The
most important thing is
to discover that you are not
stupid and that you are worth
it...
A great number of students are dyslexic
and do not
even know it. Many of them are branded as lazy, rebellious or
poor students, but their real problem is that they cannot
visualise letters and numbers correctly.
LUIS
A. CHICOLUQUE
Many theories exist and numerous
studies have been carried out in an attempt
to explain why there is this difficulty in relating the spoken
and written word. A dyslexic person is an individual who has difficulties
reading, copying and understanding letters and numbers.
Many times they
are viewed as lazy though intelligent people, and
it is thought that they just do not
feel like working. Nothing could be further from the truth. They
are also classified as having behavioural problems, but the
truth is that they are unable
to master the written word.
Many of them are incapable
of explaining
to anyone what is wrong because they have never seen what others
see.
Gael Pascual is 15 years old and has already
quit school. Since
he did not
achieve the expected results, his
teachers labelled
him as lazy and unruly. They placed
him in a new class in order to give him additional educational
support but he ended up in the back row doing nothing.
“The only thing they would tell me”, this
young man states, “was: You
can do it, you are not stupid”. “They
would tell me that but they would not
help me when I told them that the words wobbled". Gael has
never read a book in his life.
For days now he feels like a different
person. A new pair of glasses
now allow him to read. Deeply moved, he asked his family:
“Can I go back to school now?” Gael loves football
and will read Marca (a Spanish
football newspaper) whenever he can.
For Paloma Solé, a third year ESO
student (compulsory secondary education),
reading was short of torture and taking examinations was even
worse. A teacher noticed the irregularities in her reading and
writing and discussed the possibility that she might be dyslexic
with her parents. Paloma would spend hours and hours studying
and even then she was not
able to understand things.
“She went to an educational psychologist
and improved a fair amount but she did not
achieve the results she wanted at school",
her father Josep Solé says. Since she
has been using these new glasses she can read
with ease. “Now I'm reading Memoirs of a Geisha, which
was a goal I had pending”, Paloma comments.
Find
out more
OOPTOMETRIST. An optometrist is
a person that measures visual acuity
in order to correct visual defects with lenses.
CHROMAGEN LENSES. Corrective lenses that
balance the entry of light into
the eye. They cost €460 (not including
VAT). It only takes a few minutes to find out which lenses are
the ones you need for your dyslexia.
THE COMPANY. ChromaGen Spain is the company
responsible for selling
the lenses in Spain. For further
information please write to the following address: Calle Castillo
de Peñafiel 1, 28692 Villafranca del
Castillo, MADRID, call (00 34)
91 815 28 14 or write to the following e-mail
address: info@chromagen-spain.com. You can also consult our website:
http://www.chromagen-international.com
Caused
by an imbalance in light capture through
the eye
These problems are commonly
related to Educational Psychology instead of Optometry. Nicole
King is the mother of a girl with dyslexia. After having spent
a fortune in search of a solution to her daughter's problem, she
has finally found it - Chromagen lenses.
She tells us:
"My daughter's problem is purely
physical, i.e. it has to do with a
simple imbalance in the way light is captured by the eye,
which results in a distorted message being sent to the brain.
Although this may not always be the
cause of dyslexia, it
is in the large majority of cases.”
For her daughter Ashley
the use of these glasses has resulted in a
marked improvement, and she is confident
that they could help many others with visual problems. For Ashley
this has been an important discovery in her life;
since she has started using the glasses she has started
to read. “Now I can read, and I have
already read six books”, this young
girl says.
Chaaban Zeidan
Chaaban Zeidan is an optometrist who has
spent many years studying how to help
people with dyslexia. He is a pioneer in the application of techniques
involving Chromagen lenses. According to him
the main difficulty lies
in the correct definition of the problem and in adequate treatment
methods.
