Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Dyslexia
Dyslexia says nothing about cleverness — only that this brain takes a different route to letters.
Also known as: dyslexia · specific reading disorder · SLD in reading · reading difficulty · spelling difficulty
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Dyslexia, formally a specific reading and spelling disorder, is a circumscribed learning difference: despite normal intelligence, adequate teaching and intact vision and hearing, linking sounds to letters reliably stays hard. Around 4 to 8 percent of children are affected and the predisposition is strongly hereditary. Girls stand out less because they often mask their difficulty through effort and memorising, so they are identified later on average. First hints appear in kindergarten: rhyming is hard, initial sounds are difficult to isolate, song lyrics and weekday names do not stick. In year one and two children confuse similar sounds, read haltingly, guess word endings, spell the same word three ways on one page and take disproportionately long over homework. In Switzerland assessment runs through the teacher and the school psychology service, supported by the paediatrician, speech therapy or child psychiatry — with standardised reading and spelling tests and always a hearing and vision check. What works is structured, systematic phonics training over time, combined with formal accommodations: extra time, tasks read aloud, marking that does not weight spelling, audiobooks and text-to-speech. Many people with dyslexia are strong storytellers, spatial thinkers or big-picture minds. The equation “reads badly, therefore not clever” is wrong — but children believe it fast. How this is worked on in speech therapy — amount, duration, limits and the signs that are urgent — is ordered by age at logopaedie.borters.ch.
Short daily sessions with a systematic sound-letter build-up beat long, infrequent blocks.
Extra time, tasks read aloud and marks that ignore spelling create fair conditions.
Taking content in by ear keeps access to material and stories while reading is still being trained.
Read together, taking turns, without correcting every error: enjoyment matters more than accuracy.
Knowing “my brain takes another route for letters” beats the child’s own theory “I’m stupid”.
Storytelling, drawing, tech, sport or ideas deserve as much daily space as the practice does.
Before any diagnosis a vision and hearing test belongs — some reading problems have a simple cause.
Agree a firm limit with the teacher and stop there without guilt.
There is no drug for dyslexia, and there cannot be one — it is not an illness but a different way of processing writing. What works is targeted practice with sounds and letters, several times a week over months to years. Coloured overlays, eye training and food supplements brought nothing in comparisons. What changes the school path most are the adjustments: more time, read-aloud, marking without spelling.
About five to ten in a hundred children are affected. The diagnosis is made at the earliest after the end of the second school year, because before that the difference from normal learning cannot be told apart reliably — first signs show already in kindergarten in the handling of sounds. Effective practice needs several sessions a week over at least a year. Reading speed stays permanently slower in many, even when accuracy becomes good.
Already in kindergarten, finding rhymes or hearing a word’s first sound is hard.
The child reads very slowly, loses the line, guesses word endings and can hardly say what it was about.
On a single page one word appears in two or three spellings — despite prior practice.
b and d, p and q or similar sounds get mixed up — for longer than is usual in the class.
What others finish in twenty minutes fills an entire afternoon and often ends in tears.
Orally the child tells rich stories; on paper only three laboured sentences remain.
A lack causes exhaustion, problems concentrating, low mood and forgetfulness — and it is one of the few causes that can be found and put right with a single blood draw.
Low values are common with low mood. Whether correcting it lifts the mood is not settled; that it makes sense in winter at our latitudes is.
An empty store causes tiredness, lack of drive and problems concentrating long before any anaemia becomes visible. In women of childbearing age the most common single reason.
A building block of the cell coverings in the brain. The studies on mood are inconsistent; as part of a good diet it belongs there anyway.
Needed for making the messengers in the brain. It runs short with alcohol and under certain medicines — and it is always judged together with B12.
The honest account: no preparation improves reading and writing. What measurably helps is the training on the sounds and letters themselves, in small steps and over a long time. What is still worth it here is the simple round — ferritin, vitamin D, B12 — because tiredness devalues every hour of practice.
Has been examined for exactly this several times. Individual studies found a small improvement in the weakest readers, the larger ones found none. Understandable alongside the training, not as a replacement for it.
Clearly worthwhile and well supported when deficient — vegan, older adults, certain drugs. No energy boost without a deficiency.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
Clearly effective with proven deficiency, useless without. Take only with a documented deficiency — excess is harmful.
In pregnancy clearly established against neural-tube defects, otherwise mainly with deficiency. Can mask a B12 deficiency — watch both.
There are programmes claiming to improve reading through balance or eye training. The studies do not hold up — what works is structured practice of sounds and script. Said plainly, because such programmes are expensive.