If you notice that a child has difficulties reading, has trouble concentrating and gets excessively tired when he does his homework, you likely have come across a case of dyslexia.
Even though reading might seem to us the simplest thing in the world, it is the result of a complex process. When a child learns to read she recognises the way sounds form words and then they relate those sounds to the letters of the alphabet. Subsequently, children learn how to combine these sounds to form the words on their way to instantly recognising, in end effect, the words they have seen before. These few steps entail a large amount of tasks for the brain, some of which can go wrong.
Dyslexia takes place when the areas of the brain related to language have difficulties processing the information, which slows down reading and makes it more difficult, even leading to mistakes in the order of words in a given text. This disorder has other kinds of consequences, such as low self-esteem, given that the child does not understand what is going on and why everyone else has it so much easier when it comes to reading.
Dyslexia needs to be treated by specialists from the beginning, leading in most cases to a "re-education" of the child. This doesn't mean parents can't help, however: we must stress that they are the child's most trusted people, so it is fundamental that they support him and even encourage him to carry out everyday tasks that might stimulate his capacity to overcome this problem: memorising telephone numbers, helping in the kitchen with a specific recipe, or helping clear his room from any distracting elements are all the kind of things that might help. The most important thing, however, is for his parents to show warmth and understanding through the whole process.
Above all, we must get our child to think "I can do this", rather than "why can't I do this? ".