When you are not sure about a condition, it can be very frustrating. Especially if this is your child, then you can be scared, or depressed when your child acts in a way that you can't understand.  If your child has the appearance of difficulty learning, they may have dyslexia.

Dyslexia can be diagnosed in a number of different ways.  If symptoms of dyslexia are present tests of common symptoms are conducted.  Once those tests are done, if warranted, a more rigorous set of tests is applied.

If any primary symptoms of dyslexia are observed it is important to test the child at the onset of symptoms.  The earlier a diagnosis is made the better.  An early diagnosis can save a student years of frustration and learning problems.  Testing of dyslexia is performed by educational psychologists.

One step that you should take before consulting an educational psychologist is to have your child evaluated by your physician to rule out any medical illness causing dyslexia symptoms. Sometimes illness can present itself in a misleading way.

The two types of tests for diagnosing dyslexia are screening tests and comprehensive tests.  A screening test, like it sounds, is used on a group of student to find potentially dyslexics.  From that point, a comprehensive test measures the extent of the symptoms and possible causes.

Your educational psychologist will use various statistical techniques to measure dyslexic symptoms.  This is important because the statistics allow the psychologist to quantify and measure the severity of the dyslexia symptoms.  Comprehensive tests will include reading, spelling, visual test, reversal tests, and sequencing. 

Comprehensive dyslexia tests are either done in person or long distance. As it sounds, in person testing is much better because the tester can see and observe the child. With long distance tesing, the child is never met in person.

Situational questionnaires and objective questions make up the majority of a comprehensive distance evaluation.  Once the questions are returned to the psychologists the answers are evaluated, symptoms are quantified and a detailed report is returned to the student and parents.

Remember, while there is no real cure for dyslexia, if caught early, there are teaching and learning methods that can be implemented right away to help the child compensate for the learning disability.