irlene's, visual stress, dyslexia in reception; resources?

[aliceinthecities]

My daughter started reception this year. By the end of term, she was saying she cannot see the whiteboard. I took her to the opticians who said that her eyesight is normal. She continues to complain that the back-lit whiteboard just appears white to her, she cannot see any letters (she also rubs her eyes, complains of a headache etc). Then, letters on her take-home reading books, she says, jump about. So I started reading about it and it seems that what she has is covered by "visual stress" which often accompanies dyslexia.

I think, although she is only 5 that she finds it difficult to blend letters (she learned letters without noticeable difficulty), to retain the first syllable she just read in her head to blend it with the second syllable, and to remember the sentence. She is not memorising the word, so when it is repeated, she reads it anew.

Having read threads here about the lack of resources in school, I feel I have two options;
-either have the teacher tell me what it is they learn in school (say, weekly) so that I can support her at home (because I think she will need extra support). I somehow doubt she will though;
-buy a dyslexia friendly / or some phonics course and follow it with her at home after school.

I don't have any experience of dyslexia and will appreciate any pointers to good books (serious books not banal ones) and any teaching resources that I can buy. part of my degree was in linguistics so I think I can help her but there is a sea of literature out there and I feel quite lost. There also seems to be so many kinds of dyslexia. Any pointers, links, titles will be greatly appreciated. Also stories of how you dealt with similar situations.

My daughter who is 9 is dyslexic and has issues with vision, with an eye convergence insufficiency. I've been taking her to a private behavioural optometrist for 6m and it's been really really good for her. Her reading has caught up 2yrs, she doesn't miss lines, replace words and is much more fluent, and her physical coordination is better. I would really recommend looking to see if there's one you can access.

School should be able to do a dyslexia screening assessment for free using something like nessy / yeti mountain. But she might be too young.

See if they can get you on a wait list for a full assessment under nhs. I've ended up going private which was £450.

Sorry, I keep thinking of more. Look up nessy for resources. And Barrington stoke do dyslexia friendly books, but you won't need them yet, more for later on.

@Curlewwoohoo thank you so much for your responses. Can I ask you what the behavioural optometrist is doing? if you are taking her for 6 months, are there regular visits for exercises or something else? Can I also ask you if convergence issues were picked up by the usual optician or the behavioural optometrist? Thank you again

The high street optician picked up that one of her eyes flicked out when focusing at a particular distance, but said it wasn't an issue. A year later I asked school to do a dyslexia screening as I saw some funny issues with reading and remembering spellings were nigh on impossible. That said dyslexia highly likely. I then went to see a private dyslexia assessor who re-did the screening and also asked me more about the eye issues. She explained they can go together and recommended the behavioural optometrist. This was all private so cost. The initial assessment was a few hundred, including a report. It was very strange, my daughter wasn't able to copy simple shapes, spot backwards letters in a sheet (she's 9!), and also things like lift an opposite leg and arm. Very weird to watch all this! She was then set exercises to do every day for 10 minutes. They were a real mix of things, starting with developing reflexes, balance, coordination, moving into eye things later. There were monthly sessions to review progress and set new exercises. Each session was £55. We've completed the course now with noticeable improvements. Her reading has gone up a year in age level but massive differences in she'll now actually read a book, which was unheard of! We have to do maintenance exercises now twice a week. My daughter is still likely to be dyslexic. Full dyslexia assessment is booked for March.

Your DD is far too young to be assessed for dyslexia. I carry out screenings for children who may be at risk of having dyslexia from 7 years old.
In Reception, most learning is play based with only minimal carpet time staring at the whiteboard. Even then, most whiteboard work is interactive and very colourful. At this stage of the school year, many Reception children can’t read with any degree of speed - they are learning through synthetic phonics. If you introduce something different it can really hamper any learning done in school.
My SENCo dissertation was on dyslexia. Interestingly, my research found there to be almost no scientific evidence to support Irlen’s as an actual condition.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-26/irlen-syndrome-medical-eye-condition-controversy/11218184

Also to add, I went into behavioural optometry massively sceptical - even asked about it on here!

Ps I do agree 5 might be too young to go down this route, but speak to school, speak to an optician if you have access to a good one? If there is something to this then early intervention is best.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/vision-therapy-quackery/

@Soontobe60@Soontobe60 I read that before I embarked on it with my daughter 😂 I'm aware I'm sharing anecdata. It's only one person's experience. At the end of the day I only had money to lose, which I don't take lightly, but the alternative was not to try it which seemed worse. I think I lucked out with the person we worked with being very good.

Too young for dyslexia screening. Look at BDA for early signs of dyslexia in preschool children. If you do t have any family history it’s less likely she has it. Have the school tried moving her position in class? Changing the background colour of the display?

irlen Is very specific trademark, there’s a lot of criticism of it, however there appears to be very little evidence that visual stress does not exist. The argument is that there’s no robust evidence that it does. There’s no really good evidence either way. It is also not the same as dyslexia and is not a treatment for it. If your child benefits from a pair of glasses with coloured lenses then what is the harm in that, it’s a pretty cheap intervention.

@Curlewwoohoo thank you for such a detailed answer!

@Soontobe60 today my daughter said she dislikes maths sessions because they are very boring because the teacher writes on a whiteboard and she can't see. She can't see in literacy sessions. I don't care what it is called, but how would she be able to learn if she doesn't see what she is supposed to be learning (and it's all done visually)?

Thanks everyone for your advice and opinion

@aliceinthecities you can do some basic experimenting at home - use a tablet / laptop with some basic CVC type words and change the contrast of the background / text to see if lower contrast helps. The accessibility features on most tech allows this to be done fairly easily. It will answer the question about the whiteboard being too high contrast and if it helps, you can ask school what adjust they may be able to make to help. As an example, our school has a standard stylesheet with off white background, non serif fonts etc.

I worked exclusively with children with additional needs.
Ihrlen's came up years ago .
An assessment for this became available and I used this for a number of children.
I very quickly picked up that every single child preferred a coloured background but, interestingly, despite the 'script' that you use to to children to focus on the text, not the background colour, the girls , overwhelmingly preferred pink.

I have since learned that the theory has been debunked and am a bit embarrassed about my initial gushings over this supposed 'breakthrough.'

Maybe it needs a tweak, but I'm not convinced.

I have 2 dyslexic children. Irlens isn’t recognised by dyslexic organisations nowadays, also if you ask any child they all love a coloured overlay, dyslexic or not.
5 is too young to be thinking about testing for dyslexia.
Your daughter is very young. She may not be able to see the whiteboard because of the angle or the light shining on it.
For now I would just enjoy reading together and talking about the books and characters.