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How to help a child with dyslexia at home and at school

You do not need special training to make a real difference. Short daily phonics practice, lots of shared stories, and a clear conversation with the school do most of the work. Here is a plan you can start this week.

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Short answer

What can parents do at home for a child who has dyslexia?

Parents can help a child with dyslexia by doing 10 to 15 minutes of systematic phonics practice most days, reviewing earlier sounds and words regularly, reading aloud together and offering audiobooks so the child keeps enjoying stories, and working with the school on support. Systematic phonics is the approach with the most consistent evidence in trials with struggling readers. Special fonts and colored overlays have not been shown to improve reading.

  • Short, frequent practice with spaced review is remembered better than long, occasional sessions.
  • Systematic phonics had the most consistent effect in randomized trials with struggling readers.
  • Dyslexia fonts and colored overlays have not been shown to improve reading.
  • Dyslexia is not linked to intelligence; confidence matters as much as skill.

A weekly routine to help a child with dyslexia

About 15 minutes a day, five days a week, plus a reading-for-pleasure time you would do anyway. Keep it light and stop before your child is exhausted.

  1. 1

    Monday: introduce one sound pattern

    Pick one pattern, such as short a or the sh digraph. Say the sound, show the letters, and read five to eight words with it together, tapping one finger per sound.

  2. 2

    Tuesday: blend and build

    Read the same words again, then build new ones with letter tiles or on paper by changing one letter at a time (cat, hat, hot).

  3. 3

    Wednesday: spell it

    Say a word, have your child say each sound, then write it. Praise the right sounds even if a letter is wrong, and correct gently.

  4. 4

    Thursday: read in a sentence

    Read short sentences that use mostly the week's pattern and earlier ones. Add two or three made-up words so you can see real decoding.

  5. 5

    Friday: review and play

    Mix in words from earlier weeks. Play a quick game: sound hunts, rhyme pairs or a race against their own time, not against a sibling.

  6. 6

    Every day: share a story

    Read aloud to your child or listen to an audiobook together, choosing books for their interest level, not their reading level.

How to help a child with dyslexia at home: the daily plan

The single most useful thing you can do is short, regular phonics practice. Across randomized trials with children and adolescents who struggle to read, systematic phonics, teaching letter-sound links explicitly and practising blending them into words, was the only approach with a statistically significant effect. You do not need a curriculum to start; you need a sequence and a little time each day.

Follow the order children usually learn in: short vowel sounds and three-letter words first, then word families, digraphs such as sh, ch and th, then silent e and vowel teams. Our free lists follow that order, starting with short a words and the at word family, then sh words and silent e words.

Keep sessions to 10 to 15 minutes and do them most days. Research on learning shows that spreading practice out over time, with regular review of older material, makes it stick far better than one long session a week. Bring back last week's words before adding new ones.

Include some made-up words. Because they cannot be memorized, reading them shows whether your child can really sound words out, and that decoding skill is what lets children teach themselves new words as they read.1,2,3

Reading, audiobooks and spelling for a child with dyslexia

Keep reading aloud to your child long after they can read a little themselves. It builds vocabulary, background knowledge and a love of stories that their own slow reading cannot yet give them. Take turns on easy pages if they want to, but do not turn story time into a test.

Audiobooks are not cheating. They let a child with dyslexia enjoy the same books as their friends and keep learning from text while decoding catches up. Many children like to follow the printed words while they listen.

Spelling usually stays harder than reading. Practise it the same way as reading, one pattern at a time: say the word slowly, say each sound, write the letters for each sound, then check. Accept phonetically sensible attempts as progress.4,5

Building confidence in a child with dyslexia

Many children with dyslexia have decided they are stupid long before anyone has explained what is going on. Tell them plainly: dyslexia is a difference in how the brain handles the sounds in words, it often runs in families, and it has nothing to do with how clever they are.

Praise effort and strategies ("you tapped out every sound") rather than speed. Make sure they have time for things they are good at, whether that is building, drawing, sport or talking. If you want other adults to understand, our dyslexia simulator shows in a minute how effortful reading can feel.4,6

How to help a child with dyslexia at different ages

What helps most shifts as children grow, though the core, explicit teaching of how letters stand for sounds, stays the same.7,8,1

Ages 4 to 6: sounds before letters

Play with the sounds in words: clapping syllables, finding rhymes, spotting which words start with the same sound. Then link sounds to letters a few at a time. Early markers such as weak sound awareness and slow letter learning can be seen before formal reading starts, so there is no need to wait. Our rhyming words list is a good starting point.

Ages 6 to 8: decoding every day

This is the main window for systematic phonics: short vowels, word families, digraphs, blends, then silent e and vowel teams. Keep practice daily and short, and use decodable sentences so your child can succeed by sounding out rather than guessing from pictures.

Ages 9 to 12: fluency, spelling and access

Keep filling any phonics gaps, especially longer words and vowel patterns, and add repeated reading of short passages to build speed. At the same time, give your child access to grade-level content with audiobooks and text-to-speech, so slow reading does not hold back their learning in every subject.

Working with school to help a child with dyslexia

Home practice works best alongside good teaching at school. Ask for a meeting with the class teacher and, if there is one, the reading specialist or special education coordinator. Bring examples of your child's reading and spelling, and the result of the free dyslexia test if you have taken it.

