Originally Posted by spaghetti
If you have switching eye dominance, then words disappear. Also if you have some retinal issues (but the optho probably checked for that) where the center that you are focusing on disappears).

Is there anything to do to help him if it's a eye dominance issue?

Originally Posted by Platypus101
I looked this up a couple of years ago for a friend whose son complained of "the words falling off the page", and while I found lots of self-reports, I found nothing remotely credible in the way of explanations.

An optometrist who specializes in visual processing issues identified accommodation and some convergence insufficiency, and suggested he start by trying prism glasses (yeah, I didn't think that was a real thing either, but here's the first explanation I found just now: http://glassescrafter.com/information/prism-in-eyeglasses.html). Though they helped, child wouldn't wear/ kept losing (very expensive) glasses. Optometrist suggested vision therapy was plan B: a harder fix but a more permanent one.

The VT did fix the "words falling off the page" and the child did start reading a lot more, and a lot less reluctantly. However, he is still not an eager reader: whatever his barriers were, VT provided a notable improvement but not a magic fix. (It did seem to be magic for his drawing, though).

Sorry - wish I could offer better than n of 1 anecdata!

The optometrist in town mentioned VT when we pushed him, but he doesn't feel it would be particularly helpful in DS's case. I would try it, except it would likely require at least three hours of travel for us (one way). If it's the kind of thing that needs to be done frequently to be beneficial, it would be quite difficult. The joys of a small, rural town!

I'm mainly worried about the seemingly new onset of symptoms. Why would it suddenly start now?