why letter reversals happen, and what you can do!

Now that school is back in full swing, this has come up frequently. So here is my take. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that letter reversals indicate dyslexia, or vice versa. However, letter reversals are common for young writers, up through age 8, and may happen for a variety of other reasons that may be overlooked. Some of these include: ​

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• Deficits in visual memory: difficulty recalling a visual image
• Deficits in visualization: difficulty creating a mental image
• Deficits in visual-motor integration: difficulty coordinating the visual and muscular system together
• Deficits in visual association: difficulty linking what you see with something you have seen, heard, or felt
• Working memory challenges: difficulty remembering and using relevant information while in the middle of an activity
• Insufficient handwriting instruction or correction causing habituation of inaccurate formation

If your child has difficulty with letter formation, or has a pattern of reversing letters, here are some strategies you can try at home:

Normalize the experience: Kids are wise to be able to reverse a letter and reproduce it in a different direction! Use this, and encourage the child to form it in other variations away from “correct.” This will take away the fear of failure or being “wrong” and “bad,” but also encourage them to visualize the correctly formed letter as they write it incorrectly. Some variations to consider:

• Write bad letters
• Write letters backwards, sideways, upside down
• Write really big and really small letters, with sizes in between
• Write letters outside of, on top of, and below lines
• Write letters on top of, on the side of, and half way inside of boxes
• Incorporate all sorts of variations, working your way towards correctly formed letters that are oriented accurately and sized appropriately

Use multi-sensory instruction: The ventral and dorsal visual pathways are important for recognizing the identity of letters/numbers/words and their location in space. Emphasizing motor gestures may help these two pathways coordinate. Using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic sensory channels at the same time can help reinforce proper letter formation and solidify neural networks into “muscle memory.”

• Write over sand paper for extra proprioceptive and tactile feedback
• Draw letters and numbers in the air
• Draw letters and numbers on the child's back, and have them draw them on your back
• Form letters with play doh, clay, or Wikki Stix
• Write letters and numbers in shaving cream, sand, or finger paint
• Use chalk and crayons instead of whiteboards and dry erase markers for increased resistance (therefore more feedback)

Decode and encode: help your child read the letter, then write the letter

• Read the letter/number: create a double-sided card with a huge letter on one side, and a reversed version on the other side. Show the card to the child, and ask him/her to determine whether he/she sees that letter or a reversed letter.
• Write the letters: child looks at a written letter and identifies the pencil strokes used to write the letters (i.e. for a lowercase "b", starting corner, big line down, travel up half way, little curve). The child then covers up the letter and writes it from memory. He/she can vocalize the directions as necessary. The child then uncovers the target letter and determines if his/her letter looks the same or different.

Compensatory strategies: write "stories" about commonly reversed letters

• b + d: make two fists with thumbs up. Put the knuckles together, and imagine it as a bed. The left hand creates the "b" and the right hand the "d" of "bed."
• p + g: from the position above, flip the thumbs down. You now put a "pig" under the "bed." The left hand creating a "p" and the left a "g."
• p + q: also in the "pig" position, "p" (on the left) comes before "q" (on the right) in the alphabet​

If these strategies do not work, contact a local occupational therapist for a handwriting screening/assessment to identify the underlying cause.