20/20 Vision: So Why Can’t My Child Read?

It’s every parent’s nightmare…their child enters second grade (or higher) and still can’t grasp reading.   They are bright – no doubt about it.  They excel in math and take part in class with highly intelligent questions and answers, but attempting to read shuts them down.  After improving their diet, establishing a regular bedtime, chatting with the teacher, visiting the pediatrician and eye doctor, and parent/child reading sessions, nothing has changed.

I want to encourage parents.  Don’t give up.  There is help for your child.  Being able to read involves more than 20/20 vision.  To learn something, a person must collect, mentally file, hang on to, and then pull up the information.  The human body uses a variety of brain controlled processes that contribute to the end product. (Psalm 139:14)   Reading well and understanding the meaning involves many avenues.  The brain hemispheres must work together side to side, front to back, and top to bottom.  If there is a mis-connection in these hemispheres, a problem results.  This is where an optometrist who practices behavioral vision care can make a world of difference.

Another avenue to investigate is Brain Integration Therapy.  Dianne Craft is one woman who has worked in this area for 25 years.  She has created a program that parents and students greatly applaud because of the wonderful end results – a child who can read.  Mrs. Craft has developed an in-home technique involving various exercises that will work to fix the mis-connects between the hemispheres of the brain.  This enables the various systems to work together properly thereby omitting undue stress.  The result is a cleared channel for learning to progress, uninterrupted.

Mrs. Craft explains that there are different learning styles – left brain learners and right brain learners.  Both are smart and capable, but they process incoming information differently.  Left brain learners seem to prefer workbooks, facts, structure, and working independently while right brain learners do better with discussions, projects over workbooks, concepts, and free-flowing attempts to complete tasks.  You might find them a high maintenance learner.  After determining their learning style, the student’s  “glitch”, as Mrs. Craft calls it, is identified.

Dianne has discovered four learning “gates” that can be blocked.  Each gate has a specific list of processing problems associated with it.  See the four learning gates listed below and some identifying symptoms.

1. Visual Processing Gate: reading reversals after age 7, oral reading starts smooth becoming labored, yawning after reading begins, smart kids that don’t want to read

2. Visual/Motor Gate (Writing) : frequent or occasional reversals after age seven, poor spacing of letters and numbers, slow/laborious writing, tells great stories but doesn’t want to write, sloppy writing

3. Auditory Processing Gate (“This block affects the child the most.”) : phonics sounds don’t stick, sight words hard to memorized, spelling rules hard to remember, misunderstands verbal information, guesses at long words, can’t remember multiplication facts, difficulty saying months in order

4. Attention/Focusing/Behavior Gate (Nutritional intervention is usually needed here.) : inconsistency in performance, needs continual attention to finish work, forgets previously learned work, impulsive behavior, easily upset, bothered by little things ie, sounds, tags, etc.

What problems have you noticed that might signal why your child can’t read?  How can you use the above information to make a difference for this child ?  God created your child and will give you the proper direction if you will simply ask Him.  Jeremiah 29:11