When my daughter use to read out loud she use to skip the little words like 'the' and 'a' and she would replace words that basically meant the same thing. She also use to have a lot of trouble skipping lines or re-reading the same line over and over. We are going to a vision therapist next week and I have forgotten what this maybe a sign of or if it is two different problems. Thanks!

does she have tracking problems?

What do you mean by tracking problems? Can you describe that?

My DS (7) does the same thing - in my mind, it is because his brain reads much faster than his mouth can process - he was always reading ahead a line, or paragraph, and having to jump back to say it out loud, often skipping the small, unimportant words, or paraphrasing other items.

Hi flower,

This is what I found on the web for specific visual issues:

http://www.eyecanlearn.com/

If you scroll down just a bit from the top, you will see the various visual processing skills grouped under perception, tracking, focusing and eye teaming.

There is an explanation of what each skill is (click on the button) followed by a visual exercise for that type of visual skill.

My son had significant problems with "pursuits" and "convergence". The good news is, all this can be fixed with specific exercises which your vision therapist can prescribe.

I heard it is called Irlen Syndrome. Under stress people say it often is worse. The eye doctor I talked to said,fish oil tablets,no corn syrup products, good multi-vitiamin with minerals,yougart,and a pro-biotic would help. He susgested I look up leaky gut syndrome. I did. Also read a bio-phycology book about nuro-transmissions (chemical messangers) are nutrients in are food we need to have our eyes and brain work correctly. A book called BREAKING THE METABOLIC CODE explained about leaky gut syndrome. I was told the Health Care Authority doesn't recognize eye exercises as a therapy and won't pay for the service. Tinted over lays are effective. The lighting in schools effects vision processing for some children. Natural light by setting the child close to windows is what I read about. Putting a marker under each line as it is read helps.All the natural things mentioned helped. Have you talked to parents who say this eye exercise therapy worked for their child? It was very expensive to do. I would like to hear from parents who found it worked. Flower it would possibly be Dyslexia testing you would want to determine LD.

Here is a link I like about this-

http://www.childrensvision.com/reading.htm

And check out this checklist-

http://www.childrensvision.com/symptoms.htm

My dd did that. She had an eye tracking (ocular motor) problem that was fixed with vision therapy. However, I don't know for certain whether that problem was related to tracking or more of a language processing problem (which we're currently seeing a language therapist for).

I believe that Irlen Syndrome involves how the brain processes colors and is quite rare compared to tracking issues, though I honestly don't know any more than that.

Good luck with the vision appointment. I'd see someone from www.covd.org .

Thank-you for all the information! The vision therapist is on that covd list. The problem is that he does not know anything about gifted stuff and is curious about someone coming who does not "seem" to have any reading difficulty.... HOwever we have no choices here so will check it out and see what happens. My DD is completely against going.....

Depending on the results of the developmental eye exam, you may wish to then have a full educational evaluation done. Many children who are gifted also have a learning disability, such as dyslexia or dysgraphia. The giftedness "hides" the disability somewhat, making it harder to identify. For a full eval., look for someone with knowledge and experience with 2E kids.

I teach Special Education. For some kids it is the sharp contrast of black type on white paper. You can try having her read with a piece of colored overlay over the text. Different kids respond to different colors. Most like yellow or blue. I have bought the colored plastic sheets that you can slip papers in. They often come in different colors. I have seen examples of how the text appears to move black on white with flourescent lighting. It would be difficult if not impossible to read. I had one student who got a cheap pair of rose tinted sunglasses that worked. It is worth a try. There are expensive things that can also be purchased that look more official.