Useful questions to ask:1

  • What does my child's reading assessment show, and which skills are behind?
  • Is my child getting explicit, systematic phonics teaching, and how often?
  • Can my child be evaluated for a learning disability, and how do I request that in writing?
  • Would an IEP or a 504 plan be appropriate, and what accommodations could help now (extra time, audiobooks, reduced copying)?
  • How will you measure progress, and when shall we meet again?

When a dyslexia tutor helps, and what to look for

A dyslexia tutor is worth considering when your child is well behind despite school support, when home practice has become a battle, or when you want expert eyes on exactly which skills to teach next. A good tutor adds skilled diagnosis of errors and careful sequencing; daily home practice between sessions still does a lot of the work.

Look for someone who teaches in a structured literacy way: explicit phonics in a clear order, cumulative review, and regular simple progress checks including made-up words. The Orton-Gillingham guide lists questions to ask any tutor, and explains why the method matters more than the brand name.1,9

What not to spend money on to help a child with dyslexia

Parents are often sold products that sound scientific but have not been shown to help reading. Before paying for anything, ask which reading skill it teaches and what evidence supports it.10,11,12,13,4,14

  • Dyslexia fonts: controlled studies of OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie found no improvement in reading speed or accuracy. A clear font your child likes is fine; wider letter spacing helped some children in one study, and you can try it free in our font and spacing tool.
  • Colored overlays and tinted lenses: a systematic review found no good evidence that they improve reading.
  • Vision training: dyslexia is a difficulty with speech sounds and spelling, not with eyesight. Have your child's eyes checked normally, but eye-movement exercises target the wrong skill.
  • Games that promise to fix reading through attention alone: one study found action video games sped up reading, but a single study is not enough to replace phonics practice.

Daily reading practice in your browser

Games in seven worlds, a daily plan built from the test, spaced review, and a parent area with progress, a daily time limit and several child profiles on one subscription. Works on a computer, tablet or phone.

  • Games in seven worlds: Sound Island, Letter Forest, Word Workshop, Speed Track, Story Harbour, Eagle Eye and Memory Cave
  • A daily plan that starts from the focus skill and adapts as your child improves
  • Spaced review of the letters and words that are still shaky
  • Several child profiles on one subscription, with a parent area and daily time limit
See the program

Frequently asked questions

How long should I practise reading with my child each day?

About 10 to 15 minutes of focused phonics practice, most days, is plenty for most children, plus shared reading for pleasure. Short and regular beats long and occasional.

Can a child with dyslexia learn to read?

Yes. Dyslexia is lifelong, but with explicit phonics teaching and plenty of practice most children learn to read accurately. Reading may stay slower and spelling harder, which is why accommodations remain useful.

Do I need a diagnosis before I start helping?

No. Phonics practice helps any child who is struggling, so you can start now while you ask the school about an evaluation.

Is a dyslexia tutor worth the cost?

A skilled tutor who teaches structured literacy can help a lot, especially for children well behind. Check their method and progress checks, and keep daily home practice going between sessions.

Should my child use audiobooks instead of reading?

Use both. Audiobooks keep your child enjoying and learning from books; daily phonics practice builds the decoding that independent reading needs.

What if my child refuses to practise?

Shorten the session, make it a game, and end while it is still going well. Let your child choose the reward or the story afterwards. If practice has become a daily fight, a tutor or a structured program can take the pressure off your relationship, while you keep reading aloud for fun.

Sources

  1. Galuschka K, Ise E, Krick K, Schulte-Körne G (2014). Effectiveness of treatment approaches for children and adolescents with reading disabilities: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS One, 9(2), e89900.
  2. Cepeda NJ, Pashler H, Vul E, Wixted JT, Rohrer D (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: a review and quantitative synthesis. Psychol Bull, 132(3), 354-80.
  3. Share DL (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151-218.
  4. Snowling MJ, Hulme C, Nation K (2020). Defining and understanding dyslexia: past, present and future. Oxf Rev Educ, 46(4), 501-513.
  5. Peterson RL, Pennington BF (2012). Developmental dyslexia. Lancet, 379(9830), 1997-2007.
  6. Erbeli F, Rice M, Paracchini S (2021). Insights into dyslexia genetics research from the last two decades. Brain Sci, 12(1), 27.
  7. Ozernov-Palchik O, Gaab N (2016). Tackling the 'dyslexia paradox': reading brain and behavior for early markers of developmental dyslexia. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci, 7(2), 156-76.
  8. Melby-Lervåg M, Lyster SA, Hulme C (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review. Psychol Bull, 138(2), 322-52.
  9. Stevens EA, Austin C, Moore C et al. (2021). Current state of the evidence: examining the effects of Orton-Gillingham reading interventions for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities. Except Child, 87(4), 397-417.
  10. Wery JJ, Diliberto JA (2017). The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy. Ann Dyslexia, 67(2), 114-127.
  11. Kuster SM, van Weerdenburg M, Gompel M, Bosman AMT (2018). Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia. Ann Dyslexia, 68(1), 25-42.
  12. Zorzi M, Barbiero C, Facoetti A et al. (2012). Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 109(28), 11455-9.
  13. Griffiths PG, Taylor RH, Henderson LM, Barrett BT (2016). The effect of coloured overlays and lenses on reading: a systematic review of the literature. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt, 36(5), 519-44.
  14. Franceschini S, Gori S, Ruffino M et al. (2013). Action video games make dyslexic children read better. Curr Biol, 23(6), 462-6.

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