3. Family history of Dyslexia
There was a study by Hayiou-Thomas et al (2016) that showed that these children with speech difficulties have “a significant risk of poor phonemic skills and spelling at the age of 5½ and of poor word reading at the age of 8.” This study also found that the longer a child has a speech sound disorder, the poorer their word reading skills. Many times the first one to professionally see these children at risk are the SLP’s for speech therapy. A good SLP will then also work on early literacy skills during their therapy time to help prevent later reading difficulties. Some SLP’s even use formal dyslexia screeners that can help identify children at risk as young as age 5.
2. Diagnosis
Diagnosis of a reading or learning disability is usually done as a part of a team involving an educational psychologist, SLP, and other professionals when appropriate (such as neurologists). When there are concerns about a reading/learning disorder, an SLP helps to figure out if there are other areas of difficulty that need to be worked on as well, like listening comprehension, expressive language, or social skills. The most important role of the SLP in diagnosing dyslexia is not just ruling out other disorders, but also evaluating the phonological processing skills of a child (remember this is where the main difficulty is in children with dyslexia and reading disorders). A diagnosis will usually not be given until the child is at least school age.
3. Intervention
Once a child has been evaluated and diagnosed with a reading disorder or dyslexia, here is where the fun part comes in! An SLP will work on those phonological and phonemic awareness skills by helping the child learn break down the sounds they hear in words, and make words out of the sounds they hear. They also work on things like vocabulary, and listening/reading comprehension skills that are at times also affected. Some SLP’s use specific programs to target these skills, like the Lively Letters program that we use. However, a good SLP has the knowledge and skill set to work on these skills even without a specific program.
If your child is already being seen by a speech therapist, make sure to talk to your child’s SLP about your concerns and ask her/him what they can be doing to help prevent or treat possible reading difficulties. No matter what age or stage your child is at, we SLP’s are here to help :)
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3079378/#R19
https://blog.learnfasthq.com/dyslexia-intelligence-is-there-a-connection
https://www.asha.org/policy/PS2001-00104.htm
https://www.readingwithtlc.com/lively-letters/
If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call for a free 30 minute consultation!