My son’s principal is subbing for his English teacher and told me today he is skipping lines when reading aloud. I’ve noticed this myself from time to time, but it doesn’t seem too severe. She thinks it indicates a reading disability beyond his general comprehension issues. He has language disorders linked to CAPD but with a lot of therapy has made a lot of progress and actually was able to learn to read without difficulty. He is to begin LMB’s V/V in a couple of weeks. Will this address the line skipping problem? In other words, is line skipping a result of comprehension problems the V/V is supposed to address or are the comprehension problems in part stemming from line skipping that has to be addressed in some other way. If the latter, would I need to inquire into yet another line of therapy? Thanks for any insights.
Re: skipping lines
I agree with Mary. My son could not read without a book mark or his finger to use under each line of words or to track each word while he read. He also would skip over small words like “of” or “the”. After 3 months of vision therapy he was reading without a bookmark or a finger and reading the small words. It didn’t solve all of his reading problems. We are addressing those with PACE and MTC.
Donna
Would bifocals help?
Mary, Thanks for your reply. I thought of vision therapy but am questioning the need. My son is almost 11 and began reading at age 6 with no difficulty. He has never used his finger while reading and when he reads fiction (he only reads short books of third or fourth grade level though he is in fifth grade) he can recite to me everything that happened in the story. He also has very high scores on word attack and oral reading tests. So I don’t think he line skipping when he reads to himself. He does score rock bottom on reading recall. That is why I suspect comprehension is more the problem and the line skipping would self correct if he understood better what he was reading aloud in a science or history text. I am willing to spend money on anything that would help him. Time and overload, though, are my big concerns and, thus, my hesitation about going into any new therapy in addition to what he is already scheduled for. I did look at the website you recommended and saw that in some cases bifocals are recommended. My son is quite nearsighted and can’t see anything on the board without his glasses. He often won’t wear them though because he can’t read with the glasses. (I have the same problem.) Perhaps bifocals would help. Have you or anyone else found that bifocals help this sort of problem? Thanks, Marie
Re: skipping lines
Skipping lines can be a symptom of a visual muscle control challenge/occasional involuntary darting eyes challenge.
If your child is given a homework written reading assignment, you might consider giving him a yellow highlighter pen with a wide tip so he can highlight out the lines as he reads them at home. That way your son will know whether he has read the line or skipped over it. That may help a little.
Regarding the symptom of skipping lines, recall reading a book about mild ADHD - attention deficit - with a very unusual title, How to Cure Hyperactivity (An ADHD autobiography - Inattentive type)(1981) by C. Thomas Wild and Anita Uhl Brothers, M.D. Apparently the medicines reported in the book helped reduce occasional line skipping by allowing his eye muscle control muscles to move more smoothly so he could track the words more normally. Apparently this was due to the idea that some ADHD medicines tend to temporarily change the level of neurotransmitter levels (including dopamine) which is associated with motor control (including the fine motor control needed for the eyes to move while reading).
The book was available through the non-profit Learning Disabilities Association of America. It is the most reliable book I know of which addresses the challenge of eye tracking directly and reports a temporary reduction due to the right medicine. The book again looks at eye tracking from the point-of-view of mild ADHD.
There may be other conditions other than mild ADHD where the ability to control the eye muscles easily is affected so the book does not apply to all eye tracking difficulties that exist. That’s my view. Best wishes.
Re: skipping lines
You don’t say how old your son is. I teach 5th grade and I find that it’s not uncommon for kids of that age to skip lines when they read. I encourage them to use a ruler or their finger to follow along. I would say that the strongest readers don’t tend to be the ones that skip lines but those younger students who do skip lines don’t “red flag” my concern.
Re: other causes of skipping lines
My son has been in vision therapy for a variety of problems, including tracking for about eight months. The D.O. declared his tracking problems cured after three months of therapy. I saw a pronounced improvement in his ability to do worksheets. He did not read well enough at the time to make a judgment on tracking while reading.
In the last month or so, he has begun to quite regularly skip lines when reading unless we are using book mark or he or I are tracking with a finger. I asked the DO about it and he rechecked him, and told me that his muscle control is fine. His reading has improved and now we are reading books with more text on a page and not spaced out between pictures which I am sure is why this is showing up now. The D.O. told me that he would just have to get used to more text on a page.
This does not seem to be happening. Are there other causes for poor tracking? Could it be just that he is focusing so much on each word that he loses his place? Reading is still a lot of work for him. I have thought of taking him to another DO for a second opinion but there is noone else near me. I also have thought of having him do “circle e” exercises like I did last summer which really improved his tracking.
Any thoughts?
