Parents and teachers tend to look for obvious vision problems when the not-so-obvious ones most often inhibit a child’s ability to learn to read and, later, to read to learn, says a local optometrist.

“Some vision problems can be detected by a standard eye chart test,” said Dr. Jordan Brown, O.D. “But the perceptual or near point focusing problems that interfere with a child’s ability to do classroom work are not so obvious.”

Many vision skills are used to read, but the one measured by the familiar eye chart – sharpness of vision when looking at distance – is not one of them. So a child with 20/20 eyesight can still have poor vision for reading.

Looking at a printed page, a child may see nothing but blurred letters or have to exert great effort to see the words clearly. Or “b” may look like “d” and “tar” may look like “rat”.

When the eyes do not work together as a team so that the images seen by each are merged into one in the brain, the child might see double. And if eye movements are slow and halting, a young reader may find it necessary to use a finger to keep place.

“Looking from the book to the chalkboard and back requires changing focus rapidly, and some children cannot do this easily. They may take a long time to copy work from the chalkboard,” Dr. Jordan said.

All of these vision problems can contribute to reading problems, but they may not be detected during a typical school vision screening. That’s why a thorough eye examination each school year is so important.

If the optometrist diagnoses a vision problem that is interfering with learning, treatment can be started promptly. Although lenses may sometimes be used, treatment usually involves vision therapy, a program of prescribed visual tasks practiced under controlled conditions.

Once the underlying vision problem is alleviated, the child better responds to remedial reading programs to rise to his or her age level of reading.

“Children do not outgrow learning-related vision problems. Therefore, the earlier they care professionally diagnosed and treated, the earlier a child can be on the way to learning to read and reading to learn,” Dr. Brown said.