How to Help a Child With Dyslexia at Home

To help a child with dyslexia at home, keep practice short and calm, have them read only what they can sound out, and read the harder books to them yourself. When they are stuck on a word, point them back to the letters instead of letting them guess, and agree a homework time limit with the teacher.

Home is not where dyslexia is taught. The teaching of reading and spelling belongs to a teacher, tutor or speech pathologist, step by step. What home does well is practise what has already been taught, keep stories enjoyable, and stop homework from taking over the evening. For the bigger picture, the dyslexia support guide sets out where to start.

What should I say when my child is stuck on a word?

When a child with dyslexia is stuck on a word, send them back to the letters, one small prompt at a time, and give them the word if those prompts do not work. Give them a few seconds first. Many children are still working it out.

“Look at the letters. What sounds do they make?” Point under the word, left to right.
“Say the sounds, then push them together.” For “ship”: sh, i, p, ship.
Point to the tricky part only. “This ‘ee’ says one sound. Try again from here.”
Then tell them the word, and ask them to read the whole sentence again so it makes sense.

Avoid “What would make sense?”, “Look at the picture” and “What does it start with?”. Those prompts teach a child to guess. AERO, Australia’s education research body, notes that this cueing approach has not been linked to the science of how reading works. AUSPELD points out that good readers rarely guess from context, while poor readers often try to guess from the context or the pictures. A guess that happens to be right still skips the decoding your child most needs to practise.

How do we read together without a fight?

Many reading fights start with a book that is too hard. Split reading time into two jobs and both get easier.

Your child reads text they can decode. That means a book built from the letters and sounds they have already been taught, so most words can be sounded out. Healthdirect recommends decodable readers for this reason. The guide to decodable readers explains how to match a book to your child.
You read the books they love but cannot yet read. Chapter books, non-fiction about their interests, the series their friends are reading. Dyslexia Scotland suggests reading longer texts aloud. This is where vocabulary and a love of stories come from, and it costs your child nothing.

Two habits help the child’s part. Read the same short passage two or three times over a few days: a meta-analysis of 18 studies found repeated reading improved fluency and comprehension in children with learning difficulties. And stop while it is still going well, not after the tears.

How should we practise spelling at home?

Spelling practice for a dyslexic child works best when it is built on sounds and patterns, not on a list to memorise. Ask your child to say the word and tap one finger for each sound. Then they write a letter or letter group for each sound, and you look together at the one part that does not follow the usual pattern.

Group words that share a pattern (“light”, “night”, “fright”) or a meaning part (“jump”, “jumped”, “jumping”). A 2020 review of spelling studies in dyslexia backs this: teaching sounds, word parts and patterns helped, and memorising did not show a clear benefit. The reading researcher Louisa Moats puts it plainly: children cannot memorise more than a few dozen words unless they understand how letters and sounds connect. The page on spelling help shows how spelling is taught.

What are good homework rules for a child with dyslexia?

The best homework rule for a child with dyslexia is a time limit agreed with the teacher. A child who reads slowly can spend an hour on a task meant to take twenty minutes.

Set the limit and tell the teacher. Dyslexia Scotland suggests sessions of 15 to 20 minutes and raising the workload with the teacher. Write on the sheet how long your child worked and what they did alone.
Read the instructions aloud. The task is often maths or science; reading the question is not the point.
One subject, one step at a time. AUSPELD suggests breaking homework into small steps that can be ticked off.
Ask what the teacher wants from you. If the goal is ideas, ask whether your child may say the answer while you type it, or use speech to text (see assistive technology). If the goal is spelling, they write it themselves.
Praise the effort and name it. “You read that whole page without skipping a word” says more than “good job”.

If homework still takes too long, that is information for the school, not a reason to work later. The guide to dyslexia at school covers what to ask for.

What should parents stop doing?

Some common habits make reading harder for a dyslexic child. These are the ones worth dropping.

Stop	Why	Instead
Prompting with “look at the picture”	It practises guessing, not reading (AERO, AUSPELD)	“Look at the letters”
Memorising spelling lists by look, cover, write	Memorisation strategies have not been shown to help (Galuschka, 2020)	Sounds, patterns and word parts
Making a child struggle through a book that is too hard	Most words cannot be sounded out, so practice turns into guessing (AUSPELD)	A decodable book for them; the hard book read to them
Long sessions that end in tears	Short sessions of 15 to 20 minutes are the advice (Dyslexia Scotland)	Short sessions that stop on a success
Buying coloured overlays or special glasses	They do not treat dyslexia	Teaching that works on sounds and letters

The evidence on overlays and glasses is set out in the guide to coloured overlays and dyslexia glasses. Healthdirect’s advice applies to any program sold for home use: check that independent reviews support it, not the maker’s own claims.

Can homeschooling work for a child with dyslexia?

Homeschooling can work for a dyslexic child, and the teaching still needs to be explicit and in order, starting with sounds and letters. Healthdirect recommends teaching phonemic awareness and phonics. A parent who homeschools takes on the teacher’s role as well as the parent’s, so it is worth having that teaching planned and checked by someone trained in it.

How does home practice fit with therapy?

Home practice fits around the teaching; it does not replace it. With Dr Lauren Crumlish, a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist with a PhD, therapy is led by her: she assesses your child, sets the goals, runs each online session, and measures progress. The family’s part between sessions is short practice of what she has already taught, shown step by step, so you are never guessing what to do.

Her sessions do not cover school homework. They teach the skills underneath it. The page on reading help explains what that teaching works on, and how to talk with your child about all of this is in talking to your child about dyslexia.