Fortunately we were given the opportunity for a free eye examination for a child, so we decided to take her along just incase she had vision problems. At our consultation with Mark, I was surprised by his diagnosis of mild dyslexia, but at the same time relieved that a professional so easily identified all of her problems and could provide a very logical sounding explanation for her 'slowness'. He seemed to know more about my child than I did, he knew straight away that she had been slow to walk, and had difficulty riding a bike etc.
For us as parents it was important to understand that our beautiful daughter wasn't 'slow' to write and finish her work as her teachers constantly labelled her. She worked soo hard at her reading, and had finally gotten herself to a 'reading age' according to teachers, but, in my opinion she wasn't reading fluently like her brother and sister had at that age. Yes, she could read and understand each individual word, but reading was a laborious task for her, and each work was thought about, stunted and slowed. Writing was even slower.
We went away with this diagnosis and took some time to mull this over and consider whether or not to follow up with Mark's recommended treatment. Never were we pushed into following a treatment, and this was appreciated. We were naturally a little skeptical as there was a sizeable financial commitment as well as the huge time commitment; however, we wanted our daughter to have the opportunity to learn at the same rate as her peers.
At all stages of the program Mark was friendly, knowledgeable and professional, he explained every step and stage to me in a simple detail that made logical sense, he included our daughter in these conversations and empowered her by making her confident and proud of herself.
Our daughter worked hard with her exercises and because a lot of them are timed, it was easy to track and see progress each day at home. Progress of a few seconds each day was exciting, and by the end of each week she was excited to report back to Mark and see what new exercises she could do the following week.
As Mark explained to us, it was in fact hard work for her eyes to focus from looking at an object on the wall, then back down to her page, and this was where her 'slowness' was, in each eye movement. It is no wonder simple tasks would take her so long!
With the combination of dramatically increasing her eye movement times and the self confidence gained through Marks praise, and realizing her own progress throughout this program, our daughter has gone from struggling to write a simple birthday card in half an hour to researching a writing one and a half page report all on her own. She has always loved to read, but now instead of hiding away in her room, and taking half an hour to read one page, she wants to read her books out loud to us, she is confident, can read aloud fluently and is a delight to listen to. Thank you so much Mark.
