Visual Processing System
Check if your child is weak in visual processing. Here's an easy test:
Holding a pencil up in front of your child's eyes. Move it side to side slowly. Have your child can follow the pencil with their eyes.
As you do this watch their eyes. Are they moving smoothly? Or do you notice any jumps? If the motion is not smooth this may signify a problem.
Testing and strengthening eye muscles is an important first step. It's one of the easiest things to correct. And doing so leads to fast results. If you suspect it might be a problem there are many more easy tests and exercises that fix the problem. Visual therapists can do this. Or you can do it at home using the Learning Success System
Weak eye muscles cause visual tracking problems. This will cause difficulty in doing schoolwork. Letters may jump around. Work may be sloppy. Your child may fatigue or get headaches.
The bottom line is that they are working too hard. It should be and can be, easier.
Visual tracking is not the only visual micro-skill. Others include visual memory, visual discrimination, visual closure, and visual form constancy.
These comprise the visual processing system. A weakness in any will lead to academic difficulties. These weaknesses are very common. Possibly because we use screens so much. So it's a good idea to strengthen them in all children. Even if they are not showing problems.
Auditory Processing System
Next is the auditory processing system. Here's an easy test:
Read each line in the exercise to your child. Ask them to repeat back to you the two with the same ending sounds.
How difficult was it? Did they make mistakes? Did they take a long time?
You can also pay attention to where they are looking. If they are looking up and to the right then they are accessing visual memory as well. So they are mentally connecting the auditory with the visual. This is good. That means the auditory and visual systems are working together. If not, that may be something you'll want to work on with them.
If there is a problem here it could lead to
- Poor comprehension
- Following directions
- Slow labored reading
There are several different potential causes for trouble with this exercise. All are auditory processing difficulties. They could be:
- Auditory discrimination
- Auditory closure
- Auditory memory
Or a combination of the above.
It is not important to figure out exactly which. This is because you should work on all of them together. The brain is not a machine in which you can replace one part. Everything works together. So, even if the problem is with a single micro-skill, you should work on all of them together.
The above is a good test to get you started. It's better as an exercise though. Put together exercises like this which cover all of the possible ending sounds. Then do the same with beginning sounds. You might even do middle sounds and multi-syllable words. Or, if you want to make it easy on yourself, you can get all of them in the Learning Success System. Get a free trial here.