Treatment and therapy

There is no cure for dyslexia and nothing to outgrow. There is instruction that works: explicit, systematic, multisensory teaching of how sounds map to letters, delivered by someone trained to do it.

That approach has a name. Structured literacy is the umbrella term, and Orton-Gillingham is the method most structured literacy programs are built on. It is not a curriculum you buy and hand to a classroom aide. It is a way of teaching that moves in a deliberate sequence, teaches every rule explicitly rather than expecting a student to infer it, engages sight, sound, and movement together, and does not advance until the previous step is secure.

Two variables predict results more than anything else: who delivers the instruction, and how often. A Certified Academic Language Therapist working with a student four or five times a week produces a different outcome than a well-meaning tutor once a week. Most students need two to three years of consistent therapy. Frequency matters more than session length, which is why thirty minutes daily beats two hours on a Saturday.