Some may disagree with my response, but from my perspective you want to look for signs and symptoms of dyslexia and all learning disabilities as early as the age of 4.  In today's kindergarten classes the majority of states have something they refer to as "grade level content expectations" and this includes kindergarten.  Kindergarten students are expected to show an interest in books and are tested for proficiency in upper and lower case letters.  If a student is showing more than the age-appropriate letter confusion with "b's and d's" and "p's and q's" you would want to raise a red flag and consider either private testing or requesting testing through a child's school.  Very often a public school will defer testing for children in kindergarten - 2nd grade in favor of trying some research-based reading methodology or reading strategies and then measuring the student's "Response to Intervention."  Frankly, I am not a big fan of "Response to Intervention" (RTI) and simply because it works under a philosophy that all children are born with a healthy brain.  Anytime a parent is concerned about their child's reading, academic skills, social & behavior skills or any other area of child development...it is not too early to begin some testing. 

I often recommend a neuropsychological evaluation for children as young as 4 and especially when youngsters are showing signs of struggle with age appropriate skills or developmental milestones.  Children as young as 4 can be evaluated for deficits in executive functions, auditory and visual processing deficits, working memory impairments, attentional disorders and social and behavioral challenges.  Dyslexia will often be tied to deficits in areas of executive function and attentional disorders. 

If you are concerned...it is never too early to understand why and if there is a problem.  The notion that it is "always better to be safe than sorry" is so very true in the educational setting. 

I hope this information proves helpful.

All the best,

Marcie Lipsitt

I was diagnosed right after I was was born, not with dyslexia but basically as being retarded after I had my heart surgary. But I think that it was just before I started school that that they hard diagnosed me with dyslexia, and they put me in the Lab School from Pre-K all the way to 9th grade. If you can I feel that it is better to be diagnosed as early as possible. Having dyslexia however is not the worse thing; I have discovered a couple of articles online asking the question, "Can dyslexia actually help you suceede in life?" So they are just now looking at dyslexia as a positive diagnoses rather than a negitive one.