Stills from “I'm not ‘stupid’ kids”, a documentary that looks at the development of dyslexic children

April 23 is the 27th World Book Day. However, for some, reading is not as simple as we think it is. There is such a group of people who have difficulties in reading because of a reading disability, and their lack of reading aptitude is often misunderstood. According to incomplete statistics, about 5% to 8% of school-age children have dyslexia, and, unfortunately, their disability is often mistaken for as being stupid or careless.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Dyslexia is also called a reading disability, which affects areas of the brain that process language.

In dyslexic children’ eyes, characters are “jumping”

In our country, public understanding of dyslexia is relatively limited, and children with dyslexia are often misunderstood by parents and even teachers as sloppy learners who don't study hard enough. Tian Yuan, director of the Health Management Department at Shanghai Children's Hospital, advises parents to observe their children carefully. “When a child is not significantly behind in areas such as intelligence and cognitive ability, but often skips words, misses words, skips lines, or cannot break sentences correctly in daily reading and writing, parents should consider whether their children might be dyslexic,”, said Tian Yuan. She also mentioned that a child with dyslexia tends to reverse or misread letters or words, such as confusing the letter “b” for “d”, “p” for “q” or reading the number “6” as “9”, or 5”as “2”.

It is important to note that dyslexia cannot be cured, but people with this disorder can learn ways to be successful in schoolwork. With early diagnosis and appropriate treatment, many people with dyslexia go on to succeed both academically and professionally. However, dyslexia is a lifelong condition, not a temporary developmental delay.