DD12 struggling to read without words jumping around.

[Confuzzleduzzled]

DD12 has said that she struggles reading along straight lines and it is causing problems at school. She misread a test question as she was reading a word from the line below. I’ve noticed that she mixes up the lines in recipes when she is baking.
It’s a fairly recent thing but I want to get it investigated. Does anyone have experience of this? Does she need to see an optometrist or doctor or someone else. Thanks

DD15 had similar at around the same age. She hadn't realised it wasn't normal so I've no idea how long she had been struggling along with this. Anyway one day she was in class and the child beside her had a coloured overlay and dd realised that the words weren't jumping around when she read through the overlay. She said to her teacher who arranged for her to see pupil support and they did a test to see which colour of overlay worked best for her and she was also tested for dyslexia which it turned out she has. I also took her for an eye test and she now wears glasses too.

My dd had this and has Irlens. She used coloured overlay

My daughter had something similar and if was part of her dyslexia. She also really struggled copying text from the blackboard/whiteboard as she couldn't track the lines easily. The school did some assessments and found that blue overlays helped this and they gave her blue workbooks which helped. She also qualified for extra time and support in her exams based on the schools assessment. When she went to college they did their own assessments and report and she got the additional support again. She has taken this report to Uni and they have accepted it and she gets extra time on assignments and they dont mark her down for spellings and grammar. They are now arranging a clinical psychologist assessment apparently but this will be the first "official" diagnosis shes will gave had. I would approach the school in the first instance. I always suspected it but primary school just brushed me off.

My daughter was the same. Thought that words moved and as was normal for her never thought to mention it! No official diagnosis but school true different overlays and coloured paper.

Has an overlay and special glasses which help. (they were private assessment and funded not via the school)

Overlays can be fantastic for this but please ensure she has an eye test. She needs eye health evaluating. Mention the moving perception - this can be caused by a binocular vision issue (how eyes work together) and other factors. The optician may be able to refer her to the orthopaedist dept at the hospital if they don’t carry out a “deeper dive” into this. To take the strain off at home, she might try the text reading tool on Google lens to give her eyes a rest while vision is being evaluated.

Even if overlays sort it, please get her eye health checked.

Wishing her all the best with her studies.

Thanks everyone. That’s all really reassuring. I will mention it to school. They are already great at dealing with her multiple phobias and anxiety so I’m sure they’ll help with this. And I’ll get her an optician appointment.

Eye test and dyslexia screening. Now you have chucked in anxiety and phobias to the mix, I would lean more towards considering dyslexia and any other neurodiversity. It starts to build a potential pattern.

As an aside, it’s a good idea for all children to have eye tests with an optician on a regular basis once they start school. Not just if they are having problems seeing. Shortsightedness can be slowed/prevented these days with special glasses.