I strongly urge you to consider Dr. John Cannell's theory that the relatively recent explosion of autism cases is due to a deficiency of Vitamin D3. I really think he's onto something with his theory because it explains so many of the other "reasons" that people believe autism has increased (vaccinations, gut issues, genetics, etc.) More important, he's finding that some parents are seeing a reversal of autistic symptoms in their children when they aggressively supplement with vitamin D3. I've put a page together on my website that goes over what he says, and provides a link to his site, as well as directions to get to a copy of his paper, which I believe every parent of an autistic child should read. The page on my site is Vitamin D and Autism. On that page I also link to a parent letter to Dr. Cannell detailing her child's response to vitamin D3 supplementation. The next page on my site, Vitamin D3 Questions, goes over some of the issues people are concerned about. Pay particular attention to the part on supplementing with cod liver oil, because Dr. Cannell (and many others) thinks that the retinol in cod liver oil prevents the vitamin D3 it contains from being effectively utilized. In my opinion, the health benefits of ensuring both you and your child are not vitamin D3 deficient are so great that even if it didn't address some of the autism symptoms, it would be worth doing something. And D3 is so cheap that the cost of doing so is minimal. Incidentally, I noticed that this is a very old thread (started in 2008) and that back then my replies focused on vision therapy as a primary intervention. I still feel that way, but have since added vitamin D3 to my website as a major intervention for struggling readers, on the theory that it couldn't hurt and might be a big missing piece of the puzzle. This is because I view dyslexia as a pattern of developmental delays or of maldevelopment, though not so severe as with those on the autism spectrum. And the vitamin D3 intervention should be the first intervention, preferably begun prior to conception of the child, but if not then, as soon as a deficiency is noted, or when developmental issues start to manifest themselves. At a minimum, if you have an autistic child, please read Dr. Cannell's paper and the parent letter. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

Someone else already suggested this, but I'll second the suggestion that you take your son to a developmental optometrist for a vision skills evaluation. This is especially true if either you or your husband, or a few of his aunts and uncles had similar experiences with learning to read. I've got quite a bit about this on my website, but the page Find a Vision Therapy Provider will probably be of most use to you. As for the b/d confusion, Romalda Spalding wrote up one of the best ways I've ever found to straighten that out in her book, The Writing Road to Reading. The page Telling b from d on my site goes over her method in detail. It really works, unless a child is visually confused enough that they're seeing double, in which case they sometimes can't even tell which side of the circle the line is on. Personally, I think you're describing a child with vision skills issues that are holding him back, so that's the next thing I'd look into if I were in your shoes. Unfortunately, vision therapy can be pretty expensive, but it's the answer for a lot of "dyslexics." Also, here's a Vision Assessment Checklist from my site that might help you decide whether your son is dealing with vision skills problems. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

Your last comment is on target. The point is to set up a system that works most of the time and to get the child to systematically apply it, so that it becomes second nature to test the various vowel sounds. Your other point that "it would help young readers moving to easy multi-syllable words" is also on target. That is the exact point of any multi-syllable decoding method that a child should be taught. It should give him a reasonably reliable means to attack unfamiliar words he's encountering at his grade level. As for your examples, yes, other than "immediately", they are tough words to decode regardless of the approach used. That's why we have dictionaries, or now the web, and others around us to ask questions of. The key then is whether or not the word being questioned can be coded (not decoded, but coded) in a sensible manner given the coding system being used. "Seismic" cannot because the "ei" is such a rare spelling of the long-i sound that it should be considered an exception, rather than being taught as a viable option to test, much like the "eo" in "people." They just don't occur enough to warrant being considered viable spellings of a sound. By the way, here are the three Exceptions to the Main Rule: 1. Add any doubled consonant to the preceding chunk, thus ha--bit, but rabb--it 2. Add any marker to the preceding chunk. The markers are ck, tch, dg, and x, so ro--cket becomes rock--et. 3. Add a consonant if the next chunk is "hard to say." (That's the kid language...in adult language it's if the next chunk starts with an illegal blend.) Thus, mo--nster becomes mon--ster, because nster is "hard to say", i.e., ns is not one of the possible (legal) beginning consonant blends in English words. Now, one of the neat things about every single one of the exceptions is that each of them tends to "lock in" the First Vowel Sound (the short sound). The doubled consonant usually marks a short vowel; the markers all usually "mark" short vowels (ack, ick, adg, edg, itch, etch, ax, ox, etc.), and the third exception usually creates the fabled "closed syllable" of Orton Gillingham fame. Note that I said "usually" in all three cases; this is English after all. The free Multisyllable Decoding Method on my website has word lists at the 2-, 3-, and 4-syllable level that gradually introduce the Main Rule and then each of the Three Exceptions in an organized manner.

