Vision therapy - not done yet

I'm feeling a little disillusioned about vision therapy lately. Since the Great Leap Forward that happened around September, I haven't really seen much more advance with Dash's reading.

We are approaching the end of his originally scheduled sessions, but when he had an assessment last week the doctor said that his eye teaming was still not great, and added a few more to work on that specifically. I told her that his reading still seemed slower than I would have expected, and she admitted that when he did the Readalyzer test, his eyes were still hopping around the line rather than following the letters sequentially as you would expect.

When we started this, early last summer, I felt that the worst outcome would be if they "passed" him at the end of his allotted sessions, said that everything looked fine on paper, and yet we couldn't see any noticeable difference in his reading. I don't think that's going to happen - some of his numbers have definitely improved, and his reading level has definitely gone up a few notches; maybe I'm just asking for too much. Maybe I should be happy with where we are.

But then. A friend of his was in the house last week - a boy who I know is reading way above his grade level, so I shouldn't compare them at all. But he read the warning on the side of Dash's Beyblade arena (if you don't know, don't worry about it) just the way you or I would, fluently and conversationally, while Dash was still trying to get it together to focus on the first couple of words. It hit me, a little bit.

Reading isn't rocket science. Everyone can read. It's not hard. It shouldn't be this hard. For Dash, I can tell that it's a big effort. He's not lacking desire, or curiosity, or interest, or practice, and he's smart to boot. And yet, I heard him struggling over the word "house" last night as if he'd never seen it before. It's as if he has to start over remembering the rules and concentrating hard every time he cracks open a book.

I just want to know if it will always be that way.

Reading to his sister, which is definitely a first, so I shouldn't complain.