Eighty percent of everything a child learns is acquired through his or her visual system. According to the American Optometric Association, about sixteen percent of all children suffer from inadequate visual skills and up to ninety-four percent of children with reading problems have reduced visual skills.

If your child exhibits any of the following behaviors, he or she may be suffering from a problem with convergence and/or adequate visual function and/or visual perception. These visual problems can contribute to learning disabilities or, in some cases, can be mistaken or misdiagnosed as learning disabilities.

Danger Signs to Look for:

• Seems bright, but struggles with reading.
• Fatigues quickly when reading, with frequent signs of frustration.
• Is unable to sit still; cannot stay on task for any length of time.
• Reverses words, numbers or letters.
• Has difficulty remembering spelling words.
• Is disorganized and frustrated when studying visual information.
• Frequently loses his place, skips words or whole lines of text.
• Has poor reading comprehension.
• Has difficulty copying from the board or a book, has sloppy handwriting.
• Medication or tutoring has not been successful in improving school performance.
• Has been labeled LD (learning disabilities), ADD, ADHD, or dyslexic.

Eyesight is simply the ability to see something clearly, the so-called 20/20 eyesight (as measured in a standard eye examination with a Snellen chart). Vision goes beyond eyesight and can best be defined as the understanding of what is seen. Vision involves the ability to take incoming visual information, process that information and obtain meaning from it.

Vision is learned behavior therefore vision is trainable. If a child does not possess the necessary visual skills, he can be taught to possess them through the proper vision therapy techniques.

A child learns to see just like he learns to walk and talk. When learning to walk and talk, he has the added opportunity of imitating his parents and siblings. In addition, parents can observe their children to determine if walking and talking are developing properly. Vision development, however, generally proceeds without much concerned awareness on the part of parents. Because of these differences in development, no two people see exactly alike.

Adequate Vision Is Critical to Learning

Since something like 75% to 90% of all a child learns comes to him via the visual pathways, it stands to reason that if there is any interference in those pathways, a child will not develop to his maximum potential.

Children with Persistent Problems - Checklist

Here are signs of possible vision problems requiring further evaluation:

• Complains of headaches, pain around the eyes, dizziness or nausea
• Complains of itching or burning of their eyes and possibly excessive tearing
• Looks tired, with red, irritated eyes
• Has red eyes with debris in the corners or on the lashes
• Has allergies
• Have these complaints after reading

Vision and Learning

Take the exercise requiring you to name a number that comes three before 97. The task draws on the ability to visualize a sequence in your brain -- a skill that begins developing in infancy when the eyes first receive images and becomes more sophisticated the more one learns and experiences.

This task of "visual thinking" is critical in reading, learning, and navigating the world. Children who are early successes in school and reading are kids who use visual thinking to remember the look of words.

But children with problems learning to read may not have developed that skill yet. Instead of visualizing a word in their brain -- for instance, the word "because" -- some children may use a different part of their brain to hear the word. Consequently, they are liable to spell it the way it sounds and may not recognize it when it is spelled correctly.

The eyes are critical in overall development of physical and motor skills that allow us to move and react appropriately in response to the world around us.

For this reason, the failure to develop visual thinking may be at the root of problems experienced by children with attention deficit disorder. Lacking a highly developed ability to form visual images that allow them to think about and respond to all the stimuli in their environment, they are easily overwhelmed and may never master the "multitasking" skills that adult life demands.