My first suggestion is to make sure you're doing the vision exercises that you should have been assigned to do at the end of vision therapy. These are essentially maintenance exercises, so that the gains during vision therapy are retained. I say that because the struggling one part of the day and not the other are more indicative of the vision issues still cropping up, perhaps when she's tired, or has been doing close work for a while, etc. It's surprising how many people don't follow through with them, especially after spending a lot of money on the therapy to get vision skills in place. I've always told parents that eventually just doing a lot of reading will maintain the skills, but for a time the exercises are very important for maintaining the gains from vision therapy. My second suggestion is to take a look at the Multisyllable Decoding Method on my website. I taught struggling readers for over a decade, up until recently, and during the last half of that decade I usually worked with kids after vision therapy. The multisyllable method is one of my own design, but you won't believe how effective it is if you follow it closely. Virtually all of the materials are free on the website. Just read through it all and see what you think. I will warn you that if you're in love with syllables, and with a multisyllable decoding method based on syllables, you won't like my method, which is all about chunking words after the vowel sound and then applying three very-easy-to-understand exceptions. Thus, "habit" is chunked "ha--bit" by rule (stop the chunk after the vowel sound, and "rabbit" is chunked "rabb--it" because the first exception (add doubled consonants) is applied. The method dictates using the First Vowel Sound (or short vowel sound) on the first attempt through a word, so both "habit" and "rabbit" are decoded easily on the first pass if your daughter knows the code, which you imply that she does. I will absolutely guarantee you that the method is easier to explain, and for a child to understand, than is a methodology that uses syllables. When I used this method, kids would rapidly move from two-syllable to three- and then four-syllable words and the gain in their confidence was dramatic. In fact, they would grow confident enough of their ability to get the correct result most of the time that they would give up the one thing virtually every struggling reader grows fond of, their guessing habit. Furthermore, because the method doesn't dictate a vowel sound by rule, but just has them trying the First Vowel Sound on each chunk on the first pass, then trying the Second Vowel Sound, etc., until they recognize a word that fits the context, it builds code knowledge very quickly. For example, they quickly learn that the three sounds of the letter "a" are /a/, /ae/, and /o/, because their approach to a word like "father" is to try f/a/ther (rhymes with "gather" and not a word, then f/ae/ther (still not a word), and finally "f/o/ther" and getting the word. After a few encounters, they are expected to start to recognize the word on sight, having successfully decoded it a few times already. That can be another issue, of course. The one hitch is whether or not the child has a sufficient grasp of code knowledge to be able to test the options efficiently. For some, the advanced code phonics workbook that's available on my site might be necessary, but for older kids, especially those who've been exposed to the phonograms, the free multisyllable method is often sufficient. Incidentally, I've started a new blog, Perspectives, on my website at OnTrack Reading. I'd be happy to carry on discussions about the multisyllable method either here or there, although I've yet to write a blog post on the multisyllable method. But I don't want to hijack this thread with an extended discussion about it either. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

If you use the method, one thing I don't emphasize on the website is how the Exceptions to the Main Rule can be used as spelling tips. In the case of the First Exception, adding a doubled consonant to the chunk results in an unnatural break (rabb-it is awkward to say compared to ra-bbit) and that unnatural break can be used as a mnemonic device to recall the doubled consonant. The syllable division way is to split the /b/ sound into two sounds and recall the word as "rab-bit", which is the way most of us learned it if we had traditional phonics instruction in school at one point or another. Similarly, the Second Exception (adding one of the markers x, ck, dg, or tch) to the preceding chunk also results in a more awkward pronunciations (rock-et is awkward compared to ro-cket) and that can again be used as a mnemonic to recall the presence of the marker ck. (If there wasn't a marker spelling, she'd be saying ro-ket.) The Third Exception just addresses the words where the natural break is not after the vowel sound (words like con-stant, or mon-ster, for example.) That's the more complicated one to explain, but the easiest for a child to apply, because they'd never dream of chunking, monster as mo-nster, for example. The spelling tip there is that when you don't feel any awkwardness in the way it's chunked, don't bother with a doubled consonant. Rod

