Great Day

Most of you know that Taylor has struggled with reading.  She has never liked to read and she has often complained that it hurts her head and eyes.  She's been screened at school for vision problems and always passed the test.  It's always been a baffling thing to me. 

This past Monday, I was at my school's faculty meeting and one of the special ed teacher's gave a presentation on Irlen Syndrome.  I'd personally never heard of it, but as she was talking about the different ways that words move on the page for some people and some of the indicators, I kept thinking to myself, "This sounds like my Taylor."  Afterwards, I went up to the teacher and told her that Tay has like 6 of the 9 indicators and asked if she would mind giving her the test. 

So today we went in and filled out a questionnaire and she gave Taylor some quick visual tests and asked some questions while Taylor read paragraphs.  Then, she put 9 different colored overlays onto the page to see if any of them made a difference to what she saw or how she read.  For most of the colors, she sounded like she always does when she reads: halting, stumbling, backtracking, losing her place....but then she put a Yellow sheet on the page and the tester and I both looked up at each other and mouthed, "Wow!"  It was an amazing difference.  She read almost twice as fast and was smooth and clear as she read.  I started to cry; I was so impressed with the difference that this small thing could make. 

The teacher gave Taylor the yellow overlay and taught her how to take care of it.  She is supposed to use it at home for the next couple weeks and then she can begin to take it to school.  She ordered another overlay so that we could have one to use for smaller books and to carry around.  I'll have to tell her teachers about this and make sure that they let her use it.  Her retention and comprehension was even better with it...we got out to the car and Taylor said, "I still remember what that paragraph was about." And almost told me the whole thing again.

I am so thrilled and amazed!  I just hope it really does make a difference.  It seemed to really affect the way that she read, and understood the infomation.  It's such a great discovery!  Yay, yay, yay!!!