Why do some children have difficulty learning to read and write?

Why do some children have difficulty learning to read and write, or ongoing problems reading to learn more?

In describing symptoms that may relate to a vision problem the child may describe some of the following symptoms.

• Words blur or move?
• Fatigue easily?
• Lose concentration?
• Find the page bright/glary?
• Get headaches?
• Skip words or lines?
• Lose your place?

Most children have normal sight, to see well on an eye chart at a distance, but many children have (often undetected) problems of vision involving focusing, eye coordination, convergence, and eye movements, these are all needed for efficient reading and writing tasks.

It has been suggested that coloured spectacles may help children or adults with reading problems. It is very important that all aspects of vision are assessed and including responses to colour and glare. Reading difficulties can range from mild to severe and include dyslexia. These issues with learning are caused by several factors in combination and are rarely due to one factor alone.

At Young Eyes, any child or adult with reading problems will have a comprehensive assessment of vision function by our optometrist to ensure there are no problems of focusing, convergence and eye coordination which could be interfering with reading performance.

We will also include colour assessment on our colourimetry machine.

The patient or the parent will be able to see testing in a controlled environment where an assessment of reading and comprehension is completed with and without coloured and optical lenses.

At Young Eyes we will only prescribe tinted lenses where we can demonstrate an improvement in the visual symptoms.