I worked with kids who were struggling with reading and many of them were guessers/sight-word-readers. The problem with sight-word reading is many fold. As you've seen, it leads to guessing. Spelling is usually horrible. And as the memory load grows, it becomes more or less impossible to memorize every word you'll run into in, for example, college. Yes, most of us appear to be sight word readers as adults, but most proficient adults learned their vocabulary by understanding the phonic structure of the word as they were exposed to it the first few times. Once learned, automatic recall occurs after sufficient exposures. Another problem with memorizing your entire reading vocabulary (without having first analyzed the phonic content) is that people build various mnemonic devices to keep words straight from one another. If a child is confusing "what" and "that", he clearly doesn't appreciate the phonic structure of either word, so how does he eventually keep them straight? Possibly by some shorthand mnemonic of his/her own devising, and very possibly one that gets in the way of comprehension while it's being dredged up. So, I agree completely with you about the need to get your daughter to appreciate the phonic structure of the words she learns. And if she is already a decent reader of one-syllable words, you might find the Junior High Phonics Course that I put together of some interest. It's a multisyllable decoding program structured to be presented as ten 15-minute lessons. The program teaches the chunking method that I taught for ten years, a method that works exceptionally well, and nearly always succeeded in breaking a guessing habit because the kids soon figure out that it works a lot better than guessing. In the sense that I used it with nearly 200 kids, one on one, it's been tested, although I never did test it as a ten-lesson format. If you do decide to try it, I'd like to hear how it goes. I'd also be happy to answer any questions as you go along. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading P.S. You might also consider telling your daughter (and your husband) that those "good readers" in her class sound out new, unfamiliar, words when they encounter them, because they probably do. And the more words they sound out, the more they are able to commit to memory, and the better they read. It's the memorizers who eventually run into trouble and fall back of the pack, exactly as it sounds your daughter is in danger of doing. For that matter, pick a really long drug name that none of her "good readers" would have heard of and tell her to ask them how they would approach reading it. They will read it chunk by chunk, sounding it out all the way, and if they run into it a few more times in the near future they'll have committed it to memory, and will likely even be able to spell it. The rote-memorizers will have no idea how to read it at first, might be able to memorize it if they see it enough times, and will likely never be able to spell it. And, worse, if they're in the medical profession someday, they just might confuse it with a similar-appearing drug name and do considerable damage in the process.

You don't really say whether she can blend sounds effectively. Can she? If she's an auditory learner, as you say, maybe she's already able to blend orally-presented sounds, but is mainly having trouble with print? If she is having trouble mainly with the printed word, and is delayed in fine-motor areas as you say, do some reading on binocular vision problems and vision therapy, since that might be what is going on with her. Or, as others have said, she might just need some time. Here's a link the the vision information on my site: The Vision Piece. That part of the site is about dyslexia, but I just use that word to describe a struggling reader. And you might be interested in the vitamin D3 and Omega-3 information there also, under The Diet Piece. Mainly, though, if she can now blend, but continues to struggle with the printed word, keep the possibility of a vision issue in mind. As she gets older, there's a Vision Assessment Checklist there that might be helpful to help you decide if you should take her to a developmental optometrist for an evaluation. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

I read all of the replies (fairly quickly, so I might have missed it) and I don't think anyone suggested the possibility of vision skills issues. If you've been diligently working on phonics instruction with your daughter and yet she continues to have trouble, I've found that it's quite likely she's dealing with an undiagnosed visual skills problem and that vision therapy might be the next "route" you should take. You need to find a competent developmental optometrist and if he or she recommends a full developmental vision evaluation, you should let them do it. My guess is that you'll find that she needs vision therapy. Once vision therapy is complete, you might find that she finally benefits from the very programs that you're already using. One of the key indications that vision skills problems should be suspected is when a child fails to "get" phonics instruction. As far as locating vision therapy, the page Find a Vision Therapy Provider on my website might help you should you decide to go that route next. All the best, Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

