A Today Show appearance by the deputy director of Prevention Magazine, touched upon the real reasons kids and adults struggle to read and answers the questions I have been asking in my books and seminars for years:
- Is the typical eye chart screening adequate to pick up factors that are certain to cause reading problems?
Eye chart screenings are not related to reading at near point.
They simply tell you whether you can see a letter 3/8 inch high from 20 feet away, while covering one eye. When was the last time you tried to read a book or report at 20 feet with one eye covered? According to Dr. Glen Steele, eye charts miss up to 60% of vision disorders.
Eyesight and vision are not the same.
Eyesight is the acutity and health of the eye, and vision is the ability to make meaning from what you read and see.
A typical eye exam is not the same as a comprehensive exam.
While a regular eye exam will pick up big problems, the comprehensive eye exam measures things like tracking (essential to reading without losing your place, and tracking a ball in sports), focusing and how the eyes move together.
When your child is first born, their eyes tend to work separately and may wander slightly outward. If, over time, that doesn't naturally correct, you'll find your child complaining of headaches, covering one eye to read, not really wanting to read, or getting tired quickly when reading. Your child may also need to sit right and the front of the classroom to see better.
The action: get a comprehensive vision exam now, and below, there are serveral resources below where you can use to find the doctors who perform those exams.
Jean Ramsey, M.D., director of pediatric opthmology service at Boston Medical Center, says,By the time you're an adult your vision is hardwired, but a child's brain is plastic and changeable. Treatment (for vision disorders) by 8 or 9 may even repair conditions such as lazy eye.
While the American Optometric Society estimates that 1 in 4 children can't see properly,
(notice too that almost 70% of our4th and 8th graders are not reading at grade level) the CDC found that that 60% of children under 6 have never had their eyes checked.
They also found that of school-age children only 20% have had their vision tested by an eyedoctor in the past year.
OK - here's the info you need that is so critical to your child's reading success:
Get your child's eyes checked during infancy (there's a free resource below); and once a year while he or she is in school. The visual demands of school are high, and the stakes of undetected eyesight and even subtle vision problems are even higher.
Make sure that T.V. and computer use is limited, since too much of that, all by itself, may arrest some visual skill development. Get your child outside to play all kinds of games, ride bikes and definitely add sports to the mix.
Resources:
- Comprehensive Vision Exams: http://www.covd.org http://www.oep.org
- For infants - http://www.infantsee.org
- For more information on why even a former President'sdaughter struggled with unnecessary vision problemsthat affected her school work and how she fixed it:
- For informative chapters on how to detect and solve your child's reading problems, as well asmore information on practical learning strategies take a look at the best selling book, Learning vs Testing at http://www.howtolearn.com/learningvstesting2.html
Pat Wyman is a the best selling author of Learning vs Testing, international consultant and learning expert on Instant Learning, and founder of the number 1 Instant Learning site on the web, http://www.HowtoLearn.com
She has appeared on more than 300 radio and T.V. programs, had her work featured in such publications as Family Circle, Woman's World and Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. Family Magazine, and regularly conducts coaching seminars on faster learning. She e-mails her Instant Learning newsletters to over 250,000 subscribers each week.
