BY Nancy

Copyright 2008, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!

THIS IS OUR TRUE STORY!!! It is a fairly long story, but well worth reading if your child or teen has any reading or learning difficulties, or if you know someone that does. Irlen is also for adults! Information about Irlen and a link to their website is listed below our story.

I remember watching one of my daughters struggle with her short homework assignments as she reached third and fourth grades. What should have taken her twenty minutes or so took her over an hour to complete. One of my nightly tasks from that time on was to sit and listen to her questions and help her find ways to locate the information she needed in her schoolbooks. Did I ever do her homework for her or even consider doing it? It never even entered my mind. I felt my task as her mother was to help her learn to find the information she needed so she could complete her homework assignments herself.

I began expressing my concerns to her fourth and fifth grade teachers. I only received assurances that since she was doing average work in school that she was doing just fine. She wasn’t falling behind and she wasn’t failing, so of course nothing was wrong with her. It was very difficult for me to figure out what her problem was because I had never run into anything like that before. So ….. I continued to help her develop methods to find the information she needed. Fortunately, my daughter was always very good at puzzle solving and problem solving.

Sixth grade was a bit better because her teacher that year seemed to really understand what I confided to her about my daughter. When we met for a parent-teacher conference that teacher said she knew that she didn’t need to explain to me what the students had been working on because she knew I was right there helping my daughter try to get everything completed. That sixth grade teacher requested that the school put my daughter through some tests to see if they could figure out what the difficulty was. When the test results came back I was told that my daughter did average work on all of the tests so of course there was nothing wrong with her. Because she didn’t do poorly and didn’t fail any of those tests they couldn’t believe she had any kind of a problem. Of course I knew their interpretation was wrong because I watched my daughter struggle with her homework for hours every day.

Fast forward to the end of sixth grade. A young woman I worked with and I would chat at lunch or breaktime every once in a while. And of course I would share some of my daughter’s difficulties. Difficulties such as: frequent headaches, frequent stomachaches, difficulty putting reports together, a strange way of learning spelling – she would pronounce the words exactly the way they were spelled. Every time I shared something with her about my daughter she would say: Me Too!

Finally after so many stories and hearing her say that to me so many times, I turned and looked at her and asked her “What did you do about it?” That is when she shared her story with me. When she was in college, one of her professors had the students in his class take all of the tests that they would be giving to their future students. She said that when she finished taking one of the tests she went up to her professor and said that she thought she had found herself in that test. He gave her a book to read “Reading By The Colors” by Helen Irlen. She had the full test done and ended up with some colored filters to put over the books she was reading.

That co-worker let me borrow her book and that is when I felt that I might have actually found a solution for my daughter. At that point she didn’t want to be different than any of the other kids in her class, and I couldn’t afford the tests at that time.

Our solution waited until eighth grade, after a move to a new location and a new life. We located an Irlen diagnostician and set up an appointment for my daughter’s pretest (to see if she should have the complete Irlen test). My then husband took my daughter to the Irlen pretest since it was some distance away and I really needed to work. I was really anxious to find out what happened during that pretest. When they got back I got the confirmation that my daughter really needed to have the full Irlen test done. My husband recommended that I go to the full test and sit in on it because he felt I really needed to see it for myself.

My daughter had the full Irlen test done when she was in the eighth grade. I sat in the room while she went through the test. The first thing that impressed me was that the person doing the testing did not ask one leading question. Every question was worded in a way so that my daughter told her exactly what she was seeing on the paper. My daughter was asked to look at a word, or to look at a sentence, or to look at a paragraph etc. What really shocked me was my daughter’s answers to those questions. She described words moving back and forth. She described individual letters popping in and out. She described rivers through the words. She described things moving around on that piece of paper. I became really amazed that she had been reading anything at all, and I wondered how she had been doing average work if reading was so terribly difficult! (An added note here: this problem can also affect math computation. How? Well, one time my daughter was working on a math problem and as she looked at the problem she saw the math symbol disappear as she was looking at it. This was while we were waiting for her new glasses to arrive and she now had some idea of what to watch for.)