First off, I think you've made an excellent decision. I wish Spalding was used in every elementary school in the country, even it they continued to ignore the "y"=/ee/ issue I discussed in a previous post. (For those who didn't read it, it addressed Ms. Spalding's refusal to acknowledge the /ee/ sound at the end of words like "happy," preferring to teach it as an /i/ (short i) sound.) That said, as long as you're studying the method, I'd like to discuss two major changes that I made to Spalding's curriculum when I finally decided to put The OTR Homeschooling Program on my site. (it's free, by the way--I don't sell it.) I really don't mind if no one anywhere ever decides to follow it, but what it involves is reading the 4th edition and following the word list found in either the 4th or 5th edition, while making a lot of what I view as simplifying coding changes. The first major change was to get rid of the five rules for the ending "e". The other reading method that I studied before putting together my own remedial program (not the Homeschooling program I'm discussing here) was the one in Reading Reflex. That curriculum has a much more kid-friendly way to handle all five ending "e" situations, mainly by introducing ending digraphs, such as ne, se, ce, le, etc. You can read about that change here. I would warn you though, that if you decide to make this switch in approach, you might as well jump in with both feet and just follow the detailed instructions for adapting WRTR that I provide in The OTR Homeschooling Program. The reason I say this is because of the second major change, which involves the multisyllable approach. I taught struggling readers for over ten years, one-on-one, until recently. I started with the multisyllable chunking approach in Reading Reflex, but found it very unsatisfactory. I looked at WRTR, but one thing Reading Reflex taught me is to hate the concept of syllables, and if you hate syllables, you'll surely hate syllable rules, including the Orton-Gillingham approach to syllabification. Why? Because even intelligent adults have trouble with those rules for starters, not to mention that nearly all of us learned to read without ever knowing most of them. More importantly, syllable divisions are highly artificial and don't correspond with what young children actually hear as the natural verbal breaks within words. Doubled consonants, for example, represent not two sounds but one. "Rabbit" and "habit" both have only one /b/ sound, for example. Telling a child otherwise confuses him. Similarly, breaking "habit" as "hab--it" is not what a child hears as the natural break, which is "ha--bit" (Try saying it both ways three times each and you'll get the point.) The only reason we break it as "hab--it" is because Webster imposed that on us nearly two centuries ago now, giving us the two /b/ sounds in "rabbit" at the same time. So, to shorten a long story, I devised a multisyllable chunking method that takes one thing from Spalding, rules, but these were rules of my own making. By teaching a child one simple Main Rule and three simple Exceptions to the Main Rule, I found that nearly every child I worked with would move easily into decoding multisyllable words. You cannot believe the confidence the method would build in just a couple of hours of using it, once they were prepared to tackle words at the multisyllable level, that is. Furthermore, the method even generated spelling tips, due to the way the 3 exceptions were applied. Chunking Multisyllable Words is the page in the Homeschooling section that discusses this in some detail, plus there's a link to the entire method on that page as well. (Again, all of this is free, even the entire multisyllable method if someone just wants to use that with a child struggling with longer words.) I do have a confession to make, by the way. I have a motive for posting today. Yesterday, I began a blog on my site, a place where hopefully l can discuss matters like this without irritating people by hijacking posts, etc. I understand that it will be a pretty quiet place for a while, until people find it and decide whether or not there's enough of interest there to visit regularly, but Well-Trained-Mind readers are already pretty regular visitors to the permanent content on my site (again, nearly all of it free), and I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to Perspectives, The OTR Blog. I think some of you will find the first couple of posts interesting since they deal with phonics, vision therapy, and how I see the interaction between the two. Okay, enough. Like I said before, I tend to get too wordy... Rod P.S. I meant to add that used copies of WRTR's fourth edition are, so far anyway, readily available on Amazon. At one point I worried that they might dry up, but so far, so good.

