I've been told my child may have Dyslexia

Have you been told that your child might have dyslexia?  Who suggested this?  Many times when we are consulting with families, we hear this dyslexia term thrown out quite loosely.  Often it is a label given even by teachers who well-meaningly tell this to parents to try to help explain why their child is still having troubles despite all the work being put in.

Some people think a child might have dyslexia because they are still reversing letters like 'b' and 'd' or 'p' and 'q', or they may be reversing words and saying 'on' for 'no' and 'saw' for 'was'.

Some people think a child might have dyslexia because they are several years behind in their reading ability and the traditional methods of how to teach a child to read is not working.

There are so many people who have been erroneously given the label of dyslexia and most of those receiving this label were given this label from a non-educational psychologist.

Vision Therapy will not cure true dyslexia; however, keep reading... don't let that discourage you.

The good news is that many people who have been labelled dyslexic actually have a visual dysfunction whether that be an eye tracking dysfunction or a visual perceptual dysfunction (to only name two).  Visual dysfunctions are often overlooked or not taken into consideration when a child is having a learning issue.  The majority of time, the child will get their eyes checked and be told that they have 20/20 vision and their eyes are healthy so their learning difficulty has nothing to do with vision.  Does that sound familiar?

Unfortunately most regular/basic eye exams only look for 20/20, the obvious need for compensatory glasses, and eye health.  This includes evaluations from ophthalmologist who are eye surgeons looking primarily at the medical or surgical side of eye care (not developmental or learning).

20/20 does not always mean that you do not have any visual dysfunctions that negatively affect an individual's ability to take in information and to learn or learn to read.  See the 20/20 myth.

20/20 does not always mean that an individual may not benefit with performance lenses that can help decrease their focusing strain/effort when doing near tasks such as reading and writing.  See Why My Child Might Benefit From Glasses Even Though They Have 20/20 Eyesight.

If a child has an eye tracking problem (read more here) or if they have a binocular coordination dysfunction (read more about convergence insufficiency) or if they have a visual perceptual delay, that child will have to work 6-8 times more than his classmate.  They will need to disengage from their work sooner and take more breaks and more frequent breaks.  These visual dysfunctions, when removed or significantly improved through optometric vision therapy, will allow the child to concentrate and take in information much more easily.  Even if the child is in the best tutoring programs, he will still not be acquiring as much information as he could or should as they are working hard through these visual dysfunctions.  It is our experience that a high percentage of individuals labelled as dyslexic are actually mislabelled due to undiagnosed visual dysfunctions.

If your child has been seen by an educational psychologist and the psychologist has suggested there are some visual or visual spatial/memory/processing issues or if in the report, recommendations are there suggesting speech to text, having a scribe, doing tests orally, requiring more time to do tests or using a computer for typing (instead of writing) and for spell check, it is HIGHLY likely that your child may have several visual dysfunctions that can be improved through optometric vision therapy.

If this sounds familiar, then call Calgary Vision Therapy now to schedule a Visual Learning Difficulty evaluation.