As a parent, it can be disheartening to watch your child work hard to memorize flashcard words—only to forget them the next day. If your child is dyslexic, this experience is not only common—it's expected. But the reason why this happens is both fascinating and empowering.

Let’s walk through the science behind what’s going on in your child’s brain and what you can do to support them.

🔄 It's Not About Memory—It's About Mapping

When children learn to read, their brain begins the process of orthographic mapping. This is the way our brains permanently store written words for instant recognition. But here’s the key: orthographic mapping is not a visual memory task. It doesn’t rely on memorizing what a word looks like. Instead, it relies on knowing what a word sounds like and how it’s spelled.

📌 Why this matters: If your child is trying to memorize flashcards by sight alone, the word never truly gets “mapped.” Without this mapping, the word isn’t anchored for future retrieval.

🔤 Sound It Out First: The Role of Decoding

Before a word can be permanently stored in the brain’s visual word form area (VWFA), it must first be decoded—sounded out. This sounding out process is essential because it builds the neurological link between letters and sounds.

If your child skips decoding and jumps straight to memorizing, the word never reaches the VWFA. That’s like trying to put a book on a shelf that doesn’t exist yet.

🧠 The Hippocampus & Short-Term Learning

When your child memorizes a word visually (as with traditional flashcards), they’re relying on the hippocampus, the brain’s short-term memory triage center. The hippocampus is great for quick storage, but it doesn’t hold information long unless that information gets encoded for long-term use.

This is why your child might remember a word today and forget it tomorrow—the word was never truly encoded for long-term reading fluency.

🧩 Building Meaning: Semantic Scaffolding

One powerful tool to improve word retention is semantic scaffolding—linking new words to meaning. When words are attached to ideas, contexts, or mental images, they’re more likely to stick.

Try this: Instead of showing a word like “jump” on a flashcard, pair it with a picture, use it in a sentence, and act it out. Let your child connect it to something meaningful. This builds a strong mental “scaffold” for the word.

🔺 Shapes vs. Symbols: The Importance of Meaning

Children with dyslexia often rely on shape-based strategies when trying to memorize words—treating words like abstract visual patterns. But this doesn’t help with reading development.

Words are not shapes—they’re collections of symbols that represent sound (letters) and meaning (words). Each letter has one or more associated sounds. Reading proficiency requires automatic recognition of the sound(s) associated with each letter. In children with dyslexia, often this automaticity is not present, slowing down the process at the individual letter level. This lack of automaticity is often at the root of dyslexia. Children with dyslexia need more frequent successful repetitions in order to master this automaticity. Teaching your child to recognize and understand this symbolic system is far more effective than rote visual memorization.

✔️ What Can You Do Instead of Flashcards?

Here are a few practical, research-based strategies that support orthographic mapping and long-term retention:

• Use phonics-based decoding: Always encourage your child to sound out words instead of guessing or memorizing.

• Revisit frequently: Spaced repetition and review over time is more powerful than cramming. Students with dyslexia often need more explicit instruction and repetition than their classmates without dyslexia.

• Tie in meaning: Add visuals, context, or movement to make the word meaningful.

• Focus on sounds and spelling patterns: Help your child notice the consistent rules in how English works (e.g., “-ing,” “sh-,” “-ight”).

• Meet them where they're at: Start at their current point of mastery for decoding—no guesses, no stretches, no errors. Encourage repetition at this stage until they’ve got it down with ease, and only then introduce new rules or sound blends.

• Start simple if needed: For early elementary school kids with dyslexia, they may still be struggling with the sound-symbol connection. It’s absolutely okay to begin with single-letter practice or very simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words like cat, hop, or red.
  Better for the child to have repeated, predictable success with decoding on their own at a simple level, than to have lots of unsuccessful attempts to memorize words by sight.

• Be patient: Mastery takes time—and repetition.

💡 Final Thought

If flashcards feel like a dead-end, don’t blame your child’s memory. Blame the method. Their brain is wired to learn to read through sound, structure, and meaning—not sight alone.

By shifting your approach from memorization to mapping, you’re not only making learning easier—you’re empowering your child to become a fluent, confident reader.

📖 A Great Resource for a Deeper Dive

Dr. Mark Seidenberg is a cognitive neuroscientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison whose groundbreaking research has shaped our understanding of how the brain learns to read. His book, Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, is a highly accessible yet deeply evidence-based exploration of the brain science behind reading. Seidenberg masterfully explains why reading is a language-based—not visual—process and exposes how popular teaching methods often fail struggling readers, especially those with dyslexia. For parents who want to take a deeper dive into the cognitive and neurological foundations of reading, this book is an essential and eye-opening resource.