The concept of dyslexia can be confusing to clinicians who
encounter children with severe reading difficulties within
their day-to-day practice, given the problems of definition.
Usually, such reading difficulties are accompanied by
emotional and/or behavioural adjustment problems, or
more widespread problems at school, hence the child's
referral into child mental health services. Understanding
the nature of the reading difficulty offers the prospect of
prioritising treatment alternatives. For instance, if a child
has a specific reading difficulty that has resulted in much
teasing at school, and high levels of parental disapproval,
he/she may then manifest symptoms of anxiety that will in
turn further hamper the acquisition of reading skills.
Remedial teaching, albeit accompanied by work with
parents to foster an understanding of their child's difficulties,
becomes an urgent priority. Alternatively, it is
possible to envisage a situation in which an emotionally
abused child is too distressed to acquire reading skills
commensurate with their cognitive potential. With the
latter child, the underlying causes of their presenting
reading difficulty are emotional in origin rather than
reflecting a core difficulty or abnormality in their cognitive
processing. Although remedial reading may well be
necessary at some stage, the clinician should first concentrate on
alleviating the abuse. These are, of course,
extreme examples and children rarely present in such a
clear-cut way. Nonetheless, it is important for the clinician
to know whether there is a group of children with
meaningfully divergent reading difficulties, such that they
can be characterised as having a specific reading retardation.
If
there are such children, how would they be
identified and distinguished from those readers regarded
simply as generally poor readers; what is the prognosis
for such children; and what remediation would be appropriate and helpful?
ON THE PROBLEM OF DEVELOPING CHILDREN’S INTEREST IN READING: THE SEARCH FOR EFFECTIVE METHODS OF WORK
