One of the most important thing you can do for your child’s early development is preparing it for literacy. Reading and writing your own language and understanding others are important skills for all future learning.

The beautiful thing about children, and all humans, is that we are all different. We think, learn and communicate differently. Some children learn how to read very easily while others struggle for years to master this important skill.

Being dyslexic does NOT mean that you are unable to learn how to read, it only means that your brain will need a different set of tools to master the skill. It also means that you might have other more developed skills that become useful in visualized problem solving, organizing and communicating. Those are all very important skills even though they’re not graded on your report card.

So! Here are some ideas for language based games that you can enjoy with your child in the car, at the dinner table, while getting ready for bed or any other time. Stay creative and start as soon as possible. All language based stimuli will help your child form important connection for reading later on, especially children that show early signs of dyslexia.

1. Play “I spot” and describe what you see and ask the child what that kind of object would be called. Try to find words that have more than one synonym so that you can add them to the conversation and widen your child’s vocabulary. Try also to think of something that changes in more quantities. You can for example say “I spot something green and brown that grows tall” if the child recognizes it as “tree” you can add “that is correct. But if I spot hundreds of trees then it would be called…?” and the child will respond “a forest!” and then you can respond with something like “that is also correct. You are so clever! Sometimes we also have a different name for a forest and then we might talk about going to the woods”. You can also make this game more magical by adding things that your child is interested in or spicing it up with fairytale creatures and say “what do you think the elves would say? Do they live in a forest or in the woods?”.

2. Buy a dictionary. Children love to provoke response with words (why do you think they pick swearing words up so easily?). Browse through it with your child and see if you can find something unusual that spikes interest. When you have found something interesting and unusual you should read out the definition and then try building sentences with your child. Then your child can have fun with it and ask family and friends what they think it means. Some children might prefer and benefit better from drawing a picture of what the word means. The drawing can also be used in the guessing game and the child can ask people what word they think she was thinking about when she drew it. To add spelling to the mix it might be helpful to write the word on the back of the drawing so that the child can give clues like what the first letter is, how many letters the word has and etc. The child will learn through guiding others and spelling that word will be easier.

Have fun and enjoy language!