By Michelle DeLiso
When Suzanne Licks's son Andrew was in second grade, he quickly fell behind in reading. Andrew skipped words, lost his place and made careless mistakes. "His teacher suggested classifying him with a learning disability," said Licks, a 41-year-old mother of three in Cranford, NJ.
But as an experienced teacher herself, Licks had an inkling that something else was going on. "Andrew is bright, and I knew in my heart as his mother and as a teacher that it wasn't a learning disability," she said.
A vision screening test using an eye chart revealed that Andrew had 20/20 eyesight, and a private evaluation confirmed Andrew had no other academic or learning difficulties. But Licks remained convinced that her son's eyesight needed a more thorough investigation, and so she sought the help of an eye doctor who specializes in children's vision, known as a developmental optometrist (sometimes also called a pediatric optometrist or behavioral optometrist). Turns out, it was just as Licks had suspected; Andrew had a (correctable) eye coordination problem which was at the root of his reading struggles.
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