It's been a while since I've checked in, but now it's January in the frozen north, so.... I completely agree with you about the 4th edition of WRTR. The 5th edition has some very useful indices that you can use to locate specific words in the Ayres List, but all of the curriculum detail is more confusing than helpful. It was obviously put together with the intent of making inroads into the detail-demanding public school reading curricula, but the 5th edition is a nightmare for the typical parent just looking for a straightforward reading program. And, given that they did that to one of the most effective reading programs ever devised, it was completely unnecessary. If I'd have been on my toes the first day that I came to that conclusion (years ago, after reading the 5th edition) I'd have bought every brand-new copy of the 4th edition of WRTR that I could find on the internet. Back then they were still available at published retail. Today, good luck finding a new copy for under $50. (If you do find one in a bookstore at retail, buy it and put it on the shelf for a few years, or turn it around immediately and triple your money.) Anyway, I spent a very long time devising a remedial reading program, basing it primarily on two curricula, one of which was Spalding. During that time, I concluded several things about Spalding, and eventually put all of those conclusions on my website at OnTrack Reading under a Homeschooling section. Essentially, I made several minor changes to Spalding, and two major ones. The most minor one addresses the longstanding issue among Spalding users about whether or not to teach an /ee/ sound for the letter "y" in words like "happy" and "silly" and for the letter "i" in "happier" and "silliest." I think it's obvious that one should, and explain the reasons in The Easiest Change ("y"=/ee/). Making the few changes to the phonograms that I suggest on that page aligns Spalding with what we, and more importantly, our kids, actually hear in those words. And the changes result in no additional memorization load because the /i/ sound is dropped from two other phonograms, "ey" and "ie". I believe that any parent using Spalding today should make the above change. It's easy to do and is far less confusing to the child because everyone now hears an /ee/ sound at the end of "happy" except possibly in certain English dialects. Of course, the change does affect the numbering of the phonograms involved when going through the Ayres list. That's all for now. I get too wordy. I'll address the major changes in another post, since they're far more controversial among Spalding users. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

Dr. John Cannell, whose website is vitamindcouncil.org, some time ago authored a paper titled "Autism and Vitamin D" which I believe every parent of an autistic child should be made aware of. In the paper, he presented his theory that the recent epidemic of autism-spectrum disorders is solely due to the recommendation, since 1989, by doctors that pregnant mothers avoid direct sun and that they keep their newborns out of direct sunlight unless they are protected by sunscreen. Even more interesting, he has been testing his theory by following children whose parents have decided to get their autistic children's vitamin D3 levels up to levels around 80-100 ng/ml, and he's gotten some extremely interesting letters from some of those parents who've followed his advice. I have some considerable experience working with struggling readers, teaching them phonics, and became interested in Dr. Cannell's theory for various reasons, but mainly because I suspect that dyslexia and ADHD share a lot of common characteristics with those on the autism spectrum (though not as severe, of course) and so I began to speculate on whether D3 might be an issue with dyslexic children as well. This page on my website at OnTrack Reading, Vitamin D and Autism, gets into my ideas on dyslexia as the page progresses. However, the first half of it has several links to Dr. Cannell's site, his paper, and the parent letters, so you might want to pass it on to your concerned parent. One of the first things I would do if I had a child with an autism diagnosis would be to get vitamin D3 levels up to 80-100 ng/ml to see if the symptoms began to improve. The safest way to do that is with direct sunshine when it's available, or with a tanning lamp that supplies UV-B rays, because the body has a natural mechanism that avoids creating too much D3 in the skin. As for the 80 ng/ml recommendation, that's about what lifeguards in sunny climates end up at after working for a summer, so it's hardly too high. In my case, I supplement (for other health reasons, not autism), and most parents will probably end up taking that route too, rather than moving south or purchasing a sun lamp. D3 supplements are very inexpensive, so that's not an issue. No one is going to get rich selling it.

She should take her son to a developmental optometrist and have his vision skills evaluated. Odds are great that he needs vision therapy. If he's had good phonics instruction, vision therapy could enable all that previous instruction to "kick in" and she could find that he's an excellent reader, but he won't be if his vision skills are so poor that words appear to him to be moving on the page. That, by the way, is a definite complaint of people with certain vision skills problems. Here's a link to a page on my site that you could refer her to if she decides to pursue this route: Find a Vision Therapy Provider All the best, Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

