See It Differently

Why Your Child Reverses Letters (And When to Worry)


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Your six-year-old keeps writing b's as d's. Your second-grader still flips numbers. You've been down the late-night Google rabbit hole and now you're not sure whether to call the school, make an appointment, or just wait it out.

In this episode, we untangle one of the most misunderstood topics in early childhood development: letter and number reversals. We talk about why reversals are completely normal in young writers, what's actually happening in the brain when a child can't tell a "b" from a "d," and, crucially, what shifts that from a developmental phase into something worth investigating.

We also tackle the dyslexia question directly, because the answer is more nuanced than most people realize. Reversals and dyslexia are not the same thing, and conflating them leads parents either to panic prematurely or miss what's actually going on.

Plus: where visual processing fits into all of this, what a behavioral optometry evaluation actually looks for, and the questions that matter more than reversal frequency alone.

If your child is in early elementary and you've ever wondered whether something is "off", this one's for you.

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See It DifferentlyBy Justin Chelette, OD FAAO