Find out why a child is a struggling reader by asking the right question

In my opinion, one of the most common reasons that parents and teachers don't bring their children to the optometrist when they first start having trouble learning to read is that the grown-ups don't ask the children the right questions. So, they never hear what the child is really experiencing.

The adults who probably learned to read early and always performed at the top of the top reading group when they were in grade school often declare that the reason a child is struggling to read is that they are just lazy, do not want to work, don't pay attention, or don't want to learn.

Why don't the well-meaning but demotivating dissing grown-ups ask the child a simple question like: what makes reading hard or frustrating?

Instead of trying to put words in the child's mouth, the next thing to do is wait quietly until the child answers.

Perhaps the child will say that they can't tell where the letters are because the lines are always moving or they are on top of each other or look too blurry to read. Maybe the child will say that reading always gives them a headache. Any of these answers should send you to the optometrist immediately. They are classic symptoms of a binocular dysfunction like a convergence insufficiency. Research indicates that most patients diagnosed with convergence insufficiency resolve the problem after an average of twelve weeks of in-office vision therapy.

Other children may say that they keep losing their place when trying to read which may indicate a deficit of their eye movement skills. This condition, which is often accompanied and/or masked by a diagnosis of AD(H)D, can also be addressed by some guided vision therapy activities (And, if I do say so myself, by the activities in The Purple Book of the Eye Can Too! Read Series that I wrote- but that is shameless self-promotion, after all, so hurry and click on the link to that sale page.) Seriously, not being able to control their own eye movements is a common reason that otherwise healthy, obviously intelligent and articulate children do poorly in school.

Finally, the child may say that reading is confusing or they can't remember how to figure out the words. These answers should prompt you to have your optometrist schedule a developmental evaluation of the child's visual perceptual skills (And check out the other two books in the Eye Can Too! Read Series. The Yellow Book provides activities to improve dyslexia-like symptoms and The Green Book provides activities that rely on visual perceptual or processing skills.)

But, whether you buy my books or never look at them ever, take the advice of this mother of seven, grandmother, master teacher, and optometric vision therapist, please.

Children want to please there parents and teachers for the most part but when they don't know how to tell you why they are struggling and when you don't ask the right questions, they can only respond by resisting, refusing to cooperate, getting angry, or passively avoiding the dreaded school work.

Ask what makes it hard.

Don't put words in their mouth.

Respect their answers.

Believe what they say.

Be their best advocate.

Find real help and keep hunting if the first helper turns out not to work after all.

If you still don't know how to help your child or student, why not post your question or tweet it or Facebook it to the Eye Can Too! Read page's wall - I'll try to put in my two cents but I'll bet that the optometrists, vision therapists, parents, and educators among us will weigh in.

On behalf of all the children who went to bed tonight angry and confused about why reading is hard for them, thank you for reading this.

Does Your Child Stand With One Leg or Arm Wrapped Around the Other?

Many of the children whom I see for in-office vision therapy have more than one learning-related visual issue that makes it difficult for them to succeed in school. Sometimes a child presents with a severe laterality and directionality delay. Laterality is the ability to tell left and right accurately on yourself. Directionality is the ability to project the knowledge about left and right away from yourself into space. Both are visual spatial skills, i.e. processing skills or visual perceptual skills. We discover the extent of a child's delays using a combination of tests: the Piaget Test of Left/Right Awareness, either the Jordan or the Gardner test of letter reversals, and a dyslexia screener. Children who cannot cross the mid-line or who make frequent reversals when reading or writing letters and numbers often score poorly on these tests, all of which have age/grade level expected normed scores. Then we use a series of activities in therapy to address any laterality and directionality delays. (The Yellow Book in the Eye Can Too! Read series provides parents and teachers with similar activities and information about how to understand a child's behavior when doing them.) I have recently noticed that many of the children with the most severely delayed laterality and directionality skills stand or sit with one leg wrapped around the other. They often twist their bodies when standing, and seem to be holding themselves together with the right hand grabbing their left side and the left hand grabbing their right side. I think that this postural habit exacerbates the problem by making it difficult for the child to know which body parts belong to the right side and which to the left. I have begun to coach parents to discourage their children from using these positions as another way to address the child's visual spatial problems which they sometimes express as being "confusing." I'd love to know whether others see the same correlations. Feel free to add your comments. Thanks.

Does your student make frequent reversals when reading or writing? Here's help!

If your student makes frequent reversals when reading or writing or gets confused about left and right, the second book, The Yellow Book, in my three book series: Eye Can Too! Read ...Better, Faster, Without Making Reversals or Getting Confused may help. These behaviors are often due to a delay in a student's development of the visual spatial skills of laterality and directionality. Sometimes students who make frequent reversals when reading or writing are labeled dyslexic even though there is no consensus among the various disciplines on a definition for dyslexia. However, many of these students who receive vision therapy designed to address the visual spatial developmental issues overcome them. They often make significant gains in their academic performance as a result. The Yellow Book contains a series of activities like the ones we use in the vision therapy context which are designed to help students improve both of these visual spatial skills. Created with home-school families in mind, each activity identifies the visual skills used, the academic objectives and appropriate grade or ability level, a list of materials needed, clear instructions, and a set of observation guidelines to help you to understand what your student's performance may indicate. The book is available at http://www.home-school-inc.com/store/p-15-item-000014.aspx as a pdf download or as a printed spiral bound text. The Purple Book (the first in the series) is also available online at Home School Inc- it gives similar activities designed to help students improve the eye movement skills that must be in place for a student to be able to read efficiently without skipping words, lines, or losing their place. In a few weeks, the third book in the series, The Green Book, will also be available. That book provides academic activities designed to improve a student's visual perceptual skills. Each book contains graded activities for Pre-K through 8th graders. While they are all written for a home school audience, classroom teachers will find the activities easy to adapt for their class either as whole group or learning center activities.