Beth
Re: skipping lines
Sara, Thanks for your post. My son is ten and in fifth grade and seems younger than most of his classmates. I personally didn’t think the skipping was that much of a problem (particularly compared to his multitude of other problems), but the principal flagged it. You given me some reassurance this isn’t all that uncommon and perhaps there’s no need to rush out and address it but rather give it time and see how it develops. Marie
Re: skipping lines
Dear Marie:
Lindamood’s Visualizing and Verbalizing helps a student learn to visualize (make mental pictures) of what words are saying. The program would not help with tracking problems. As a child I had problems with tracking, but at the time no one realized there was such a thing (I’m 54). In third grade, when the print got smaller and the teacher no longer allowed the use of a card, I had trouble finding the beginning of the next line. So I started putting my left finger at the beginning of the line below when I started reading a line. That way I could find the next line quickly when I came to the end of a line. By fourth grade, my tracking ability improved, and my reading speed improved; but to this day if I have to read something very quickly, particularly when I am tired, I will revert to the use of a card as a line marker. (Personally, I don’t see why there is such a fuss about using a line marker. It hasn’t stopped me from getting my master’s degree in reading. However, I do agree that therapy for tracking problems is advisable to eliminate “jumping” movements (to words in a line above or below) and “darting” movements (moving sideways too quickly thereby skipping words because it takes extra effort for a child with tracking problems to control the eyes and read words at the same time.
Re: skipping lines
Just a thought on using a marker to help track print. I do this if I’m reading some really heavy text and need to slow down my reading pace to deal with vocabulary. It helps to slant the marker very slightly so that, if you have the marker above the line, the next line of print will be ‘marked’. If you have the marker below the line, the beginning of the next line will uncover as you reach the end of the first line. I really prefer putting the marker above the text so that the next line is not obstructed in any way. Grace
practical suggestion re skipping lines
Yes, skipping lines can make a mess of comprehension. It’s definitely cause and effect, first the skipped line, then the words don’t connect so comprehension is lost.
Poor comprehension won’t *make* you skip lines, but it will allow you to go on without noticing that something is wrong. If a student skips lines and keeps going, I have them go back to the start of the paragraph and read more slowly while paying attention to meaning. If they can’t get any meaning anyway, I drop to a lower level of reading until they are comprehending; word calling with so little comprehension that you don’t notice a missing line is a step in the wrong direction.
I really, really dislike the ruler or bookmark under the line method. Every kid I’ve seen using it has been made worse, not better. It makes reading even more slow and laborious for a kid who is already over-stretched. You have to read in a crouched posture with the book flat on the table, not slanted for a good eye view and comfortable back. You have to keep both hands steady. You have to carefully move both hands down exactly one line, breaking off the sentence and totally destroying comprehension. You have to pay attention to your hands and the ruler, not the meaning of the text. You can’t glance ahead and keep a flow of the reading, yet another blow to comprehension and a total break of fluency. Every kid I’ve tutored who had previously been using a ruler, I took the ruler away and they *immediately* read better and faster.
Fingers pointing to the words are moderately effective, but after primer level, two small problems crop up — the type gets smaller and your finger is bigger than the word, and people make fun of you for being babyish and pointing.
A simple solution — use something smaller for a pointer, something that looks grownup. I use a ballpoint pen with the tip retracted. The little silver ring at the end of some pens makes them an even better visual guide. (Although a cheap Bic with cap on works too). You can track the words even in small print, track letter-by-letter when analyzing new words, look back and ahead for comprehension and fluency and structure of the sentence, keep the other hand free to hold the book for better view and posture; and as an added bonus, with your nice silver-trimmed pen you look mature and studious, not silly.
bifocals
The decision whether to try bifocals is one that should be made by the eye doc. It depends on your child’s individual needs. In some cases, reading glasses that are worn for near work only are all that is required; distance vision may be just fine. In that case, clear, nonprescription glass is on top for distance, and the prescription is on the bottom only. The bifocal in this case is a convenience issue.
The advantage of bifocals is that they are worn all the time, so that your child will not forget to use the nearpoint lenses when they are needed. Sometimes, if just reading glasses are used, the child will forget to wear them! My daughter started wearing progressive bifocals two months ago because her prescription for distance had changed so that she needed correction for distance as well. We went with progressive lenses instead of bifocals because I was also concerned about middle distance vision. She adjusted to them right away, much to my surprise, and has really noticed a difference in ease of getting work done. It was a much, much easier transition than I had anticipated.
The others have filled you in on the pros and cons of tracking exercises more than adequately.
Jenny
Well, my daughter skipped lines too. Her problem turned out to be developmental vision delays. It would be a good idea to take your son to a developmental optometrist for evaluation. You can find certified developmental optometrists in your area at http://www.covd.org. Just as a regular hearing test does not test for CAPD, a regular eye exam does not test for developmental vision problems. This is a specialty area.
Vision therapy usually corrects developmental vision problems. If money is an issue, find out if the optometrist is willing to design a primarily home-based program for you if vision therapy is needed. Not all optometrists will do this, but often many of the exercises can be done at home with considerable cost savings.
We ended up doing 6 months of vision therapy and then, because the delays had been so severe and undiagnosed for so long, 3 months of PACE. Halfway through PACE is when we started seeing big gains in reading, but vision therapy laid the groundwork for those gains.
Mary