An astonishing 5 to 15% of people in the US struggle with dyslexia. Because of this high rate, you might not be surprised if your child, or a child you work with, receives this diagnosis. But sometimes that diagnosis deserves a second look. 

Simply put, dyslexia is a learning disorder that is unrelated to intelligence. It is popularly characterized by mixing up words and difficulty reading. While there is no cure, dyslexia is often very manageable with tutoring and specialized educational programs and will often mitigate as they get older. 

True dyslexia is passed down through genes and stems from dysfunction in the areas of the brain associated with language processing. However, there are many cases where the diagnosis is dyslexia, but it doesn’t come from the brain. It actually stems from the eyes. The conditions at hand might look like dyslexia, but actually be a vision problem.

The symptoms of a person suffering with dyslexia and a person suffering from a vision problem are often very similar. For example:

• Eye strain or headaches
• Double vision
• Blurred vision
• Excessive blinking while reading
• Avoidance of reading or visual tasks
• Poor reading comprehension
• Consistent reversal of words or letters after the second grade

If a child’s eyes struggle to track or focus it may result in difficulty reading and other symptoms associated with dyslexia. Having eye tracking problems and skipping words when reading is often a vision problem that mimics dyslexia. While vision therapy doesn’t solve dyslexia, it often can mitigate symptoms by treating the underlying visual problems.

While tutoring and special education for dyslexia may assist children with visual problems too, it is much more effective to go to the root of the issue and help them develop the visual skills they are lacking if those are the skills that are disadvantageous to them.

In situations of vision problems, many parents find themselves in despair: “I know my child is smart, they just hate to read!” When you have a vision problem, reading becomes really difficult. Instead of recognizing words and pulling them from memory, a child with a vision problem has to decode each word individually. This makes reading laborious, annoying, and far from enjoyable.

Vision therapy may use lenses or prisms to train the coordination of the eyes and improve a child’s visual efficiency and processing. Vision therapists engage children in fun, game-based activities to develop the coordination of the muscles of the eyes until they work together efficiently. Once their eyes are working properly, many children begin consuming books at an astonishing rate and express great enjoyment when reading.

So, if your child has been diagnosed with dyslexia or is struggling to read, set them up with a comprehensive eye exam. Knowing the source of the learning difficulty will greatly improve your ability to assist your child to success. It’s a simple fix, but it can change a life. Give us a call or send us a note if you or a loved one struggles with some of the symptoms listed above. We just might be able to help.