While not all children with ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder experience difficulties when it comes to reading, some studies estimate around half may struggle with literacy skills.

That’s because attention issues make it harder for children with ADHD to concentrate on a text. They may have trouble following a narrative, holding what they've read in memory, connecting a text to their prior knowledge of a topic and/or guessing at the meaning of unknown words met in context. If auditory processing is also an issue, sounding out words may be a challenge.

When ADHD and dyslexia present together, which occurs in about 1/3 of ADHD cases, both reading fluency and comprehension are affected. The child may take longer to get through a page and stumble when reading aloud. There can also be difficulties sitting still for long periods, in order to read the assigned pages.

When kids lack confidence in the classroom, are struggling to keep up with their peers, need help preparing for exams or are dealing with a learning difficulty, parents may arrange for them to see a private tutor outside of school.

Tutors provide the extra scaffolding that less able students may require and can also encourage gifted children by introducing them to more advanced topics not covered in a school curriculum. By working one-on-one, tutors are able to go over content at a pace that is right for every child.

They can also assist with school assignments and help enforce good study habits, including setting smart targets which are specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant in a given time period.

The terms self-confidence and self-esteem are often conflated. Confidence is a measure of faith in one’s own abilities; esteem is about our sense of self. It involves both thoughts and emotions and influences how we perceive others and interact with the world.

When children have healthy self-esteem, they tend to be confident. Similarly, if a child has a negative self-view, which can be the case for learners with undiagnosed learning difficulties, it can cause them to lack confidence.

While most words are relatively easy to learn, every individual will encounter challenging spelling words that they frequently misspell. Making spelling mistakes is frustrating for students and can lead to low self-esteem for learners who may be labeled as lazy and penalized by losing points on written work.

For adults, having poor spelling skills can cause them to miss out on career opportunities and lose face in front of friends and family. It’s important to understand that spelling skills have nothing to do with intelligence and that there are plenty of strategies that can help. If spelling becomes a persistent problem, there may also be an undiagnosed learning difficulty to blame.

It is sometimes said that certain mood disorders and learning difficulties are more common in people who favor their left hand. Researchers have not yet found a genetic link between dyslexia and handedness and individuals with dyslexia, a learning difficulty that affects reading, writing and spelling abilities, are split 50:50 between right and left-handedness.

However, there are fewer left-handed people in the world. In fact, the difference is 90:10. This means that dyslexia may be more commonly found in left-handed people but the relationship is not necessarily causal. There is also the question of whether or not it is more common in boys than girls.

Some evidence suggests dyslexia is just as prevalent in girls as boys but not as well recognized, while other studies (Quinn & Wagner 2015) have found reading difficulties occur more often in male individuals.