Irlen syndrome is a load of rubbish?

[GherkinTherapy]

My daughter finds writing really difficult and her school have a dyslexia testing kit, which suggests she is dyslexic (not an official diagnosis).

They have also determined she has something called Irlen syndrome or 'visual stress' which can be alleviated by using green tinted transparent plastic overlays on anything she is reading. The SENCO and various support staff have recommended I have her eyes tested by an Irlen specialist who can provide her some special tinted plastic glasses in just the right colour for her. Given that this is quite pricey and not available on the NHS I did a bit of research on the internet before going ahead. A recent meta-analysis of the data found 'no evidence of treatment effectiveness has been achieved'. It seems any positive effect is placebo.

www.researchgate.net/publication/332205658_Irlen_syndrome_systematic_review_and_level_of_evidence_analysis

And an article in the BMJ saying similar www.bmj.com/bmj/section-pdf/763087?path=/bmj/349/7972/Views_Reviews.full.pdf

I'm not a scientist and maybe I am missing something, but it seems wrong they are pushing an expensive treatment with no evidence to support it's efficacy. I have raised it with the head, but he thinks they are right and I am wrong.

Extra time in Exams should NOT be given. However, it is possible to have the Exams copied on to coloured paper (both the question booklet and the answer booklet) as long as it is the Normal Way of Working.

Well, it stands to reason coloured overlays won't help all people with dyslexia. If you're bothered by what experts think, plenty of experts think the term dyslexia is unhelpful, anyway, because the term covers such a wide range of symptoms and probable causes (and thus no one effective method to help improve all the possible symptoms). As such, if you find coloured overlays do not help your dd, then don't bother with expensive testing for tinted glasses, as it is likely to be a pointless waste of time for you, but also don't poo poo the idea for others for whom it may actually work. There is enough evidence that some people find coloured overlays genuinely helpful.
As a matter of interest, why have they settled on green overlay for your dd? Is that the colour they had lying around? And if that isn't working, why are they pushing for you to spend money on glasses?

Yes, dysgraphia is certainly possible, she also has a lot difficulty with learning sequences like days of the week, and with maths. She is excellent at learning lines (for drama). She really struggled to learn to ride her bike and after years of swimming lessons still can't really swim, but is excellent at climbing!

While I'd do apple and pears first - they have placement tests though mine all started near start of book 1 which was a shock and you need to buy both the teacher book and work book.

Spelling Made Easy series by violet Brand might also be worth a look. Currently using Remedial Spelling to try and find and plug where the current holes are - and red hot roots is also useful longer term.

If you don't think the extra expense is necessary don't do it, but don't dismiss the entire thing just because you don't want to spend the money.

My son was diagnosed at 11 now 17, we went up to I think from memory Durham university to see a professor who was doing research. First off they gave him passages to read and measured how many words he could read in 1 minute they did this several times and got an average. They then repeated the exercise with different overlays, (different pieces of text) many times with varying shades. It was dramatic the difference it made his average with no overlays was 38 words per minute with the optimum shades of overlay he was reading 76 words per minute. He described it without the overlay the words were floating around the overlay stopped this. We then took this information to a local opticians that specialised in Irlen they did their own test and came up with the same conclusion. We bought these optimised glasses I think including the test it came to about £300 his latest pair were about £175 as we didn’t go through all the testing.
A fashion conscious 17 year old wouldn’t wear these coloured glasses unless hey gave a real benefit. His school work fell into place once he had the glasses, primary school excluded him from sats now doing A levels.

GherkinTherapy - I would save your money for a proper assessment by an educational psychologist. The LA ED Psych will be refusing to assess all sorts of children who would benefit from it, because they will be focusing on the most severe cases only. You can bet a thorough Ed Psych report would give you a lot of useful info.

Ps you are describing a child with a lot of the symptoms of dyspraxia.

Irlens isn’t the be all and end all. They’re the noisiest private company, but visual stress is the generic term and can be treated within the NHS if your PCT has a department or you’re willing to try to be referred to one that does.

The only cost we will incur for my daughter’s glasses is if she chooses a frame that will need a bit of extra paying for - the same as if she was just having standard glasses made and just fancied something a bit more fancy. The testing, the colorimetry, and the lens tinting will all be free from the clinic.

My daughter has it. Was diagnosed aged 7. She is classed as severe. The glasses have been worth every penny so I think yabvvu. She went from the reading age of a 5 year old to the reading age of an adult within a term after getting the glasses. She can't make out stairs without her glasses. She can't use an escalator or walk in a straight line.
Constantly spilling things.

They've helped her in no end of ways. I didn't even know that she used to feel nauseous and get a headache watching TV. She thought everyone felt like that until she started using her glasses.

The full irlen test takes hours. It's intense. They try many combinations of colours to find just the right shade. They aren't just tinted, they have UV filters too. And when she looks through them, she doesn't see tint at all. They are as clear as normal glass. White is white, blue is blue. I look through them and see everything tinted in the colour of the lense.

