My 7yo son had his birthday last week, in Grade 1 in Australia NSW this year. Diagnosed with dyslexia last week. Was tested yesterday for Irlen after my research on the internet (check out Irlen Sydney in google), and no, his psychologist who diagnosed the dyslexia didn't even mention it! I walked in with significant skepticism, but deep down desperate fragile hope.
My first pleasant surprise was they asked all the right kind of background questions on the review sheet prior to the interview. Promising. Then followed 2 hours of thorough testing with a highly competent diagnostician (a teacher of 17 years, with two Irlen diagnosed kids - she's been through it all). Not only did she make my son feel welcome and comfortable and talk directly with him, she asked questions the right way so that my son came out with all sorts of descriptions - and not once did she give him clues as to what she thought he might be seeing, so he had no chance of using descriptors learned in the session.
Gosh. The stuff he sees! Horizontal lines are wavy. Vertical lines are moving and varying zig-zags. Words move all the time. a's o's and e's all have black dots in their centres. Words are always blurry as there's a second set of words right next to them. Letters change heights. Some words appear with neon white light around them. I have two heads (LOL). As the session moved on past the testing stage, she initially gave him overlays to try. Once he worked his way thru them and found the ones that were easier on his eyes/did good things for them, she started giving him lenses to try and compare and comment on (3 sets at a time). She went through about 40 sets, making sure that the ones that worked the best were really 'for sure'. The revelation when all of a sudden the words stopped moving! For the first time in his life, he can see words that don't move! He looked out the window and said, hey mum, the plane's just going along in the sky (along its trajectory) - it doesn't go round and round and round like it used to (wobbling along its trajectory). He thought all he saw was 'normal' until yesterday.
Needless to say, we've walked out with glasses ordered, a very excited boy, have temporary overlays to use in class, and have discovered that Reflex Blue is his easiest colour to read from for school photocopying. We're now going through the process of educating teachers, and all the kids at school (small school) about Irlen.
You can ring the Irlen centre - they'll tell you straight away whether or not colour blindness will affect the use of their lenses. (My son has red/green colour blindness.) The lenses help correct a specific colour(s) light spectrum deficiency in the magnocellular cells in the nerves that send the messages from the eye to the brain - it doesn't correct any eye/optical issues - they still need to be worked on by an optometrist. Hope this helps.
For my son, every dollar spent there was worthwhile. How incredibly life-changing. All up, including two educational books (for others) and cost of glasses, we walked out for $680. Oh, and they offered to come to our school for free to educate teachers, even after I offered to pay.
Wow. Evan is (as far as I know) also red/green colour blind.
All very interesting. He has an appointment with a behavioural optometrist next wednesday so I will ask him then. There is a centre here in cairns that specialises in Irlen also, so hopefully if we need to go down that path it will be easily accessible.
What sort of signs made you look into Irlen? Evan can read ok. But his comprehension is the problem.
My now 15 year old went to the irlen clinic at the newcastle uni when he was in kindy as he was reading backwards and was writing mirror image so if you turned the paper over it would be correct but he actually would write it back the front anyway he was tested and it took a few visits until he found blue lenses helped him so we ordered the blue lenses it took a few weeks to get them and then our optometrist put them in a pair of glasses he picked he wore them for 3 years and now his reading is way above average his writing is still not so great it is tiny and very hard to read but the right way around.
There are two books out about Irlen Syndrome that are available on amazon.com, and elsewhere. One is an older book called Reading by the Colors from the 1990s. The other is new and called The Irlen Revolution - it talks about how Irlen filters not only help kids learning to read but also help with symptoms from autism, traumatic brain injury, migraines, etc. Also visit Irlen.com and you's find much more about Irlen Sydrome.
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