OnTrack Reading

This is the concluding Page of The Dyslexia Puzzle section of the Guide. Based on my experience with around 200 children in my reading tutoring business and on further experience with another 200 or so children I’ve evaluated who are in for developmental vision examinations, I’ve concluded that children who struggle to learn to read usually have problems with their visual skills and that those problems tend to run in families.

It is this genetic pattern of poor vision skills combined with an inability to learn to read efficiently that I have been calling dyslexia. I’ve also tended to give the impression that if you successfully address the vision problems and ensure that phonics instruction is in place, that dyslexia can be overcome in the sense that your child will then become an able, willing reader. While I believe this to be true in many cases, I also see children who remain a puzzle even after vision therapy and phonics instruction have clearly had their respective impact.

That is, some children have their vision problems corrected, as determined by objective testing, and also readily absorb my phonics instruction, again as demonstrated by objective testing, but they continue to struggle with print. I’ve seen clients of mine who learn to confidently decode three and four syllable words when all they did was guess at them three months earlier, but who still read aloud haltingly and hesitate at common one syllable words.

While it’s always tempting to want to think that these children just need more practice using their newly-acquired skills, I’ve seen enough such children in my client base over the years to realize that there’s another pattern present, and that it probably has another explanation for its existence.

The clients who struggle visually demonstrate many similar symptoms and are usually easy to pick out once one has some experience in what to look for in their reading behavior. Vision therapy will addresses those symptoms. Similarly, good phonics instruction will address the fairly obvious symptoms presented when a child has no clue how to sound out words. But sometimes neither of these is enough and some children, while better off, still struggle. It’s a puzzle that I lack a satisfactory answer to so far.

Some Possibilities

It’s possible that more practice is exactly what’s needed, especially guided practice so the previous phonics instruction is not forgotten, and I have had parents report success with that approach.

It’s also possible that diet is a factor. A study done with fish oil in Great Britain showed that supplementation increased word identification ability after only three months. Modern diets lack the essential fatty acids necessary for optimal brain development and doing something about that might be a good idea.

Another study done on Arizona school children supplemented with a multi-vitamin showed a significant increase in performance in the nonverbal IQ in a subset of the active group. Nonverbal IQ is related to visual skills and processing speed. The gains were quite large in the children affected.

In addition, there is growing evidence that the majority of the population is not getting sufficient Vitamin D3 from sunshine due to lifestyle changes and sun avoidance over the past few decades. This too could be having an influence on the dyslexic population. For more on these nutrition findings see The Diet Piece.)

Other possibilities are that problems remain in the auditory realm or with processing speed, and there are many programs out there which purport to address those issues. In fact, this would be a good place to mention a longstanding Yahoo Group, ReadNOW, whose contributors have been a tremendous help to many parents over the years. Many regular contributors have had experience with specific programs and are willing to share advice and details on costs, effectiveness and availability. I’ve also added a link to ReadNOW on the home page so you can find it easily later.

Summing Up The Dyslexia Puzzle

Instead of pounding away at the phonics instruction for years, or worse yet, switching to some eclectic mix of instruction that totally confuses your child, investigate vision first, then take care of the phonics instruction. If, after both of these are completed, your child still continues to struggle in spite of continued practice, then you’ll be right where I am, wondering what else is going on. What I will say is that those who continue to struggle demonstrate enough similarities in their reading behavior that I think we will find that only one or two factors are responsible. The question remains, what are they, and can they be addressed with nutritional changes and/or other therapies?

Next topic: The Phonics Program Piece (of the dyslexia puzzle), or return to the Home Page