Learning Difficulties Newcastle

I spent the day at Singleton today, and screened four young children who were really struggling at school and they had been referred to lots of specialists in an effort to find out why they were having trouble reading. All of them had Irlen Syndrome, and were able to read much more fluently with the selected overlay than without it. One little boy could not bear to look at the white page for longer than about 5 seconds before his eyes started to hurt. Another one gets headaches every day. He said that he got a headache yesterday evening and when asked what he was doing at the time, he said “nothing” but Mum said “playing with his WI”. This is a part of Irlen that is not always recognised. When playing with electronic games, children often don’t wear their lenses because the games are colourful, and don’t require a lot of reading. However, they emit a lot of glare so children can get sore eyes, headaches or tired eyes but don’t realise that it is the result of the glare from the games. So if your child has Irlen lenses and doesn’t wear them when playing electronic games, try to explain to them, that the glare is making their brains work harder than they should be.