Is vision root of reading battles?

By Lauran Neergaard | The Associated Press
November 9, 2008

WASHINGTON—Your 9-year-old's eyes hurt during homework? Your teen's a slow reader plagued with headaches? They may have a common yet often missed vision problem: Eyes that don't turn together properly to read.

As many as one of every 20 students has some degree of what eye doctors call "convergence insufficiency," or CI, in which eye muscles must work harder to focus up-close. And those standard vision screenings administered by schools and pediatricians won't catch it—they stress distance vision.

When symptoms such as eye strain, headaches, double vision or reading problems trigger the right diagnosis, doctors prescribe any of a hodgepodge of exercises designed to strengthen eye coordination. Now a major government study finally offers evidence for the best approach: eye training performed in a doctor's office for 12 weeks.

The right treatment can make a profound difference, says Adele Andrews of Rydal, Pa., whose son Thomas participated in the study when he was 10—and improved enough to at last start reading for fun.