Tip #1: AVOID PARENTAL GUILT SYNDROME

Whether you are their primary tutor, you've hired a private tutor, or the intervention takes place in the school (or some combination of these options), you will seldom feel that you are doing enough for each child. Replace this guilt with action in the form of knowledge, advocacy, and determination.

Expect periods of frustration and discouragement as each child works through the hurdles involved in becoming a proficient reader. The journey will be different for each of them, depending on their specific dyslexia profile, personality, and emotional resilience. Keep your expectations high for all of them

and make sure they know you are always there to support them, even when they experience occasional plateaus in their progress. The nagging feeling of not doing enough may tempt you to skip much needed holiday and summer breaks from tutoring. Although breaks in the intervention can certainly cause learning loss, there are ways to minimize the loss and maintain the momentum of reading gains. (See our article, "Fun Ways to Prevent the Summer Reading Slide in Dyslexia" featured in the June 2023 issue of Exceptional Parent Magazine at epmagazine.com/archive to learn more about how to manage breaks from tutoring.)

Tip #2: BUILD AND MAINTAIN THEIR SELF-ESTEEM

Since each of your children can be anywhere on the spectrum from mild to severe, depression might accompany the child with the most severe profile. Children who tend to be more competitive or self-aware, may be highly sensitive to where they stand in reading levels at school compared to their classmates. It's especially important to help this child focus on academic areas of strength, along with extracurricular activities that provide opportunities to excel. When they share their emotions and thoughts about not feeling as smart as their classmates because of their reading struggles, explain to them that dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence. Introduce them to the many successful individuals with dyslexia from all walks of life. Well known examples include celebrities like: Cher, Tom Cruise, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, Daymond John from Shark Tank, and super athletes like Muhammad Ali. There are also professors, scientists, and others who did not let dyslexia keep them from their dreams. The genius Albert Einstein was able to achieve more in the field of theoretical physics than many of his fellow scientists who did not have dyslexia.

In fact, some companies are beginning to actively recruit dyslexic individuals, because there is greater awareness of the value of "dyslexic thinking." We know from neuroimaging studies that although dyslexic children approach reading itself in a less efficient way than their non-dyslexic peers, they often recruit other brain

regions to help them with reading tasks. This compensatory approach might explain their success in tasks related to problem solving and creativity. Einstein explained that he tended to think in images, and as a visual thinker he was able to produce his greatest work. He also quipped that if you judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, it will live its whole life thinking that it is stupid. As you help each of your children develop their reading proficiency, give them plenty of time to explore and build on their natural talents and abilities. Considering that each child with dyslexia has their own distinct reading profile, it's important that you find out more about each child's dyslexia, to ensure that their profile is being addressed in their individual interventions. This can be done through comprehensive screening that looks at the many components of dyslexia. Don't expect to see the same profile for each of your children, but if they are similar enough, they may be able to be tutored together, either by you or an outside tutor. This is not as unusual as you might think. Dyslexia intervention in schools is mostly taking place in a small group setting of two or three students, where they are grouped according to various measures. But the most logical way of ensuring success is to group your children by level of severity. If you have two children who are severely affected, they could be tutored together and receive the same level of pacing and intensity. If one has severe dyslexia and the other does not, then individual tutoring would be best.

Tip #3: CATCH IT EARLY IN YOUNGER SIBLINGS

The first child in the family to be identified as dyslexic may have endured years of missed opportunities for early reading intervention, with parents frequently being told to wait for testing because the child is not far enough behind. Many children have had to wait until third or fourth grade to be screened for dyslexia, even though they remained at a kindergarten or first grade reading level. These children lost so much ground academically, not to mention the terrible toll on their selfesteem. This scenario, although still common, is in the process of being turned around because of state legislation requiring early dyslexia screening.

If there is already a family history of dyslexia or reading problems, be on the lookout for any early signs of dyslexia in each child. One of the very first risk factors to show up in a child's life is early language delay, a strong predictor of dyslexia. Not every dyslexic child will experience this, and not every child with early language delay will have reading problems, but parents should certainly ask the school to screen this child for dyslexia, and initiate an early dyslexia-specific intervention, in PreK if possible. Early identification and intervention can prevent reading failure. It's important to know that it is possible to identify young children at