dyslexia? Visual sequencing problem? second guessing myself.

[HattiFattner]

I had DS2s parent/teacher assessment this week. A very lovely and experienced teacher, who has taught both his siblings, and so knows our family.

SHe (and I) has concerns about DS2s reading, writing, spelling and numeracy.

On reading, he has not progressed from Y2 Sats level. He is in Y4. He is very hesitant, still does not really see the difference between "what" and "that" or "Where" and "There", but can pick up on very long words and decode them. Still hits a major block with certain sound blends - ai / ay in particular. Reads words from the middle - so last night, the word "rudely" became "Druley?" He was in reading recovery in infants.

His handwriting is a mess, which I have put down to him being a left hander. Teacher implied theres more to it than that - letters are transposed, badly formed letters, writes everything in very big letters (about 2 lines deep for each letter). He has done a writing/coordination scheme through the school last year, to try and get him better hand control.

Spelling he is 2 years behind his age. ALthough he gets 10/10 for every spelling test, he forgets the spelling when he has to write them in stories.

In numeracy, he also transposes numbers - so 315 becomes 351. He also writes numbers back to front P for 9 for example.

Teacher says she will now keep him on her radar. But im wondering (and second guessing) if DS has some form of dyslexia or visual processing issue.

And if so, what ....and how can I help him?

His confidence is taking a big knock because he is not moving on to the later books, he hates reading out loud and now avoids doing so ("I left my book at school" and "I finished it in class".)

He is otherwise a bright boy, funny, articulate. Just falling behind.

choccyp1g, this is not reall my thread; but very good posts, if I may say so.

Tumble - you run a specialist reading difficulties clinic? Yet you believe kids who can't learn to read are just 'not very bright' ( despite the fact people with IQs of 50 can lean to read)

If the eyes don't work independently of each other why do people have different prescriptions for each eye? Isn't lazy eye when the 2 eyes don't work together?

You say if you don't have smooth pursuits and saccades you must be dead - what about nystagmus? What about the evidence I have from a visiograph of what DD is actually looking at when she attempts to read.

I honestly hope to god you're a troll and don't really run a reading difficulties clinic.

the only thing that is unethical is not treating kids, and instead letting them suffer for their whole life, and telling their parents the child is just not very bright. ( which obviously you are not even qualified to test)

The only good thing DD has had for free was a report from an Educational Psychologist saying how bright she was. You couldn't possibly know how bright or otherwise the kids you treat are.

For someone who runs a reading clinic to believe that 'reading us just not their thing' is truly horrific.

The amount of damage 'professionals' like you do is immense. I can't describe the grief and hell people like you put me and my kids through - how much damage you do - all because you're ignorant but think you're superior. Think that what you learnt at university 15 years ago must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

i didnt mean to upset you, can I clarify a couple of points please?

some children are not so good at reading as their peers, this is what I meant by "reading is just not their thing" , ie a child should be entitled to be "not so good at something" just as they are entitled to be top of the class at something.

when I say the eyes cannot work independently , have you ever tried to move one eye without the other moving?

re nystagmus, I guess you havnt a huge knowledge base on this topic, I see lots of children with nystgamus who read normally.

when I made the statement "not very bright" I am relating to the difficulty all professionals face when a parent wants their child assessed for "dyslexia" when all that is wrong is the parents expectations being too high of their childs ability. It goes without saying that in no way am i relating to anyone on here or to every case at all, but this does happen. These people generally have been seen by a number of health professionals who can find little wrong but then if the child is taken to a behavioural optometrist all sorts of things are diagnosed. The child is then , in my opinion, put under great pressure to improve with these wild ideas involving things like swingball.that is what I find unethical.

What matters is the child.

Id love to know what damage I have ever caused a child, behavioural optometrists cause damage by putting children under pressure, if their ideas really worked it would be available for all.

Im going to leave things as they are now because I dont think our discussion is giving any further help to Hattifatner.

I hope your children are happy .

Some children aren't as good as their peers at reading because they have physical difficulties their peers don't so teachers rely on professionals, OT, Paedologists, Audiologists, Opthamalogists etc to help correct physical obstacles to learning.

