Many parents of struggling readers become concerned that their child is dyslexic. While dyslexia is not well understood, one way to address it is to find out whether or not the child has deficient vision [i]skills[/i]. This isn’t the same as visual acuity (20/20 vision), but instead it involves determining whether both eyes are working efficiently [i]together[/i]. If they are not, the resulting visual confusion can result in a child that struggles with learning to read, or who is uncomfortable reading and so tends to avoid it.
Your regular optometrist might pick up on such visual confusion, or he might not. The best way to make sure that deficient vision skills aren’t an issue is to see a developmental optometrist who oversees a vision therapy department. If vision skills deficits are found, they’re usually addressed with vision therapy, a therapy that is not usually covered by insurance, unfortunately. Nonetheless, it’s often what a child struggling with reading needs.
The [url=http://www.ontrackreading.com/dyslexia-puzzle/the-vision-piece-of-the-dyslexia-puzzle]Vision Piece of the Dyslexia Puzzle[/url] on my website is a good place to start if you want to know more. If you want to communicate with other parents who’ve had a child go through vision therapy, one of the best places I’ve found for that is this [url=http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/forum/6-the-learning-challenges-board/]Well-Trained Mind Learning Challenges forum[/url] where parents discuss many issues including vision therapy.
Dyslexia is complicated, but in my experience vision therapy, sometimes followed by phonics instruction, has helped a lot of struggling readers and parents should be made aware of this.
Dyslexia and Vision Therapy
My main point was that addressing vision issues with vision therapy will often help struggling readers and since most parents consider reading problems to be the main symptom of dyslexia, VT is, for their purposes, a treatment for dyslexia, even though VT is actually treating a symptom of dyslexia.
Many children, following vision therapy, will also benefit from remedial phonics instruction because they probably found such instruction difficult to absorb when they were struggling with a vision problem (assuming they got much phonics instruction at all, that is.) In fact, phonics instruction is my main personal interest; the interest in vision therapy arose because I found it an essential component for many struggling readers.
Incidentally, if you read “The Vision Piece of the Dyslexia Puzzle” on my site, you’ll see that it covers much of the same information contained in the source you cited, including a discussion of the effectiveness of in-office VT, of symptoms to look for, and even a discussion as to why it’s difficult to get your regular optometrist to diagnose such vision issues. It’s a comprehensive look at vision therapy and the issues involved and is aimed at parents trying to understand a complicated issue that might be affecting their child if he’s struggling with learning to read.
Convergency issues can be helped by vision therapy, which is different than the treatment for dyslexia. This article provides a balanced view of the topic:
http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/treatments-therapies/vision-therapy-learning