I’m often asked, “What is the difference between the reading difficulties experienced by a child with an attention disorder and those seen in a child with dyslexia?”
This is a tough question because students with attention disorders and children with dyslexia often receive low reading scores on standardized achievement tests. In order to make a distinction between dyslexia and ADHD, one must look beyond the numbers and consider the types of errors the child makes.
Different Needs
Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that is diagnosed based on a specific set of developmental and skill deficits including problems sounding out words, mispronunciations when reading passages, and non-phonetic spelling that is difficult to make out.
An attention disorder may cause a child or teen to struggle with reading too, but her reading accuracy errors typically include contextual substitutions (mom for mother), numerous repetitions, variable reading rate and inconsistent reading comprehension for details, cause/effect, compare/contrast, and inference. The spelling errors of students with ADHD tend to be phonetic: in other words, you can sound them out.
Although dyslexia primarily hampers reading, spelling, and related learning, the child or teen with an attention disorder often struggles with other multiple-step and multifaceted tasks such as math procedures, math problem solving, and organizing written narratives.
Different Plans
Because of the clear-cut differences in their struggles, children with dyslexia and children with attention disorders require very different educational plans.
Research clearly shows that the student with dyslexia benefits from explicit and systematic teaching aimed at improving phonological awareness, phonics skills, and reading accuracy. Accommodations of reading, spelling, and related learning struggles are also critical for the child or teen who struggles with dyslexia.
In contrast, the child with attention difficulties benefits most from an education plan that addresses two specific needs: (1) Structuring aimed at helping her build her own structured approach for answering reading comprehension questions, and (2) Flexibility of accommodations for the specific reading fluency and comprehension weaknesses associated with her attention difficulties.
Need Help Identifying or Addressing Your Child’s Specific Needs?
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(c) 2009-2019, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.
