I have struggled with English ever since I was in elementary school. Reading, writing, grammar, you name it. My parents thought I was always just a lazy kid when it came to reading because I just had so much trouble. I was put in special education. I was supposed to be tested for anything that could rule it out, but my parents declined it. They instead thought it was a vision issue, and I was diagnosed with convergence excess but I see nothing like what they see. When I read, I read backwards at times, go over sentences, go up the sentence, and look at the spacing between words. Many of my friends thought it was dyslexia. Could that be possible? I also am wondering what the difference is between a learning disability and a vision problem.

There is a lot of difference between a learning disability/dyslexia and a vision problem. We do need to always determine that a student’s eyes are working properly, but one of the biggest myths we have to still overcome is that dyslexia is a vision problem. It is not – it is a language-based learning disability. Here are a couple of pieces, one that I wrote and one that my colleague wrote that addresses this issue.

And here is what dyslexia is.

Thank you for writing in about this very important issue and misconception.