Is this dyslexia?

[HortonMarket]

Hi my 9 yo dd complains of text being hard to read because the wires 'move and keep crashing into each other'. School tested her in summer but said they had no concerns. DD says that the words they have her to read were in a column and so it was easier to read. Unsure about getting private assessment. What should I do?

I would. I can’t say whether she has it or not but it is a very complex thing and far more than read words from a column. My son has no issues reading at all but still has dyslexia. I would get it checked by a professional. Good luck.

"Words" sorry not wires!

It's Irlens. You can search the images of what she is seeing on line.

Google local assessors, she will be prescribed coloured overlays and tinted glasses which will help.

It's very tough, dd has it, she is at uni and studying is very hard.

40% of dyslexic people develop Irlens so worth also looking at dyslexia later.

My DS who is dyslexic but has no problems reading, although at that age did use a ruler under the sentence. He had a full battery of eyetests at the hospital for another reason and there was no problems.

However DD who is not dyslexic has convergence insufficiency and at that age saw double. This was diagnosed by high street optician.
Basically if you hold a pencil out in front of your nose and gradually bring it forward. Bring it slowly forward and note the point you see double. This should be about 8cm from the eyes , dd was about 20cm. It is caused by the muscles round the eyes not working together.
It is easily rectified with a boring but simple "pencil push ups" excercise 10 minutes a day.

Dd wasn't diagnosed with Irlens until she was 16. I asked her for years as her dyslexic report flagged it up as something to look out for.

I kept asking her if the words moved and for her they don't they are distorted and in colour.

Dd is studying photography and made the hopefully attached image of what she sees. It's very interesting.

You don't need expensive overlays - experiment with different coloured plastic wallets. Has she has a sight test recently? See if there is a behavioural optometrist locally.

See if there is a behavioural optometrist locally

Try a normal optician first, as that doesn't cost anything and can rule out convergence problems

Wow thank you all so much. I have never heard of Irlens but I will look it up and flag it to the school. She did have a sight test done, came back normal. Maybe I should go back and do that too?

Ideally your dd needs to see an optometrist as she has already seen an optician. An irlen screening would not be able to identify any underlying vision difficulties.

Following with interest as my DD has also been picked up at college as having Irlens and needs testing for dyslexia too

Dd vision tests are perfect, they won't detect Irlens.
You really need to see a specialist, Wrexham University has an amazing Irlens unit if that's near you.

Horton - I'm a Optometrist with a special interest in reading/learning vision. It could be one of several things, its could be Irlens, it could be a sign of dyslexia, it could be due to binocular vision problems (such as convergence insufficiency or uncorrected heterophoria) it could be an issue with accommodation.

Paul Adler in St Albans is very good at dealing with everything above. In London the Institute of Optometry I'd recommend.
If neither are close by, I'd suggest another test with a regular optician (People use optician/optometrist interchangeably in the UK, but only registered Optometrists are able to test eyes).

Thank you all. I'll try optometrist first and go from there.