Dyslexia is not something that can be outgrown. Over time, your child will gain skills that he struggled with at first, but his dyslexia will present new challenges as he grows older and school becomes more challenging. He may master reading and writing in elementary school, but have difficulty learning a foreign language in high school. He may avoid early problems with arithmetic, but struggle with algebra. As you learn more about dyslexia, you will be able to anticipate these problems before they arise and help guide your child to use study methods that are effective and useful for him.

Reading is the most significant problem area associated with dyslexia. Your child will eventually learn to read, but it will probably take her longer than most other children. It is very common for a child with dyslexia to be unable to read independently until age eight, or ten, or twelve, or even until the teenage years.

Despite the delayed start in reading, your child can learn to read advanced material and can gain reading comprehension skills as good as or better than her peers. Having dyslexia, though, means that she'll be more likely to read slowly and with greater effort.

Dyslexia can also affect other areas of life. Your child is likely to have difficulty remembering and following directions and have poor time management skills. She may be tremendously disorganized, or become compulsively neat as a way of compensating for her confusion.

These issues can be very frustrating for you and your child, but they are also problems that can be resolved over time by using planning and learning techniques to compensate for weaknesses. For example, as your child grows you will be able to help her become more organized by relying on calendars, planners, and lists; of course, she will need to learn to read first to take advantage of these tools.