OnTrack Reading

An undiagnosed vision problem causes problems for first graders, but the affected children tend to demonstrate a relatively limited range of undesirable behaviors. They still probably like their teachers, their classmates and school in general. They feel like their parents are proud of them and life is good, regardless of their struggle learning to read. Besides, it’s likely that several of their classmates haven’t quite caught on to reading yet either.

As the years progress though, the failure to learn to read takes its toll and the range of expected behaviors really starts to widen. And this presents a problem. If you’re convinced, based on what you’ve learned so far, that your child is dyslexic and probably does have an undiagnosed vision problem, you’d like to think that seeing a developmental optometrist and undergoing vision therapy would be the answer.

And if your child is still reasonably well behaved, interested in school and wants to learn to read well, then go for it. I’ve seen many children in the upper grades who’ve undergone vision therapy and have done just fine. This is especially true if they have maintained their school efforts and if it is their vision problems that are slowing them down. They really appreciate the fact that someone has finally figured out why it takes them so long to do what other, often less talented, classmates do easily and quickly.

Older Children Can be Hard to Assess

Unfortunately, schools today can be pretty hard on students who don’t read well. Perhaps the most damage is caused by the limits they put on what such students are allowed to learn. Shunting them aside into special education classes and resource rooms where teachers help them accomplish their limited homework assignments is not productive and usually causes them to fall farther behind their peers each year. The massive increase in state and federal testing of reading skills has also restricted the actual learning of these students because teachers feel pressured to continue to work on basic reading skills regardless of a child’s inability to absorb the instruction.

The result is that older students can be a handful and in many cases spending money on vision therapy might not be the best use of a parent’s resources, at least initially. If a child has been so beaten up psychologically that he’s given up on learning, counseling might even be in order before other steps are taken. At the very least, he should be brought into the decision to undergo vision therapy and be made aware of how it will help him. After all, up to this point, he’s probably convinced himself that he’s incapable of learning to read, and might even be questioning his innate intelligence.

Some Only Need Phonics Instruction

And then there’s another group of struggling readers. These are the ones who might have had a vision problem while undergoing initial reading instruction in first and second grade, or might just have had very poor reading instruction, but who now manage to see near work just fine. In other words, they are now physically comfortable reading, but they don’t know how, or they read, but quite poorly. Their vision skills might have finally matured or, possibly, their brains have compensated by finally using the input from only one eye for doing near work, like reading. Regardless, it’s no longer vision that’s getting in the way, but rather knowledge and probably some serious misconceptions about print.

The section of this site titled The Phonics Piece is on phonics instruction. Early on in that section, you’ll find tests to determine how comfortable your child is with phonics and how competent he is in using the important reading skills called blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. It’s entirely possible that you have a child who no longer has a vision problem, but who needs a solid course of phonics instruction to learn how print actually works, and testing that you can do yourself can help you decide what to do next. I have worked with several children in the upper grades who clearly needed phonics instruction, but at the time it was not apparent why they missed it the first time around. However, if reading problems run in your family, then you can reasonably assume that your child had a vision problem getting in the way back then.

My recommendation, regardless which direction you go first, whether counseling of some sort, vision therapy or phonics instruction, is to get an evaluation by a developmental optometrist so that you at least know whether deficient vision skills remain a factor in your child’s struggle, especially if reading problems run in your family. If your child still has deficient vision skills, this knowledge can be helpful in explaining to him that what has been happening to him is not his fault, though he should not be excused for inexcusable behavior in the past either.

A note of encouragement: Once an older child get vision therapy, if he or she still needs phonics instruction (and many do) I find them very rewarding to work with. They are my favorite clients both because they usually learn quickly due to their maturity and because they clearly appreciate the fact that people have finally figured out what has caused reading to remain such a mystery to them over the years.

Note to parents of older children: The school is done trying to teach your child phonics so consider this route: 1) Your child probably already knows the Basic Code but you should still purchase a copy of Reading Reflex to get a good grasp of the essential reading skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation. 2) Then read the phonics information on this website and purchase a copy of the OnTrack Reading Advanced Code Workbook I use with each of my clients, regardless of their age. Alternatively, if you can find someone who will follow the detailed instructions provided, hire someone to work with your older child using the OnTrack Reading Advanced Code Workbook. (I usually work only 12 to 16 hours with an older child and in that time they learn the Advanced Code, become proficient at the necessary skills, and also learn an efficient strategy for decoding the long multisyllable words that they are encountering each day in their other studies.)

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