The 9 year old girl who I prescribed Irlen glasses for this week is on the ‘Gifted and Talented’ program at school, she also has severe Irlen Syndrome.
Her mother said her daughter was an ‘expert’ at accommodating for her reading difficulty for instance by using Audio books for information, using every single second of a recent test in order to score 100 and generally putting in so much effort that it made her extremely tired and gave her headaches.
Although they were aware of her reading problems, caused by the white page becoming bright, glary and having ‘colors’ appear on the page as flashes of light, the girl and her mother were not so aware of environmental difficulties until she was able to see ‘a whole new world’ through the green/blue lens chosen. Her descriptions of the contrast she saw with the glasses were excellent:
Patterns: ‘My kind of normal is the white would stand out and make all the other colors difficult to see’
Shiny objects: ‘Usually the gems are like looking at the sun, really bright and it hurts my eyes’
Corridor with fluorescent lights: ‘When I take the glasses off it is like a bad surprise for me, I need to close my eyes, everything is shining in my face and it hurts’
Outside on a bright day: ‘Everything is cool, it looks a lot better, without I can hardly see the leaves at all, never mind the detail on them’
After the 9 year old explained what her world had been like both mom and daughter cried with joy and relief and hugged. The girl said ‘I now understand what other people without Irlen Syndrome see, but it doesn’t feel normal to me because my normal hurts’.
Now she can experience:
A whole new world
Don’t you dare close your eyes
A hundred thousand things to see
Hold your breath – it gets better
I’m like a shooting star
I’ve come so far
I can’t go back to where I used to be