Have you ever seen a child remove their glasses for PE and one eye turn towards the nose or to the corner? Isn't that why we use patches? Am I wasting my time with the exercises from the hospital to strengthen one eye?

Word searches teach a child to track words they learn to look for the letters in the correct order left to right and are often recommended by the specialists at my local NHS hospitals ... am I wasting my time following their recommendations?

Tumble - the only thing you are qualified to say to parents is 'out of the vision tests I have done I haven't found any problems'

You are not qualified to comment on their intelligence, or whether or not they have dyslexia.

But by thinking that the kid is just not good at reading you are failing the kid. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that will stop you from noticing problems you should notice.

You cannot even say their vision is fine. An Occupational Therapist does a whole raft of other vision tests (on the NHS) which you can't do.

It does not follow that if BO worked it'd be available on the NHS. Firstly, that is not how the NHS works, secondly BO isn't even one thing, there are several different approaches to it, and thirdly it is available on the NHS - at Essex county hospital.

Nor does it even follow that if a kid has vision problems they'd get seen on the NHS. The school nurse noticed problems with DS2s vision, and referred him to an opthamologist - who didn't accept the referral.

Unfortunately I wasn't told that, do I wasted a year there waiting for a referral that never came.

Your attitude towards kids who can't learn to read is what is stopping children like my DD from learning to read. If the optician hadn't told me her vision was fine I wouldn't have wasted a year thinking (incorrectly) her vision was fine. If the audiologist hadn't told me her hearing was fine I wouldn't have wasted a year thinking (incorrectly) her hearing was fine.

Hillingdon Hospitals opthamologist and orthoptist spectacularly failed my DS1 - who amongst other problems does have nystagmus. If private BOs failed kids - they'd go out of business - unlike you NHS professionals.

Tumble - have you ever used a visagraph before?

It measured DD as looking at 700 points per 100 words - instead of 150. (350 of them backwards). Many of them not in the right word or even line.

It's a bit like she has nystagmus when reading - but she does not have nystagmus.

Are you claiming:

• that severe lack of eye control does not affect your ability to read?
• or that the visagraph results were fabricated?
• or that I'm lying about the visagraph results?

(I was present when the test was done, and the results are played back as a video of what she is looking at - would be fairly hard to fabricate)

Here are her exact results from the visagraph:

Fixations/100 words: left - 736, right - 761, grade norm - 255, goal < 155

Regressions/100 words: left - 335, right - 332, grade norm - 52, goal < 35

Avg span of recognition: left - 0.14, right - 0.13, grade norm - 0.45, goal > 0.65

It is just not possible to learn to read with eye control this bad. It is totally a vision problem, and nothing to do with her intellect or me having unrealistic expectations.

Luckily there are good people out there who are able to help her. The fact I have to pay to see them is irrelevant.

The visagraph is no longer in production, need I say any more.

These results mean nothing, can you explain to me exactly what a span of regression is and how it is relevant to eye movements.

We use medical and scientific methods to assess eye movements used worldwide.

I am not accussing anyone of lying or fabricating results.

I am glad you feel you have found help for your child and I am genuinely sorry that you feel let down by so many health professionals who you feel are incompotent and (oddly all work within one health authority ) and have put your faith into someone unqualified who possibly charges a lot of money.

If I were you Id be complaining about your experiences in the NHS, particularly the apparently incompetent school nurse who did nothing when your consultant didnt acept the referral ( I wonder why? ), and did you really sit and wait for a year, personally if my child were struggling Id have been finding out long before a year what had happened.

am I correct in thinking an optometrist, orthoptist and an ophthalmologist all told you your childs vision was fine , so you sought out an unqualified person who uses unquantified, outdated methods oh and who charges money , and they told you there is a problem and you believe them?

why?

you had your childs hearing assessed by an audiologist , who told you their hearing was fine and an unqualified person who charges you money and promises you help tells you its not normal and you believe them?

why?

Im guessing your Behavioural person will be showing you all sorts of high tech data to "prove " what they are doing is working but do you understand what they are telling you?

