Reading difficulties are all around us. And while reading is a frequently discussed topic among parents, struggling to read isn't. Families who know their children struggle, or who have difficulties themselves, often don't want to talk about it. But that's only one of the reasons we don't hear more about the struggling reader.

A longitudinal study of 445 children in 24 randomly-selected Connecticut schools found that fewer than one-third of the children whom researchers determined to be reading below their age, grade level, or ability were receiving school services for reading difficulties. This figure suggests that reading problems are seriously underdiagnosed. In cases like these, families may not know that their children need help. This finding is consistent with what we see at Ravinia Reading Center. Smart children employ phenomenal compensatory strategies to hide their inability to read adequately.

Classroom teachers, who teach many children at a time and are expected to have expertise in so many areas, frequently reassure parents that skills will come later. We have not met teachers who have followed children into later grades to see if these predictions are true. Schools may not be eager to pinpoint reading problems because they are then legally obligated to remediate them, placing additional burdens on their already burdened cost structures.

Sometimes skills do come later, but often they don't. Reading is unlike spoken language, which is innate. Speaking is learned through imitation. Reading is not natural; it must be taught. Whereas some children can learn by whatever method of reading instruction is offered, many cannot.

Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes for Health, estimates that a lucky five percent of kids seem to read with no effort at all, and another 20-30 percent of students overall learn to read with ease when exposed to any kind of instruction. He says that for about 60 percent of students, learning to read will be hard work and their success will depend largely on the effectiveness of the instruction. About 20 to 30 percent of students will find reading to be one of the most difficult tasks they have ever encountered. How these children are taught to read is critical to their success.

"Reading is the most important work of childhood and yet as many as one in five children struggle to learn to read, with consequences extending beyond childhood into adult life," said Sally Shaywitz, MD, the co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention and the author of the book Overcoming Dyslexia. Lyons' estimates are fairly consistent with Shaywitz' 20 percent.

Shaywitz' figure does not highlight underprivileged areas. It reflects a cross-section of American society. Other reputable studies have found even more reading difficulty. Large-scale surveys testing thousands of children annually carried out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed in 1998 that 69 percent of fourth graders and 67 percent of eighth graders were reading below proficiency levels.

And here's one of their figures that hits close to home: 55 percent of the children of college graduates performed below proficiency levels in eighth grade. It's not necessary for us to know exactly which of any of these figures is most correct. What we know is that in study after study too many of our children cannot read or read below proficiency levels. The studies show that the prevalence of reading difficulty includes our area and others like it. It is everywhere.

The word dyslexia means the struggle with learning to read despite intellectual, motivational, and educational resources. It's from the Greek dys meaning difficult and lexia from the root meaning word. Difficulty with words.

Dyslexia is not an all or nothing proposition, rather it exists on a continuum from mild to not. The word itself doesn't tell you where on the continuum your child is. It does tell you three things:

Your child is having difficulty learning to read or is reading very slowly. He or she is not enjoying it.

The reading difficulty exists in a sea of strengths. Your child’s vocabulary, reasoning and understanding are all good to excellent.

There is a phonological weakness. The 44 phonemes in our language – the smallest unit of sound in speech – are not distinguished well by your child. He or she struggles to break words apart into sounds (segment) and put them back together (blend).

Researchers have found that some pathways in the brain function differently in children with dyslexia even with the bounty of books and language to which our children are exposed. You do not have to worry that you didn’t read to your children enough.

Misconceptions about dyslexia are abundant and we think it’s important to dispel these ideas so that children can get the help they need. Over- and underreactions are inevitable with misinformation.

It is commonly thought that children with dyslexia always reverse letters. Not only has this not been found to be true, but also letter reversal is common in beginning readers/writers. Another misconception is that dyslexia is much more common in boys than in girls. Not so. As it turns out, boys and girls struggle in almost equal proportion, contrary to popular belief. Dyslexia has been called a medical diagnosis, a scary label, nonexistent: All not true.

Sometimes adults who have become successful emerge from underground and talk about their earlier reading difficulties. Heads of corporations, lawyers, scientists, artists and writers all have among their ranks those who struggled to read as children. Reading was, for many brilliant men and women from professions across the board, an uphill battle. Children who learn to read with far greater effort than their peers still can go on to conquer the world, or at least the part of it that interests them.

Leonardo Da Vinci is a good reminder of the richness of scope that a person with dyslexia can possess. From the Mona Lisa to his writings on human flight, Da Vinci was a great painter, designer, scientist, inventor, futurist and thinker. It has been asserted that his trouble with reading and writing may have forced him to use other pathways for thinking that the easy reader does not have to exercise.

Albert Einstein. Pablo Picasso. Jay Leno. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein. John Irving, author, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Graeme Hammond, cardiothoracic surgeon. Archer Martin , 1952 Nobel Laureate chemist. Charles Schwab, financial services innovator. David Boies, attorney and Time magazine Person of the Year 2000. All troubled readers.

Thomas Edison was thrown out of school when he was 12 because he had difficulty with words and speech and was terrible at mathematics. But he invented the telephone and had over a thousand other patents in his name. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” Edison is credited with saying, and he would have known. Despite his brilliance, learning was hard work for him. Learning may be hard work for your child, too.

Why is it significant to know that these achievers could not read early in their lives? Because it’s important, in the middle of what can be a long, difficult struggle, to remember what can be at the end of the battle. Even if your child is more interested in science or math than in literature, he or she needs to read to learn. Reading is foundational – for learning, for pleasure, and for ease.