4yo suspected Autism/Dyslexia

[laura1306]

My 4 year old is currently undergoing a lengthy diagnosis through the school/child psychologist and doctors for Autism and one of the things they pointed out was his inconsistent learning. He does flash cards every night with me and has simple reading books. Sometimes we fly through the flash cards and other times he can't even give me the first letter. Have any of you experienced this or had a child with dyslexia. I've been told they are almost overlapping conditions in a minority of cases.

It does sound odd I agree - If you have dyslexia you will always struggle with written language, not one day struggle and the next day ace it. Children with autism do learn, but in a atypical way, the order and time line tends to be different to those children developing typically (for example, it would not be unusual for a child with autism to first learn expressive language before receptive language, which logically you would think it would be the other way round which it is the way a typically developing child would learn it).

My child with autism can be very much like this with learning. The problem is usually one of concentration rather than academic ability. His brain gets flooded with so many messages/sensory input. Some days it's just much harder to think clearly than others. However his teachers are fairly confident that there's probably a lot more knowledge being processed in his head than he outwardly expresses - and that's my gut feeling too.