Do you see a rabbit or a duck? The speed in which you can flip between the two images says a lot about your neural plasticity.
Not all of us see the same images
We get a book and we start reading. Has it ever occurred to you that some people do not see a page the same way you do? That their eyes move in all directions and therefore reading for them is not a joyful activity but rather a painful chore.
When I ask some of the children if they like to read stories, they often say: "Yes, if my mom reads them to me!".
In order to read the words, first we need to
1. see the words correctly! Then, we could go into
2. decoding the words, which leads to
3. understanding of the story. Only once this is achieved, can we
4. have fun and enjoy the story we read.
Let us show you how some people see
The below test exercise shows you a 'before and after' of a boy's reading through horizontally arranged visual symbols (just like letters in a book). You can see how he was going from left to right and then from right to left.
What would the words he reads look like? How would they be placed? It’s literally a chasing game with no beginning and no end. When this child reads a story, it will look something like this:
That is the reason that majority of children coming to us do not believe that they are ever going to be able to read or even enjoy the story books.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel!! Look at the same boy doing the same test a few months later! He finished the test in more than twice the speed and with no errors!
Luckily, the majority of the children who go through the whole process became happy and avid readers. They now enjoy the stories they read and are writing the success stories of their own lives.
It fills us with such pride when we see that these children are now having a good time and a much more positive outlook to their life.