First, I think it's going to turn out to be a huge issue for older people once they learn more about it, and about all the diseases low D3 have an impact on. This is partly because as we age some of us make less D3 from sunshine for some reason. I get outside a lot in the summer, though mostly it's just my arms getting the sun, and I'm finding I still need at least 3,000 IU in the summer to maintain the level I want (60-80 ng/ml). The only way I can know that is by testing, so I test at the end of winter (to see if I've been taking the right amount over winter when I get virtually no D3 naturally in Wis.) and again at the end of summer (to see if the lower amount I take in summer is enough...so far it hasn't been.) I don't see how one could figure this out without regular testing. However, without testing, taking around 1,000 IU's per 30 lbs of body weight is what Dr. Cannell recommends, then nothing in summer if you're getting plenty of sunshine. For me, though, I'd go into winter low doing that, so I test. I'm now at 5,000 IU winter and 3,000 IU summer and homing in on it I think, but that's only after a 3-year process of testing, changing doses, retesting, etc. As for your child, or any child experiencing developmental issues, I think it would be valuable information to have the level before supplementing began. Otherwise it's hard to know whether D3 should get the credit for a change. As you've indicated, people change a lot of variables all at once, and it's nearly impossible to figure out what really made the difference. For example, if you've had a couple of weeks of pretty good sunshine since you started "kicking him outside" when done with lessons, he might be making significant amounts of natural D3 in TN, more than he would get from a normal supplement. (That would definitely not be true up here in WI, but it might be in TN. I lived there for 4 years, and your Februarys are more like our Aprils.) If I had a child with some developmental issues I was hoping to address, I'd want a D3 test before I'd noted any improvement just to see if it's unusually low. Dr. Cannell gets reports from parents of autistic kids who note marked changes of behavior between summer and winter, for example, with summer sun being the likely cause of the changes. Interestingly, he also wonders if it might take getting their level up to the higher end of the range to have a treatment effect, that is to the 80-100 ng/ml level, which might require taking daily doses higher than the 1,000 IU/30 lbs for a time. Can I ask, just how quickly have the changes you've noticed happened? Was he already improving in early January, for example? Or did it happen extremely quickly. If it did, I'd suspect the diet/supplements/sunshine had something to do with it. If it's been more gradual, maybe just the change in daily routine had something to do with it. So hard to sort all this out, and all kids are different besides. It's even possible his D3 was high enough, but he was missing a cofactor, like magnesium for example, that helps with the utilization of the D3, and that the supplement provided the cofactor. Or it might not have had anything to do with the D3. Rod

I'm curious whether the supplements include extra vitamin D3, and if so, how much? It's a topic I'm very interested in...Thanks Rod Everson

First, regarding the insurance issue, she has two practices, one an optometric practice, and the second a VT practice. If you have vision insurance, it will usually cover the sort of testing, etc., done in a standard optometrist's practice. It only rarely will cover VT, however, except maybe for part of the initial exams. Anyone considering VT who thinks their insurance will cover it, needs to investigate that carefully before beginning, because insurance might indeed pay for the initial visit, and then parents optimistically assume VT is covered and find out later they owe big money out of pocket. As for the prisms, it's possible your son's eyes are slightly out of alignment in the vertical direction, rather than the horizontal. VT trains the horizontal because we all have eye muscles that can converge or diverge the eyes. But moving one up or down relative to the other is a different story, yet some people do have a misalignment vertically. My understanding is that prisms are definitely called for in such a case, though I've no way of knowing whether that's the case with your son. I agree that if it's a horizontal issue, VT would seem to be a solution, but then if the glasses work, and the expense is easier to bear because of insurance, maybe that's the way to go? I'd be curious how often she refers to VT. If she does so routinely, but feels the glasses are what's needed in your case, that's one thing, but sometimes an optometrist will try glasses as an interim step, hoping they work, trying to save you money. If that's the case, make sure you are aware of it, because I've known cases where parents have assumed they'd addressed the issue with the glasses, and later failed to remember that the optometrist had said, "If these don't do the trick, come back and we'll consider the VT route." Essentially, any signs of obvious visual distress should disappear when the glasses are used. They're like a switch ("on" is good, "off" is back to visual distress and problems reading), not a training device where you see gradual improvement over time. If the reading problem persists, and it's not due to a poor understanding of phonics, but to visual discomfort, lean toward getting the full developmental vision evaluation. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

I'm just curious. Have you ever had your son's vitamin D3 level checked? More and more, I'm wondering if that isn't going to turn out to be a big piece of the puzzle when a child shows various delays in development. (And I'll second, or third, the suggestion to take your son to a developmental optometrist.) Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

All I know is that the optometrists I'm familiar with claim that it's harder to do vision therapy after surgery (surgery to correct misaligned eyes in a child anyway) because then they've got muscles with scar tissue to deal with. Whether that's actually true or not, I don't honestly know. Also, vision therapy might not even be an option here, but I'd check it out before having any eye surgery done. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