The next part of the test was to pick out colored lenses for her new Irlen glasses. My daughter would look through the various colored lenses at the printed page and pick colors that made reading the words on the page easier. She ended up with three layers of colors for inside and four layers of colors for outside. (Later, in college she switched to using the outside lenses for everyday, including inside.)

We waited impatiently for her new glasses to arrive. My daughter’s first comment when she put on her new glasses and looked around was “Wow, my legs are so long!” Apparently, the ground had suddenly appeared to be 2 or more feet farther down than she had previously seen without her glasses. She saw the world and everything in it, including herself, in a new way with those colored lenses. And yes, those first glasses were just layers of colors. I say just because I mean they were not prescription lenses through an eye doctor. And those Irlen glasses completely changed my daughter’s life! In one semester her grades jumped from a 2.6 to a 3.8. Which proved that she never had been an average student.

Go to the Irlen website Now: IRLEN
While you are there, sign the petition to help prevent the ban on incandescent light bulbs.

My daughter went on to college and obtained her Bachelor’s Degree Magna Cum Laude. She also went on to graduate school and obtained her Master’s Degree. She tells me that she never would have been able to do college, and especially would not have been able to do Graduate School if she did not have her Irlen glasses.

ABOUT IRLEN

What is Irlen and what are symptoms of Irlen Syndrome? It is NOT about giving reading instructions or methods of how to read.

This color-based method, which uses colored overlays and filters, is patented and was discovered by Helen Irlen, MA, LMFT. She is the nation’s leading expert in perceptually-based reading and learning difficulties. Helen Irlen is the author of “Reading By The Colors,” a book that describes the variety of ways this problem affects an individual. It also explains the changes that can take place with the appropriate use of color.

The Irlen website tells us that Irlen Syndrome does not really have anything to do with the eyes. Apparently it is not an optical problem. Irlen Syndrome has to do with the way the brain processes information that is fed to it through the eyes. This problem is not currently identified in standardized educational and medical tests.

The Irlen website lists a long list of symptoms. Many of my daughter’s difficulties are listed on that website.

One symptom is LIGHT SENSITIVITY: Bothered by glare, fluorescent lights, bright lights, sunlight, and sometimes lights at night. Fluorescent lights bother my daughter because she has a strong light sensitivity problem. When she was young she used to sit and read in a fairly dark room with the lights off and I would always tell her to turn the light on! And then I later found out that she could actually read better with that light OFF! I received quite an education in this whole process.

It is very troublesome that some states are attempting to pass laws outlawing or banning incandescent lights. There are some people in this country that are physically affected in a very negative way by fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lights, as they are right now, are not healthy for many people. Yes, I believe in environmentally friendly products, but not by making some people sick because of poorly researched laws. It would be much better to encourage the manufacturers of light bulbs and fluorescent lights to come up with lighting that is healthy for ALL people and also healthy for the environment.

The Irlen website gives more detailed information about light sensitivity, including other possible medical reasons for a light sensitivity problem.

Other symptoms of Irlen Syndrome are:

• Reading Problems
• Discomfort
• Attention and Concentration Problems
• Writing Problems
• Depth Perception
• Distortions
• Other Characteristics

The Irlen website also demonstrates a few sample distortions so you can get some idea what some children and adults see when they look at a printed page. There is a self-test section so you can see if the Irlen method might help you, your child or teen, or someone else you know. (An added note: my daughter actually has a combination of several types of visual distortions.)

DYSLEXIA

Many children and adults are misdiagnosed with dyslexia. When words jiggle, move, or disappear, reading is very difficult, and therefore these children get labeled “dyslexic.” If the problem is actually Irlen Syndrome, or a combination of Irlen Syndrome and dyslexia, then the Irlen method might be able to help.

Check Out The
IRLEN Website
For More Detailed
Information!

Check out Irlen’s webpage that talks about Who They Can Help! You might be surprised at the extensive list and amount of information available!

Also, I suggest that you read some of the testimonials at their website. These are all true stories, just as our story is completely true. We live it, we have experienced it, and are experiencing it.

While you are there, sign the petition to help prevent the ban on incandescent light bulbs.

Helen Irlen’s book, Reading By The Colors

Trackback URI |