Dyslexia and Learning Difficulties Newcastle

Children try really hard, but when it gets too hard, they give up!

A little girl came to the clinic today to be screened for Irlen Syndrome. She is in Year 5 and was really struggling at school. The result of the screening indicated that she did have Irlen, but as well as words not looking very good for her, she also did not see the clinic room as a “square”. In other words, she sees the world as almost 2-D so that the corners of the room just looked like a small indentation in a flat surface. After selecting the overlay that helped her, she looked through it and noticed this difference in how the room looked. Prior to this, her parents did not know that was how she saw the world, because she had not mentioned it to them. But why would she? As far as she knew, how she saw the world was how everyone saw the world.

That is why I feel so strongly about screening all children for Irlen in the school situation, because they don’t self- report because they don’t know that what they see is different from others and the only way we can know this, is if we screen them.