Sure, I agree. I was just pointing out that some kids who don't get their vision problems straightened out in childhood actually do very well in life. It's the hard way around for many of them though. Personally, I think a lot of kids with mostly vision problems are misdiagnosed as dyslexic, or put another way, I think a lot of kids considered dyslexic mainly have vision problems and when those are straightened out, the "dyslexia" disappears. Some developmental optometrists feel the same about ADHD symptoms. In some cases, when the vision issues are addressed the ADHD symptoms mysteriously disappear too. However, I agree with you that in many cases more is going on, and further investigation after vision therapy is warranted. Rod

Both of you might consider reading Growing An Architect on my site. Your son just might have some advantages over his peers because of his vision problem. Not necessarily, but possibly. And you know, once we're adults, it's really hard to pick out the poor readers from the good readers, and a lot of times the poor readers had to work so hard to keep up that they developed one heck of a work ethic. If he finds something he loves to do, he'll likely be very successful pursuing it as an occupation. Don't misunderstand me. It's better to fix things when they're young. But what I'm saying is, not only is it not the end of the world if they don't get fixed, but sometimes it works out very well because of the challenges they've had to face growing up. All the best, Rod

I've removed the reference to the free PDF's from my website after giving away the 35 copies, and this thread will soon be buried again, but if anyone still wants a free set for a while, I'll still email it to you. It's just that you'll have to use the Contact tab on the upper right of any page on my site to reach me now. Just mention in the email that you saw it here in WTM. Rod OnTrack Reading

I purposely don't talk much about my program in here because it would go against the advertising restriction, but in a nutshell, it's a blend of Reading Reflex and Spalding. RR is very quick but leaves a little to much to chance; Spalding is comprehensive, but took too long for my purposes, which was to get the phonics info into their heads quickly, especially for those who had just finished vision therapy. I usually worked about 20-25 hours one-on-one, with the parent overseeing about that much homework, so 40-50 hours in all. The philosophy of both RR and Spalding is to get into real children's literature right away, so that part worked well also. They just read books from their home or school library, increasing the levels as they progressed. I found it very interesting, by the way, how you had to go back through so much and re-teach it. It makes the point that we do an awful lot of learning through our eyes. What's ironic is that the reading researchers for going on three decades now keeps claiming that reading depends mostly upon auditory skills, even to the point of disavowing the value of vision skills in some cases. That's why it's so encouraging to see threads like this develop over the past several years, and to read of so many successful VT cases. I know everyone doesn't get the results they want, but it's a good part of the answer for a lot of struggling readers, in my experience. Rod

It really is like physical therapy for the eye muscles, training a person to use the eye muscles appropriately, a skill most of us acquire naturally in early childhood. I knew a boy who would do the same thing, go back to his exercises during the first summer after VT when he could tell his eyes weren't working right. He was the toughest referral I ever made in that he demonstrated absolutely no symptoms I could pick up on other than that he just plain couldn't grasp phonics instruction. It just wouldn't "sink in" so I finally referred him just so they could rule out a vision problem. He later told his mother he never could tell which side of the circle the line was on when looking at a b or d. Yet I couldn't see any of the telltale signs of visual stress at all, and he had a great memory besides. He was one of the best readers in 1st grade because he just memorized all the books, then hit the wall in second. At that age, they just have no idea they're not seeing print the way most kids are seeing it. Rod

If they have other VT offices in your area, even though they're all charging the same, maybe a different office is more flexible with the homework, that is, will meet weekly or even every two weeks, and expect more to get done at home. I'd be honest with them, tell them you don't have the money, and see if they can't tailor a program that will help within your budget. Two times a week might get the job done faster, or it might just mean that you're paying a lot of that money to someone to do what you can accomplish at home. That might well mean going with one of the other VT departments in your area, however. The work is pretty straightforward, so I wouldn't worry about the difference between having the Fellow or a certified vision therapist conducting the sessions. They tailor the treatment plans based on what the optometrist finds at each regular evaluation. Personally, I think that if a parent can work reasonably well with the child at home, you shouldn't have to see the therapist more than once a week. That's the normal practice in the office I'm familiar with, and they generally get good results. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

