When did your child stop reversing letters/ numbers?

[smee]

Just that really.

ds is Y3 and still does it sometimes. Dd has pretty much stopped at 5 (y1). Will be interested in the answers as I'm beginning to be twitchy about ds...

When she first learned to read and write - so around 4/5.

DD has very bad dyslexia vision problems and still reverses letters and numbers in Y4.

DS2 doesn't have dyslexia, but does have other very common, minor, visual issues, and still reverses one or 2 letters in Y3.

How old is your DC?

The important thing to remember is that reversing letters / numbers is a sign of vision problems, not a sign of dyslexia.

DS is in Y£ and he also reverses some letters, and often too. 'S' and 'F' are the usual suspects. And '5'. His teacher told me that his left-handedness has something to do with it. NO idea if there's any truth behind it or not.

Y3

Reversing numbers is a symptom of Poor Visual Perception

There is loads and loads of info on the internet about how to correct it. I'm still trying to find out which is the best site or book to recommend :)

I'd like to know this too, my dd still does this she is in year 2. She is right handed. The teacher says her reading level is lower than her writing level at the moment.

Thanks all - he's 7, yr3. He's doing pretty well at school and can read and write above average for SATs, etc, but the reversing letters is still very much a problem.

The visual perception aspect's interesting as I noticed the other week he has problems copying. He had a literacy homework where he had to re-write a passage from 3rd to 1st person, so basically copying most of it with the odd word change, and he really struggled with accuracy.

Meant to add, that we don't think he's dyslexic, as he's shown none of the other classic signs and basically is doing well. Very interesting all of this though.

My son is Y1 still does it and I can't see him stopping soon.
Dd never reversed.
My other son stopped about Christmas in Y2.

Def sounds like he has vision issues then, if he can't copy accurately and reverses letters.

This stuff is all correctable - and to some degree will probably correct by itself. Although it is very easy for an older child to have these problems and you not realise.

An optician won't test for any of this, so I wouldn't bother with them.

A behaviour optometrist is the correct professional to do this stuff. However they are very expensive.

Start researching 'vision therapy' and you'll get some ideas.

Basically the two most common vision problems are

• convergence - inability to bring eyes together
• eye tracking - can't scan across the page smoothly

Both of these will cause literacy difficulties, which may or may not be noticeable age 7.

manual vision therapy just consists of things like tracking a pencil as it is moved in and out, or reading the first word and last word of every line in a page of text. This is probably as much as your child needs. But I'm still trying to find a really good free write up of what to do :)

Here's an article on Convergence
And here's one on Eye Tracking

Computer vision therapy is excellent - but almost impossible to get hold of cheaply. Top Vision is the cheapest. But obviously you'd have to be fairly concerned before you'd use something like this.

Ds1 still does it Y1.

As he said to me yesterday: 'It's hard to remember if it goes from left to right when I can't always remember which way is right or left' Bless him.

Blimey Indigo, you should start charging yourself out. Brilliant links, thank you. I will start researching. I didn't think it was a problem until I saw how hard he found it to copy. Makes a lot of sense in explaining why he was such a late reader too.

I'll let you know if I find any other research. why are you such an expert? Have you had similar problems with a DC?

dd in Reception has stopped. They learn cursive writing from the start which I think may have helped her. She still likes to give her 3s a bit of a lie down though, so they often look like m.

smee - I forgot to say if you child has visual discrimination issues the best thing to do are word searches, where's wally and spot the difference.

Not exactly sure how you'd know your child had visual discrimination problems, but I think it would show up as a) hating the above puzzles, and b) spelling problems. They wouldn't be able to look at a word and see if it was spelled right or not.

All of my 3 DC have convergence and eye tracking issues. DD has been misdiagnosed with dyslexia. Her eye tracking problems means she just can't read at all. We've done a course of manual vision therapy, and it wasn't enough, and now we're starting computer vision therapy.

DS1 and DS2 are both perceived (by school) to be excellent readers. Top of the class type stuff. Yet DS2 hates reading - it turns out he has really bad convergence issues, and can only focus at one distance. And DS1 skips words, skip lines, spells badly, and can't read phonetically - he has convergence and eye tracking issues. But he reads for hours, and loves reading.

So DS1 and DS2 will also start computer vision therapy soon. :)

So, my conclusions are that it is a reasonably common problem, and normally goes undiagnosed and untreated.

And lastly ] I forgot to say, that Reading Plus is an amazing reading program that has (important) bits of vision therapy embedded in it.

It's not for kids who can't read - but for kids who can read, and need to improve their reading. :)

I took my dd (age 5) for a Specsaver eye test 6 months ago as I was concerned about her reading development.

They did a standard eye test and also tested for convergence and tracking. There was a problem with both and he recommended glasses to help correct. I have noticed an improvement (whether down to the glasses or just natural progression in school) and we are due for a retest shortly. I will be interested to see what is the situation currently.

Sounds like you've done amazingly for your DC, Indigo. Hope you get some joy for your DD soon. Must be so frustrating for her and for you. I'm not at all sure what or if there's any problems for my DS, but it does sound likely. I am going to read round it all and research. Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction though.

DS does back to front numbers a lot, but I've put this down to not being taught them properly yet. He's in Reception. His letters are getting much better now they are teaching them. I think they've done some number writing in nursery and reception but not foccused on it per se.

My DD is 5.5yo and reverses almost everything. She writes words completely mirror image IYSWIM. The teacher thinks it is down to her left handed-ness. Apparently it is common for left handed children to have problems up until Y3 or 4. However, I will now have a read of the links from Indigo, just in case!

dd1 is Y3 and still does it occasionally - when tired, or rushed, or both. But not often anymore (was a lot in Y2).

I think she does have tracking issues, and had an Irlen Syndrome test done last term, for which she tested positive - but have to say, the coloured sheets didn't help much, and it does seem to be getting better without any intervention.

She's always been a good reader, but jumped lines, and missed words, etc. She's not hugely well coordinated either, and has shaky hands - especially first thing. I do wonder who/what else I should see/do for her, if anything

dd2, OTOH, turned 5 yesterday and has never reversed a letter or a number.

My ds is 9, Y5, and still has to work very hard to remember which way certain letters go.

Elibean I haven't found the Irlen test very accurate. I'm sure there's lots of different Irlen tests - but I wasn't impressed with the one my DD did.

After much research :) my top recommendation for eye tracking problems (which it sounds like your daughter does have) is Reading Plus

It's does lots of work on improving your eye tracking, while it improves your reading.

Its a sign of genius, like leonardo da vinci