Reading is a wonderful habit and the best of hobbies. It widens the horizon and improves language skills. Parents therefore are always keen for their children to take up reading. There are some children who take to reading spontaneously and others who have to be prompted repeatedly and still they never take it up.

The reason is that learning to read is a slow and tedious process which requires considerable effort from the child in return for very little reward in the early stages. There are yet some children who, inspite of schooling and being taught, fail to achieve the language skills of learning spellings, reading and writing. Reading disorder is known as dyslexia.

The term dyslexia though hardly heard of until a few years ago is used broadly now. As different children have different causes for stomachache and the medicine would therefore have to differ, too, in the same way each dyslexic case would have to be handled differently keeping in view the problem area. However, when it has been understood why an individual child is struggling to read it is usually easy to work out how to reach out and overcome the difficulty.

It has been found that 80 per cent of the children diagnosed as dyslexic are in fact visual learners who have not grasped phonics. Simply put it means that they rely and learn largely through what they see and a little from what they hear. They learn the alphabet and simple words visually and even proceed to early-reader books relying on pictures and visual cues. As they disregard phonics as irrelevant it is only when the text becomes complex do they falter and are unable to continue.

For some children it is easy to read individual words but difficult to follow words and lines. Irlen Syndrome can also be one of the reasons whereby a child may have trouble with the black and white contrast on the pages of a book.

For some it may even seem that the text is moving around. Some may also have a poor short-term memory. However, practice improves ability as the more any part of the brain is used the stronger it gets. Any form of attention deficit also makes learning to read very difficult as reading is a skill requiring prolonged and consistent practice. Stress also plays a major role and raised emotion naturally reduces the ability to think.

Teaching dyslexics can be very tedious, requiring lots of patience and skill. However, every step ahead is a reward and achievement in itself. Reading is an ongoing task and continuous regular practice keeping in view the specific area of difficulty will slowly and steadily take the child up the ladder to greater heights, rung by rung.

The writer is a teacher.