Most children are introduced to letters, blends and reading in their first 2 years of school. Alternative schools may do things differently. Rudolf Steiner schools, for example, do not introduce reading until age 7. Montessori schools focus first on sensorial training. Children learn first to trace sandpaper letters, and are then introduced to movable cardboard or wooden letters.
There is no ‘right age’ at which a child is ready for reading. Young children may have sound peripheral and depth vision, but it is only by age 7 or 8 that fine motor co-ordination of muscles naturally develops. Just as children grow at different rates, so, too, is visual development an individual process. This becomes problematic at school, where children are grouped according to their age in years – not their development level.
Eye tracking is arguably the most important skill needed for learning to read. Eye tracking is when a dominant eye tracks across a page of writing from left to right, guiding the movement of the non-dominant eye, which follows the movements exactly (this may also be called laterality – an awareness of and ability to cross a body midline). While one child’s frontal lobes may have matured enough to allow eye tracking to occur accurately, another child’s muscles will not be ready yet. This child, no matter how hard he tries, will not be able to get his eyes to team together to follow a page.
There is an additional factor that makes reading an ordeal for a child whose eyes are not yet ready. It is very likely that the child feels anxious about books and reading. In stressful situations the eyes shift peripherally, as a primal response to the threat of danger. The eyes move in this way in order to absorb as much of the environment as possible. This makes foveal focus (concentration on the fovea in the retina for reading) and eye tracking nearly impossible. Rapid eye movements have a huge impact on reading ability, as they make focusing on a book extremely difficult. It is much more challenging to develop finely controlled eye movements if inappropriately retained reflexes still want to lock in certain movements that are no longer necessary.
When children displayed signs of stress through this reflex Jim immediately stopped them from reading, building them up slowly with visual games and drawing instead. This trained the eyes in a gentler way. We played visually stimulating games such as Blink, Tricky Fingers and Right Turn, Left Turn.
We performed a basic eye tracking test on each child (learned from Behavioural Optometrists) to check eye teaming and convergence. This test involves moving a bright object (such as a pen with a colourful lid) around a person’s face: tracking in and out 5 centimetres from the nose, left to right, right to left, up and down and in rotations, clockwise and anti-clockwise. Signs of visual stress during this activity included looking physically uncomfortable but not admitting so (this is a sign that a person has become used to feeling discomfort), bleariness or redness of the eyes, splotchiness of facial skin, quickened breath and a change in posture. The latter three are stress indicators in any situation and need to be watched for carefully. We also watched for eyebrow movements and movement in the head of body (such as the head needing to follow the eyes, from left to right). We checked convergence and divergence – aiming eyes at close and far distances.
The implications of difficulties with tracking, convergence and divergence may be severe. If visual problems are not addressed early on they can impact negatively on all areas of child’s life.
Children who have problems with convergence have eyes with a tendency to drift outwards. They will struggle especially with looking in and out, for example to the whiteboard and back to their book, or to a computer screen and back to their writing. Those who under-converge could have difficulty with any close-up work; meanwhile, those who over-converge may have trouble with decision-making and planning for the future, as they tend to miss out on what has been happening in front of them. It is important to note that convergence difficulties very often go undetected and untreated in children because this problem is not tested in basic eye tests or school screenings. A child can pass a 20/20 eye test and still have convergence issues.
If a person’s eyes don’t work together they will have trouble concentrating on the whiteboard in class or the workplace. If their eyes cannot track from left to right they will almost certainly have difficulty reading and writing, skipping words and lines. I see this weekly, especially in children from ages 7 to 12. Another common problem related to eye teaming is reversals of letters and numbers. If children reverse letters, skip words and miss lines they will not gain meaning from what they see. They will not expand their vocabulary and will be unable to express themselves in the written word. Writing will cause headaches and fatigue. Children with any visual problems will also have trouble with the fine motor skills required for tactile activities such as writing, colouring (controlling pencils) and cutting (controlling scissors). Clearly, vision and visual processing have a huge impact on learning and academic success.
Not only this, but visual processing problems affect life outside of school. Up and down tracking is necessary for viewing a page up and down (viewing vertical graphs, for example), scanning the Internet, and looking through files and indexes.
Moreover, tracking affects physical pursuits – in sports and in the playground. Sport can be a nightmare for children with tracking difficulties. Up and down tracking is used in climbing and catching a ball, left to right tracking for passing a ball and perception of where it is moving to, and eye tracking in rotations is vital for all movement and 3D visual-spatial work. Some children may have trouble with just a quarter of a rotation, which makes their eyes ‘jump’ while following an object. Children with visual problems are more likely to bump into things, trip and fall. Often these children are called ‘clumsy’ by others.
This may even lead to social problems- by bumping into people on the playground a child may seem anti-social or rough. Either they will not see people coming or they won’t learn to read social cues because they are not quick enough to notice them.
Adults with visual processing problems may have trouble learning to drive. This task requires efficient processing. Drivers need to see behind, in front and to the sides of the car. Intersections can be especially problematic if the eyes are not teaming.
