John Bald/language and literacy

Sensitivity to light 2

Professor Arnold Wilkins, whose book, Reading Through Colour, is the best compact description of the issues involving sensitivity to light, has finally got the issue onto the agenda of the BBC, with an interview with Libby Purves and a news item at the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7257617.stm

I continue to meet people whose lives are wrecked because this issue is not checked. The latest is a lady in her late 20s who cannot read more than one or two paragraphs at a time, who suffers headaches every single night, and who had to leave her examination hall because of the severe discomfort caused by fluorescent lighting, leaving her with no qualifications. An overlay produced an immediate benefit. The failure to check this condition, with so much evidence in the public domain, now amounts to negligence.

A second recent case involves a boy of 11, with a long history of "assessment" as having every disorder under the sun, who is now settling into secondary school well having received no primary education at all - his life was one of continuous frustration and misbehaviour, causing distress to all around him. He was excluded from school several times, and his language and shouting often left his teacher in tears. Towards the end of his primary education, his headteacher made matters worse by not allowing him to use in school an overlay provided by his local hospital. He is reading the Dinosaur section of the Dangerous Book for Boys with me - he could not read at all last September - and had beaten his end of year English target by November of the first term. There is plenty of work to do, but at least we can now do it. He has had no significant problems with behaviour at school, and his behaviour at home has also improved beyond measure, though it is not yet where it needs to be.  

There are many more, including teachers who were unable to work under fluorescent light, children whose reading speed has increased tenfold, and people who have had relief from devastating migraine - by which I mean having to take days off work at a time. The Institute of Optometry screening kit costs £60ish - google them - and will let any teacher make an initial screening just by following clear instructions. The kit needs to become part of every school's screening and assessment procedures for reading problems.

Asperger's - or a reading problem?

Over the past year, I've had four children referred to me who have been assessed as having Asperger's syndrome. All have responded well to the teaching methods outlined in Chapter 7 of Using Phonics to Teach Reading and Spelling, to the extent that there is a serious possibility that their problem has been misdiagnosed. Each case was different - one extremely intelligent 10 year old was bored with teaching that did not fully extend him, and another of the same age was, well, a little lazy. A child entering secondary school was sensitive to light to the extent that it caused headaches and blurring of print, while a six year old was simply confused and frustrated at teaching that relied too much on guessing from pictures or from the first letter in a word.

I'm very interested in working with parents whose child has been assessed as having Asperger's syndrome, and who do not feel that the diagnosis is reflected in their own experience - you can't have Asperger's at school and not at home, for example. If this sounds like your son  or daughter, please get in touch.