I had a phonics instruction business and rented space in a vision therapy department, so I've seen a lot of kids and talked to a lot of parents who've dealt with vision therapy. On balance, I think you're getting good advice here so far. The costs you were quoted are maybe a little high compared to western Wisconsin, but we're in a lower-income area and the costs aren't that much lower here. I do have a couple of recommendations, but you're doing a good job of investigating it so far in my opinion. First, yes, I did see mothers who didn't think VT helped that much, but they almost always said that because their child's reading didn't improve significantly during VT. Guess what? VT doesn't teach reading; it makes learning to read easier. So, essentially, those were the very kids that ended up getting referred to me, and I can honestly say that nearly all of them were reasonably easy to work with. In other words, they finally "got it" when I'd work with them. I'd have mothers thinking that they wasted their money on VT and should have come directly to me instead, and would tell them that, in my experience, it was a breeze working with kids after VT, whereas the kids I'd get from outside referrals would often be quite difficult. In many cases, I'd see obvious signs of visual distress, but for reasons of finances, or just skepticism, some of those kids never got VT. My point in saying all this is that you have to keep in mind the possibility that your child might still need some additional phonics instruction following VT, particularly if he's never had good, consistent phonics instruction. If he's a guesser, VT might not break his guessing habit, for instance. Just keep that in mind. On the other hand, VT might enable him to finally utilize all the phonics instruction he's already had, and it might appear that VT is actually teaching him to read. See what I mean? Getting long here, but my second recommendation is to go back to the doctor and ask for some names of parents whose children had the same sort of diagnosis. The reason I'm saying this is because his convergence is normal. A lot of kids who clearly benefit from VT do so because their convergence skills are awful going in, and when they improve they can finally make sense of print. Double vision goes away, moving letters too, etc. But accommodation is a different animal. His eyes converge, but they focus slowly, so looking up at the board and then down at his notes and back and forth, etc., will stress his vision, as he has to change focus continuously, which, according to the testing, is difficult for him. I would want to talk to at least a couple of parents whose child's convergence ability was like your son's, to see if they were satisfied with the results. I'm not skeptical or anything; I'd just like to hear what they say. Along that line, you might ask the optometrist what it is about your son's vision that makes reading difficult now. Is it the poor accommodation, or poor visual memory, or what? For instance, it might be that his poor eye movement control is making tracking print extremely difficult for him. Most people discover VT when they're trying to fix a reading problem. My point is that VT might fix a lot, but you could still be disappointed if the reading problem persists. In one case, the child might need more phonics instruction, and in another case, the particular vision issues involved might not be hurting his reading, so it might be due to something else on the developmental spectrum. That still doesn't mean the money on VT would be wasted, as it might make life easier in other respects. Perhaps a parent or two in here has had a child with good convergence but poor accommodation and poor eye movement control go through VT, and could comment? Also, just out of curiosity, if you have the time to check, how would he have done on the Vision Assessment Checklist I developed a few years back? I'm wondering if his particular vision issues would have generated some of the symptoms on the checklist. Rod Everson OnTrack Reading

I take fish oil and vitamin D3 daily, and encourage my adult children to take vitamin D3, and to see that their kids are getting vitamin D3. There's a study out there that links fish oil supplementation to reading that I discuss in Fish Oil and Dyslexia, but the main reason I take it is for general health. I also take the vitamin D3 for general health reasons, and there isn't really much relating a vitamin D3 deficiency to dyslexia in the research that I'm aware of, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Dr. John Cannell's theory relating the current autism epidemic to an ongoing vitamin D3 deficiency in our population turns out to be correct. And because I tend to view dyslexia as a developmental disorder, as autism is, I would also not be surprised to find that the incidence of dyslexia diminishes as people (and especially their doctors) become more concerned about maintaining vitamin D3 levels in the future. Personally, I have to take about 5,000 IU of vit D3 per day in the winter, and nearly that much in the summer, to keep my D3 level in the 60-80 ng/ml range, which is where I want it. And there is hope on the doctor front, as more and more pediatricians realize the problem and supplement newborns with D3. My granddaughter, recently born, has been getting 1,000 IU per day, which I think is quite a lot frankly, but at the advice of her pediatrician. And my daughter was in no way vitamin D3 deficient going into childbirth. In fact, her level is high enough that my granddaughter is probably getting D3 in breast milk as well. But I'm not really worried about dyslexia in that family, as there's no history of reading struggles. If there were, I'd be very insistent on supplementation to ensure against a vitamin D3 deficiency, because I'm convinced Dr. Cannell is onto something with his theory of autism. (I'm not saying all cases of autism are vitamin D3 related, by the way...just that it's possible that a reasonably high percentage of them might be.) Rod Everson OnTrack Reading - Vitamin D and Autism Letter from a parent of an autistic child to Dr. Cannell and his response