[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by jackyalex

yes he has to wear glasses and has had a recent eye test,the school he is at teaches children the phonic alphabet,we think that this may be where we are going wrong at home but have tried many different ways of teaching him, but dont want to confuse him anymore ,i have not had a problem with my eldest child reading just my 8yr old ,the school has not been much help , my 5 yr old brings home reading books from school and these are the books that i now use for my son aswell as my 5yr old,it does seem to be helping a bit,

I wasn't meaning just if he needed glasses. Bernadette mentioned dyslexia and that is a bone of contention with me as it's very difficult to get a child checked for it. However there are visual problems linked to dyslexia that aren't necessarily label-able as dyslexia but cause a child problems with reading due to the colour of black print on white paper. I only learned about this after my daughter had a serious accident and was being tutored at LEMS until she was able to go back to school full time. The tutors there tried out various coloured acetate sheets for children to read through and it makes a world of a difference to some of them. Different colours work for different children and they are specific optical colours not just pretty plastic.

There is an optician in Bury who can do these tests. Most opticians aren't qualified to do them. They are very few and far between. The only other one in Lancashire is in Lancaster I was told. It might be worth making an appointment for him with Crowthers in Bury and explaining what his difficulty is. I can get you the phone number if you like. It may mean that he needs specially tinted lenses.

There's also a brilliant system called "Toe-by-Toe" which I could explain more about if the vision thing doesn't help.