OnTrack Reading

Remember, the vision skills that are needed to read efficiently are developmental in nature. By that I mean that these skills (which I have not discussed in any detail so far) develop as your child matures. Many developmental optometrists believe, for instance, that the near-point vision skills so essential for reading, such as being able to converge both eyes on the exact same point simultaneously and hold them there (called binocular vision skills,) are developed during the crawling phase of childhood.

So, if your child skipped the crawling phase, did this cause his vision skills to not mature efficiently? Did this cause dyslexia? Well, it’s possible, because there are clinics that specialize in taking poor readers back through the crawling phase in life and by doing so claim some success in addressing the symptoms of dyslexia as well as the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. For example, in their book Stopping ADHD, the authors Nancy O’Dell and Patricia Cook claim that one of the primitive reflexes, the Symmetic Tonic Neck Reflex, or STNR, matures during the crawling phase of life, and that failure of that reflex to develop can cause many of the symptoms of ADHD as well as symptoms of dyslexia.

The existence of some sort of dyslexia gene could explain all of this assuming that activation of the dyslexia gene primarily causes delays in development. Many parents of struggling readers report that their children walked late, or talked late, or never crawled at all or just generally seemed to develop more slowly than others, including some of their siblings. But in the end they generally end up as average adults, indistinguishable from their peers. They walk normally, they talk normally, they have normal intelligence, but they just might not read all that well even as adults. The point, though, is that they eventually develop.

It’s possible that a genetic explanation of dyslexia has enough flex in it to allow for a reasonably wide range of outcomes. For instance, if your child struggled with first grade, you probably remember the teacher attempting to reassure you by telling you that he would probably just start to get it at some point. Teachers probably say this from experience. If this whole issue is one big developmental puzzle, it’s logical that some kids, while behind in the development of their vision skills, aren’t all that far behind.

When the day finally comes that binocular vision skills mature, a child might quite suddenly realize that things are starting to make sense in reading class because he can finally see the world of print the same way others do. Seeing just a few children like this will encourage a teacher to remain optimistic about the others that still lag. Unfortunately, most will continue to struggle, and few teachers are informed enough to tell you about crucial vision skills that might be deficient.

So, yes, dyslexia probably can disappear. But if it happens too late, your child can still be at significant risk of failure both in school and in society. The next page will discuss the sorts of stress that children with undiagnosed vision problems go through in and out of school. Even if a vision problem resolves on its own, all the stress on the child to that point can have a significant effect on his future.

Next: Traumatic First Years of School, or return to the OnTrack Home Page