My daughter has had her assessments through the NHS, and will receive her colorimetry testing through them too.
Which NHS area are you in? In my area, the NHS will not fund this, it's a private appointment through a trained optician only.

OP, in most local authorities, educational psychologists are not able to test for dyslexia. As a Senco I can screen for risk of dyslexia, and sold then base interventions on the results. Far too many parents think that if their child is slow to read, they are dyslexic. They may just have a moderate learning difficulty which will affect their learning across all subjects.

Those of you with Irlens, how do you read MN threads ok? I find if I invert colours on screen then too many other things look awful, become impossible to use. But otherwise, MN is very start black on start white. It's glaring for sure.

In scotland mears irlen syndrome is a recognised condition using evidenced based practice in the nhs.
overlays and glasses paid for by the nhs.

Soontobe60 My daughter had the screening you mention. Sounds like she won't be able to get an assessment in her new school either. If parents get a diagnosis privately will be school be able tailor interventions to the diagnosis? My daughter gets extra help with spelling and maths ATM.

I can see that the overlays really are helpful to lots of people here. For my daughter I really don't see any difference to her reading when she is using hers.

here is a scientific assessment on Irlen syndrome

sciencebasedmedicine.org/irlen-syndrome/

(tweeted by the great Dorothy Bishop the other day, who is an authority on pseudoscience in developmental disorders).

Thank you for the link parietal the article concludes;

'it is unethical to continue to promote and offer this as a treatment. The burden rests heavily on proponents to conduct large rigorous studies if they wish to persist in their claims, and then to abide by the results of those studies.

Otherwise Irlen syndrome (by its various names) will continue to exist as a medical zombie, alongside homeopathy, psychomotor patterning, acupuncture, subluxation theory, and other unkillable nonsense.'

This sums up my concerns.

lljkk
I magnify the page so the text is way bigger. I turn down the brightness and I wear tinted glasses. The words still move about and I miss/misread stuff but it's good enough.

My tinted glasses are from an "intuitive calorimeter" not Irlen's per se. I got them years ago and for the test and lenses (they are varifocals), it cost £400. They are now the wrong prescription but still better than the right prescription non-tinted. I can't afford new ones.

It wasn't that long ago that dyslexia wasn't a 'real' thing either and many LAs didn't recognise it.

My concern is that all parties involved have something to gain from Irlens being “a thing.”

The children get extra time in exams etc, which gives them an advantage over their peers of similar academic ability.

The parents prefer to believe that their child has a “syndrome” rather than they are just not very good at academic work.

The practitioners make a lot of money from the high fees they charge from unnecessary tests and coloured glasses.

It seems very easy to get a diagnosis and in some schools it’s becoming almost an arms race. If a lot of your friends suddenly do better in their exams because they have half an hour longer to do it than you do, then you will want the coloured glasses and extra time too.

I don’t think schools should go along with this based on evidence which is flimsy at best.

What a coincidence. I had never heard of this and only yesterday I met a lady, through my job, who is a specialist in Irlen condition and diagnoses it. She is also a sufferer and was wearing coloured glasses when I spoke to her.

I have one of her fliers here.

If your daughter has Irlen's Syndrome, the coloured overlay will have an immediate and dramatic effect on her reading. The look on her face and the speed of her progress will convince you where a thousand scientific tests could not. If the green overlays are not working then either she doesn't have Irlen's, or she has been given the wrong colour. You can buy a full set of 11 coloured overlays online for less than £30 and then try them out at home. If you find a few colours that help her, you can try to laying one colour on top of another to get the best tint for her.

An Irlen's diagnostician should always advise your daughter to use the inexpensive overlays for at least 3 months and notice a big difference before suggesting testing for expensive glasses. In my opinion, your school are quite wrong to be suggesting glasses at this early stage.
My daughter has Irlen's Syndrome. The diagnosis and treatment has been completely life changing.

Why are you concerned about “decent evidence”?? You do realise diagnoses such as bipolar and schizophrenia were once described as “breakdowns/nerves/fragile dispositions” etc. it takes a long time for actual “things” as I guess you’d refer to it by to become well known. I thought my daughter was dyslexic. The optometrist suggested irlens. Since using a blue cover sheet over her reading books and her other written work she has improved so so much as is no longer behind. It’s a “real thing”.

I don't refer to them as 'things' Ihatehashtags, I only when quoted another poster to called Irlen syndrome a 'real thing'. It's not that Irlen syndrome hasn't been studied and no one knows, it has been studied and studies show tinted overlay and specs don't work. Clearly there is lots of anecdotal evidence that it does here in this thread, but I think it is ok to question these things.

In the case of my daughter's school I worry they are pushing Irlen syndrome as an easy solution (which isn't a solution) to a complex problem. Helen Irlen promotes her products as solutions to reading problems, my daughter reads fast and accurately. The coloured paper does not help her handwriting.

GherkinTherapy, I have always read fast and accurately too. I still experience the visual distortions I shared in a video above, which make reading very uncomfortable for me.