Thanks - Irlen

Dear Mrs. Irlen,

I use my yellow overlay while I read. It helped me read and I really did improve in my reading too. Before my eyes would always hurt me and it not only helped me it also helped my whole family and they are also impressed in how it helped me I just want to say thank you.

Rosalinda Torres

Dear Dr. Helen Irlen,

Hi! My name is Elizabeth Diaz and I would like to congratulate you for the wonderful idea that you got to make the overlays that really help people to improve there reading and also all the colores that you made them in to. The one that I could read better with is the gray one because is like if the letter get bigger and dark. Now that I have a overlays I am so happy because now I could see the later better and my eyes don’t get tired any more and I don’t have to worry about the light that is to bright because with the overlays I could see the letters like if is dim. Well that is all I have to tell you Dr. Helen I hope you come out with other great idea and I wish you luck.

Elizabeth Diaz

Dear Mrs. Irlen,

I am thankful for the color sheets you made for us and I also want to tell you that you had made a wonderful job. I haven’t received one from my teacher but I already have one, I saw that my friend have one big piece and I told him if I could have a little piece and he gave me one, he gave me the perfect size for an small book. These sheets really help on a test, books and other things like math. I don’t know how you invent these plastic sheets I have no idea. These plastic sheets can help any one to read long books and our eyes don’t get tire so easily. When I show the plastic sheet to my dad he told me that it was so easy to read with them and you can see the letters more easy and highlighted. I just know how you did this because they work great to eyes.

Armando Garcia

Dear Mrs. Irlen,

Thanks for making those paper colors that could help us and other students in school see more better the words. It also helped all of Mrs. Holt’s class.

Sincerely,

Ricardo Navarro

Thank You!!!!!

This response submitted by Lauriel

It’s now been about 3 or 4 years since I first took my then 6th grade daughter to the Irlen Clinic in Ardmore, Oklahoma. After reading the book Reading By the Colors, I wasn’t surprised that she was diagnosed with SSS. I didn’t know if I dared dream that it would make a significant difference in her life, but I can say now, “YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!”. She has a very high I.Q., but we couldn’t understand why she hated to read so much and couldn’t spell. I was determined to find a way for her to over come this problem so that she could live up to her full potential.

Now she’s an 11th grader, after having skipped the 10th grade. She’s making 100’s in several of her classes and all A’s in the rest! She’s “caught up” to her reading level and has made magnificent strides in the way she perceives herself and her abilities. She sometimes wears her Irlen colored glasses (when she wants a “funky, cool” look) and at other times she wears her specially colored contact lenses. I have spread the word to anyone who is interested about Irlen Syndrome and what an incredible difference the color makes. I just wanted an opportunity to tell you how much I appreciate your research and your ongoing work.

I’m So Glad

This response submitted by Jeri Key Roberts

Thank you so much! I have been struggling with this for years and now finally I know that I’m not crazy and I’m not an idiot. I’ve been to many eye doctors that have told me that there is nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m just so glad to finally know that I can be corrected and that I can, once again, read without struggling.

Teacher and Grandmother

This response submitted by Joyce Harmon from Biloxi, MS

Thank you very much for this site. Until I read an article in Woman’s World, I only had a small bit of information that this even existed. I am a first grade teacher and a grandmother. I know first hand how this affects children and until now there was no one to turn to. I have been in contact with your Irlen Clinic in Atlanta. What a delightful, understanding, knowledgeable person. She is going to be testing my granddaughter at the end of the mother. I have printed all the information from your web site to present to my school district for consideration. Thank you so much for all the wonderful avenues you have opened.

10 Years Later

This response submitted by Arthur R. McCullough on 2/11/97.

I want to personally thank Helen Irlen who we saw on 60 minutes 10 years ago for making our lives more complete and satisfying. The discovery allowed my son to come from the bottom of his class in grammar school to the best recording technician and sound designer in Southern California at age 23.
Our oldest son age 25 has been able to become an outstanding Computer tech and network master because of his ability to read.
For the ophthalmologists who think they know everything about vision and where to find information. They should study the brain and realize that the problems of the SSS people are not caused by problems in the eye but in the Visual cortex of the brain.
In our family all 4 family members have SSS.
All of us ware different color lenses.

Art McCullough Escondido ,CA. rotryarm@electriciti.com

Absolute Believer

This response submitted by P. Klarich on 1/10/97.

My son was just diagnosed. He is 12 years old. I feel like we won the million dollar lottery now that this has been discovered. The overlays did not help him much because he is so severe. He has not yet received his glasses (he was tested on the 6th of January for lenses) but he wanted to take the tester lenses home and super glue them together and use those until his glasses arrived. What do you think……wouldn’t you be a believer. Some day I want to thank Helen Irlen personally, I hope I get the chance. My son has struggled forever in school and really felt that he was stupid. Now he knows he’s not! In fact, he is so severe that the testers wondered how he learned to read. He said because he got “breaks” in between his distortions and that when he would learn things. About 1 hour a day in total. He was a low B/C student. Imagine what he’ll be now. This stuff is the most exciting thing I’ve ever observed. Thanks goodness for Helen and her testers

Sincere Gratitude

Submitted by Michael George Michael, BA, BTh, MTh, MA(Hons), PhD(cand)

I felt that it was time to send a letter of sincere gratitude.

Some time ago I had reason to make an appointment to visit the Irlen Clinic in Sydney University, Australia, on account of great trouble that I was experiencing with reading. My ability to differentiate between letters (particularly m and n; c and s; v and u; j and i; a and e – just for example) began to deteriorate around 1987 and from then it progressively got worse. Some words would also join or “melt” into each other. I would literally spend hours each night trying to “re-education” myself by ploughing through dictionaries and teaching myself to picture the words as “drawings” rather than distinct letters or phonetic symbols. There is no need for me to go into detail; but for years this matter was terrible and debilitating – both physically and mentally. I managed, however, to complete tertiary studies. At the start of the thesis that I have just completed (I trust I have got the dating correct), the situation had become unbearable. By good fortune I heard of Irlen through a friend and made an appointment (with some skepticism I might add). But even after my first appointment, I felt that good progress had been made. Pam was exceptional and she soon came to the conclusion that it all had to do with my “inability/ability” to filter blue light and some sort of dyslexic disorder probably occasioned by “overload.” The clinic prescribed special lenses that were put into my reading glasses and I was also given blue diaphanous sheets to place over pages that I was reading if things got too difficult. These measures proved essential in the struggle to complete my study. I found an almost 75% improvement (though one cannot quantify such things). The problem has not completely left me, but there are times when I have little inconvenience, other times (especially when I am tired) I still struggle…almost always with the letters I mentioned above.

I just wanted to say thank you for being there; and if I can ever vouch for the clinic in any way, please do not hesitate to call upon me. If I have one suggestion, it would be that the Irlen Clinicsstops being such a well-kept secret and that the University of Sydney helps to make your precious work nationally known and accessible. It would be tragic if many people are not helped because they have not heard of you (and particularly when the “treatment” is so quick, so simple, and soeffective).