I think we ought to finish things at this point.

No indigo knows it is working because her child has made huge strides in reading and writing in a very short time after being unable to read or write for 4 years

The visagraph is no longer in production - because they are now making the visagraph 2 instead.

Span of recognition is how many letters you can see at once, and is a term used by people assessing how well children read. Something you obviously don't do and know nothing about.

Like I said I have 3 kids, so I have a different story with each one.

DS1 and DS2 both read very well and do not have dyslexia. They still however have eye tracking problems and CI. I didn't push for a referral for DS2 to the opthamologist because I forgot about it, and because I had no concerns about his vision or his reading.

The hospital did not say there was nothing wrong with DS1s vision, they just said come back in 6 months, which we did. They then said come back in another 6 months, at which point we realised there was no point in attending these 6 monthly appointments.

His paedetrician and NHS occupational therapist also told me he had vision problems, which is how we got referred to the orthoptist in the first place.

They are not unde a BO, they are somebody else who you would consider to be even more unqualified. He is treating them for their ASD and Dyspraxia. During his first examination of them he picked up their vision problems. (like everyone else did). But unlike the NHS he wants to do something about them.

DDs hearing was improved enormously by treatment I couldn't get on the NHS.

And I have every reason to believe that computer vision therapy, done daily, over many months, will cure her current vision problems. If you stick around this board in a few months you will certainly hear whether or not it worked.

What I do know for certain is that no-one in the NHS or in school can help DD. I have well and truly exhausted all of those venues. I would be a neglectful parent if I listened o you and all the others who told me nothing can be done.

You, like all the professionals, are an expert in such a narrow field. You know nothing about reading or learning to read - or it seems even how the eyes work when reading.

you only know what you have been brainwashed with by someone you pay. who is an expert in ASD, dyspraxia, oculomotor difficulties and audiometry but has no qualifications.

if this worked wouldnt it be more widely available? Is it not possible there are more reasons your daughter became able to read?

one of the things I do is to work in a multidisciplinary manner and I certainly know about the mechanisms involved in reading and how the eyes work!

perhaps we should agree to disagree?

So would you disregard Indigo's paediatrician and occupational therapists who identified her daughter's vision problems? As a parent what would you do if two professionals told you your child had vision difficulties that you were unable to have treated by the NHS? shrug your shoulders or look for help?

It is widely available in some areas on the NHS have you heard of the post code lottery when it comes to health care

perhaps we should agree to disagree? - I could do that, if you weren't mistreating kids every day, claiming to be a professional who knows what you're doing.

If you weren't a professional I'd be happy for you to hold whatever views you do.

if this worked wouldnt it be more widely available? - Not necessarily. The NHS certainly isn't going to provide anything they don't have to, and haven't historically.

If it was a drug sponsored by GSK then yes it would be adopted. But a treatment? No way. For starters no-one besides the big drug companies have the millions required to run the studies which are convincing enough to convince an unwilling NHS to adopt it.

If you know about how the eyes work when reading, how come you don't know about 'avg span of recognition'?

And if you want to help kids how come you don't use a visagraph to see how their eyes work when they read?

I most certainly haven't been brainwashed. I just do have enough disposable income that I'm happy to try things which may or may not work.

I have absolute proof that so far the therapy is helping my 3 kids - in that all 3 of them have made significant improvements since we started the treatment 5 weeks ago. So far in particular their motor skills are vastly improved. And DDs word finding ability and memory.

We haven't started the computer vision therapy yet. So I can't say yet whether or not it works. But I do know that the results so far are amazing. And given that I'm talking about 3 different kids, with 3 different diagnoses, that is one incredible co-incidence.

DDs reading was improved vastly by a different auditory treatment she did last year. When I told the EP who she was under that it had helped her, his reaction was pretty much like yours. He said 'There is no evidence that treatment works, it must have been something else that helped.'

What if I'm right? What if you could be helping kids but you aren't? How do you know that vision therapy doesn't work. There's certainly an awful lot of anecdotal evidence on this board that BOs do work.

