Your Child’s Struggle to Read and Learn Might be a Vision Problem
If your child is struggling to read and learn, a visual processing problem could be to blame. According to the American Optometric Association, up to 80 percent of what students learn in school occurs through vision. One out of four children struggle with reading and learning due to an undiagnosed vision problem. For one in ten of these children, the vision problem is so severe that it impacts his or her ability to learn.
Even children with 20/20 eyesight could have a vision problem that affects their reading and learning. Eyesight and vision are not the same. Eyesight is the physical process of our eyes focusing light, while vision is our ability to understand and generate meaning from what we see. Vision is more than 20/20!
How do you know if it’s a problem?
According to the College of Optometrists in Vision Development, these are the five most common signs that a vision problem may be interfering with your child’s ability to learn:
- Skips lines and/or re-reads lines in books
- Poor reading comprehension
- Homework takes much longer than it should
- Reverses letters like “b” into “d” when reading
- Short attention span with reading and schoolwork
For a full list of possible symptoms, click here.
At Northland Eye Specialists, Dr. Andrea Keele and her vision therapist provide vision therapy to help treat and eliminate visual-related learning problems. Vision therapy is a progressive program of prescribed vision “exercises” or procedures to help a child’s eyes work together and with the brain to properly interpret visual information. Vision therapy exercises:
- Help patients develop or improve fundamental visual skills and abilities
- Improve visual comfort, ease and efficiency
- Change how your child processes or interprets visual information
Talk to our eye care specialists if you think your child might have vision problem that’s keeping him or her from succeeding in school. A vision therapy program could be the answer.
