"This really doesn't answer the question...are reversals STILL developmentally appropriate at age 5? When should a parent begin wondering about the presence of a learning disability such as dyslexia or dyscalcula?"

"To add to the above advice -- school is the first real experience where directionality is crucial. When a toddler learns that a chair is called a chair, it can be upside down, backwards, or sideways, and it is still and will always be a chair. Learning our alphabet and how our words are formed from left to right is not typically encountered until the pre-reading experiences of preschool and kindergarten. Developmentally, we are not overly concerned about reversals until the end of first grade, as often it takes that long for some children to make the connection with the critical importance of directionality. Many opportunities to explore those troublesome letters (b,d,p,q for example), should rectify the problem. As far as the D'Nealian style of writing, many schools have actually moved away from this style, because the little tails on the ends of most D'Nealian letters cause them to look too similar. There have been some very interesting research studies of late that h! ave shown that struggling readers have more difficulty in distinguishing between letters because of this similar look. The argument that learning this style of writing would aid the transition to cursive is not a powerful enough reason, since learning difficulties emerge in first grade, and most cursive writing instruction is not introduced now until third grade, when children should already have strong reading skills in their repertoire."