If I was a professional who was meant to be helping kids, I'd certainly be very interested in finding out why so many of us have found it to work.

Didn't you go into the profession to help kids?

A paediatrician will not diagnose visual problems of such complication, even a simple squint they will not diagnose., they refer onward just as they do for any other problem. Occupational therapists are great at what they do, but again they refer onward.

In my opinion and every other paediatric ophthalmologist I meet up with, we off course discuss such things, "avg span of recognition" is a nonsense term.
Anecdotal evidence is not enough. I have looked into what these people do in great detail, none of it makes sense, not just to me but to every opthalomological govening body worldwide.

I admire you doing everything you feel is right for your kids. I certainly care about the kids I work with, I care enough not to subject them to things which have no scientific basis.

Good luck

"mistreating kids everyday" thats extreme!

you obviously have a chip on your shoulder, is it perhaps partly true that your childen arnt quite as academically inclined as you would wish and you are disappointed?

My clinics help childen who have a genuine need, I also go every year using my own holiday time and money to Malawi to help kids with a genuine need. uncaring? really?

I will leave you to your own misguided ideas

is it perhaps partly true that your childen arnt quite as academically inclined as you would wish and you are disappointed? -

Um. No. Both of my boys are top of their class in almost every subject. They are very academic, and doing very well at school.

I am not at all disappointed in them - although I still want to cure / improve their ASD and dyspraxia, as it makes them miserable.

My DD is bottom of the class in every subject - and given that the EPs has said her cognitive abilities are in the 98th percentile (ie an IQ of approx 130) - there clearly is a problem, which I have to solve. I can't possibly let her leave school unable to read and write.

I'm not disappointed in her. I'm determined to give her a fighting chance at a reasonable life.

I am very disappointed at how rubbish schools and the NHS are at dealing with ASD, Dyspraxia and Dyslexia.

You see, if you didn't believe kids who can't read were thick, I could forgive almost everything else you say. But this belief you have is so damaging. And so wrong. And so against what all the scientific literature claims.

If you're ever unlucky enough to have a child (or three) with SEN, maybe then you'll see how truly bad the system really is.

A paediatrician won't give a detailed diagnosis but they will indicate vision difficulties and refer to specialists and they will provide schools with recommendations in writing

@dolfrog - out of interest I looked up APD, which (from a selection of options) presumably is 'action potential disorder'. And is supposed to be caused or affected by nerves with reduced myelin, or ion channels, or electric potentials supposedly related to synapses; or something like that.

I've made some effort to check out this stuff - there are considerable doubts about the accuracy of this nerve and brain material, mainly caused by suspicions about interpreting electron microscope photos.

If I were you I'd be careful only to rely on empirical stuff which you're confident about; don't trust that the theoreticians have got it right.

I dont believe kids that cant read are thick, I really dont. All I said was that some parents expectations are too high. I have been open to all these things you talk about in the past, and have found zero evidence that they work. We live in a society of evidence based practice

I have a disabled child who certainly has SEN, how judgemental of you to make assumptions.I can only praise the people who work with my daughter, maybe the difference is geography, I dont live in England.

I initially posted out of a desire to be helpful to others, thats all

Rerevisionist APD is Auditory Processing Disorder

OK, tumble. I apologise. I have been very rude.

Parents expectations can never be too high - by defn.

As long as you don't think kids who can't read are thick. That is the most important thing.

I'm glad your DD is getting good treatment. The difference is either geography, luck, her diagnosis, or your expectations (your defn of good treatment).

I don't mind you saying as an opthalmologist you don't believe in this stuff. That is a fair enough professional view point.

I was really taking objection to you saying that not all kids can learn to read, (which sounded to me like you're saying that they're just thick), and their parents expectations are too high.

Parents (and teachers and health professionals) expectations can never be too high.

I'll continue the campaign to get all children reading, and you continue the campaign to improve children's vision.

And if you stick around you will see that I will succeed in curing all 3 of my kids.

I think in principle we believe in the same things, i would love to find out that there is a cure for reading difficulties, I will keep my eye! on this and see how things progress

best wishes