Volume 1, Issue Three September 2011

Tips and Tools for Back to School Part 2  Reading Challenges

School just started and you are becoming aware that the coming school year may have some academic challenges for your child. Here are some ideas when the reading is not going well. While working with many children and adults for the past 10 years, I have narrowed down the many reading difficulties to the following three areas:

Physical: vision problems – not necessarily acuity but tracking, sensitivity to light, poor eye muscle development and/or lack of movement during the school year
Emotional: related to stress and lack of sleep
Developmental: retained or lacking reflexes

Sensitivity to light caught my attention since I use color-light therapy with children. This condition is described as sensitivity to aspects of light involving brightness, wavelengths and dark/bright contrast.

At home, make sure that children study under natural or incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs are missing certain wavelengths and may cause stress on children’s eyes.

Some children have difficulty with contrast white page with black letters. One of the ways to correct the problem is to introduce color overlays over the written page. After testing many children and adults, I have noticed a substantial change in their reading fluency, comprehension and stress level. Choosing color overlays takes approximately one hour and at the end of the process, it is obvious to the person if the overlay makes a difference or not.

When you see that your child tilts their head to one side while reading or writing, they are trying to compensate for a problem in eye tracking. Their acuity may be 20/20 but their eyes cannot stay on the entire line from one end to the other. Educational Kinesiology’s Brain Gym® movements are easy to do and bring welcomed relief to many children.

In the developmental area, many children show signs of retained dynamic reflexes (reflexes that should have disappeared in infancy or early childhood) and are also lacking certain postural reflexes. Some examples: using the tongue while reading or writing, rocking back and forth while sitting on a chair or tucking one’s foot under the buttocks or around the leg of a chair. With the help from Educational Kinesiology’s Brain Gym® movements and Dr. Svetlana Masgutova’s Neurosensorimotor Method, integration of these reflexes is possible and can be done in a simple, fun and orderly fashion.

If your child is struggling with reading, do not hesitate to call me to discuss the best way to address the issue.
I wish you and your child a great beginning to the new school year, Mariola