Hello All,
I took my 6 year old daughter to an Eye Doctor that the school recommend last week. The eye doctor was recommend for helping LD. My daughter vision is find. The eye doctor/Optometrist said my daughter has dyslexia and wrote a perception for reading bifocals. My daughter got her glasses yesterday.
Two weeks before that my daughter was seen by Neurologist. He did a few simple test asked and asked a few questions. He said her evaluation was normal for a child her age. He believes firmly in not testing a child for LD until they 8 years old.
Does anyone else have a child wearing bifocals for LD? Can an Optometrist make a diagnoses for LD?
I’m really puzzled over this any help or advice would be great. Thanks
Re: Can an Optometrist diagnose Dyslexia?
My dd was seen by an educational optometrist who did find that she had visual issues requiring bifocals. Her distance vision was fine but she had double vision up to 3 feet from her face. This definitely effected her ability to learn to read. :) A neuropsychologist, however, dx’d her with diseidetic and disphonetic dyslexia when she was 9. So, get some thorough testing done, try the glasses for a while and see if they help and good luck on your journey helping your child.
Re: Can an Optometrist diagnose Dyslexia?
How long did the testing take? A full developmental vision evaluation takes about two hours.
Is this doctor listed as board-certified at http://www.covd.org ?
I am a strong proponent of developmental vision testing and vision therapy for visual efficiency problems, but I am sceptical of bifocals for a child this young. Even if the child needs bifocals, it would not be for “dyslexia” but rather for an eye condition. Dyslexia is a language-based disorder of neurological origin, although there can be many contributing factors (such as phonemic awareness delays, visual efficiency problems, auditory processing disorder, sensory integration disorder, etc.).
I would get a second opinion about the bifocals, and I would also get a complete speech/language evaluation by a speech pathologist to determine if there are phonemic awareness delays. Problems with phonemic awareness are the most highly predictive for difficulty learning to read, and PA is very trainable at your child’s age.
Nancy
Whether an optometrist can diagnose dyslexia depends on what tests he gave and what his qualifications are. I do happen to know of one optometrist who also has a masters in education and can test for dyslexia as well as vision problems. But I am extremely doubtful that most do. For the most part dyslexia is a problem with processing SOUNDS (phonological processing), but some children do have visual aspects as well. So unless this doctor tested phonological processing, phonics knowledge, etc., then he cannot diagnose dyslexia. It sounds like he diagnosed a physical vision disorder, but that is not dyslexia!
The neurologist obviously did not find anything neurologically wrong in the tests he gave, which is good. However, he is also wrong in that 8 years old is very late to be diagnosing a reading disorder. We can test children as young as 5 for phonological processing problems. The earlier the problems are found and remediated, the better the child’s prospects. I encourage you to go to the International Dyslexia Association site www.interdys.org and find your state branch and contact someone there to ask where you can have your daughter reliably evaluated for a reading disorder/dyslexia.