Many parents of dyslexic children will notice that although their children can cope with complex words, they sometimes struggle with smaller words. Consequently, a lot of the common connecting words that are used in speech, including “and,” “the” and “for” can be missed by a child that has dyslexia. This is something that can easily impact on the speech habits that a child has and could make it more difficult for a child to be understood by people at home or at school.

Children with dyslexia will generally try to focus more on larger words that are difficult for them to understand. As a result this can cause children to forget about smaller words that are used to connect other words with one another. This will make it difficult for a child to handle the concept of sentences.

A major factor for this relates to how speech can be influenced by the reading patterns that a child with dyslexia has. Dyslexic children tend to focus on learning complex words when reading, and because this makes great demands on their concentration, they can forget about using connecting words. A child’s method of reading can then easily spill over into his speech.

Here is an example of how this can influence a child’s speech. Instead of saying “The cat went around the desk” the child could say “The cat went around desk.” Here, a vital connecting word is missing. As a result the speech can sound unusual and difficult to comprehend. When children first learn to speak they will say simple phrases that don’t include connecting words. A child usually develops his speech into full sentences with connecting words by the age of three. Therefore, if your child is much older than this and is still omitting connecting words, this could be a sign of dyslexia.

This one factor in isolation will not necessarily mean that your child has dyslexia as it can affect speech development in a number of other ways as well. However, if your child is displaying this sign as well as changing the word order of sentences, having a poor vocabulary, having problems following instructions, and generally being late in speech development, it would be best to seek further advice from a trained professional.

Diana Vogel