Further uninformed thoughts on Dash's vision

 Continuing the story from here, if you missed it before.

I always thought so long as you were reading you'd be okay. (You being anyone, in elementary school, to make any sort of decent progress.) It never ocurred to me that reading itself might be a hurdle. We had books in the house, we read stories every night, we visited the library; I was pretty confident that some time between four and seven, the reading would just happen.

I have no memory of learning to read, I just remember shouting out all the road signs from the back seat and reading the cereal box from an early age. So all this faltering and halting progress was new to me; but he's a boy, I thought, and he's not me, I thought, and he's his own person and clearly more interested in running and jumping and taking things apart and thinking about how things work and what stuff they're made of than I ever was. I still think that.

Dyslexia is a recognised thing. (I don't think he has dyslexia.) But how many other similar, lesser, learning/vision difficulties are there, and when does it become just searching for new ways to say "Well, he's a slow learner;" or is there really no such thing as a slow learner, just children with undiagnosed vision problems? Conversely, are we just trying to put names and explanations (and excuses, maybe) on things that don't really call for it?

Will it all turn out fine in the end? Probably. But this is one of those in-between points where you can't tell whether it's a vital decision that you're about to make or if it really won't make any difference. Short-term, long-term: I know he'll be fine in the end, but I'd really like something that makes second-grade homework less of a pain for all of us than kindergarten and first-grade homework was, especially as I know the stakes are higher and the expectations greater next year.

And then I think "For heaven's sake, it's second grade. I don't remember learning anything in second class." On the other hand, I could read pretty well by then. On the other other hand, that was in another country, and besides, those days are dead and gone (and with O'Leary in the grave). And then sometimes I think that maybe everyone here and now is far too focused on getting your kids into "a good school" (that means university) and the notion that you can't get a decent job without at least a graduate degree; then again, people are also agreeing that degrees are devalued when everyone has one, and there's a glut of PhDs out there with no jobs to go into, and that if he becomes an electrician he'll never be stuck for work...

It's all hypothetical until I know what we're talking about, which we will find out on Friday at our meeting. Assuming that we trust the professionals, that we feel like they speak the truth and that their methods are good, then we will listen to what they have to say and make decisions about what, if anything, we should do to help Dash with his reading. I am eager to find out.