Lisa was born 4 weeks prematurely. The sweetest little baby girl. She started to sit at 7 months, crawled late, walked late, and only talked at 3. She always wanted to be outside and loved animals more than people. She still does.

At the age of two I found her crawled into a cupboard when I went to pick her up from daycare. That was her little spot where she waited for me every day. She had chronic ear infections. She did not socialize well with the other children. Finding her there in a cupboard day after day was where I drew the line. That was it.

We came home. I quit my job, sold the car and got rid of the nanny. Lisa was our reason for starting home education.

By the age of nine reading was still a huge problem. Her concentration was close to zero. I had her evaluated at a reputable reading centre and I was told that her reading abilities was that of a 5 year old child!

I was starting to question my own abilities to home educate and my reasons for choosing home education. Was it maybe my fault that she wasn’t reading as she should have been reading by now? Was I to blame?

There were others signs that told me that this might be more than just a reading and concentrating thing. Lisa often didn’t follow through with daily tasks. She was forgetful. She was clumsy and had silly little falling accidents at ballet. She couldn’t catch a ball. She hated ball games.

Learning was difficult. I am a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with learning stuff a little bit later. But Lisa’s later was starting to become a little too late for me.

I was thinking Aspergers. I was thinking Ritalin. We needed professional help. I had to swallow my pride and admit that we had a problem.

I prayed. Oh boy did I pray. I waited for an answer. Peace. I wanted to have peace about any decision that we were about to take.

Mr. Leendert van Oostrum from the Pestalozzi Trust, the “father” of home education in our country (South Africa) who has dealt with all kinds of children and parents and learning abilities and difficulties. He asked me if she could read, write and do math. I said yes she could, but… everything is slow and there are other problems… I tried not to sound like a paranoid mother.

He suggested that we have her eyes tested first.

As Mr. Wagner was testing her eyes, even I could see that this was where our problem was. Her eyes were not focusing together. They were not working together. He explained to me that all learning takes place through the eyes. Eyesight affects not only how we perceive stuff around us, but also how we learn, how we walk, how we remember and even how we do ballet!

We started with in-house therapy once a week, and lots of eye exercises that we could do at home. For the next couple of weeks we actually didn’t do much home schooling but concentrated on her eye exercises. And I must admit there were days when we did absolutely nothing.

Today, after seven therapy sessions he evaluated her and asked me to write this testimony. Lisa’s eye tests are all within the normal ranges. In his words: her progress has been phenomenal!

And here’s the thing: she doesn’t need glasses and she is not going to need medication. Lisa does not have a diagnosis. My little girl is normal. All the Aspergers symptoms have disappeared. She doesn’t have silly falling accidents at ballet any more. Clumsiness and forgetfulness is something of the past! Well, we might have to work on obedience now instead of forgetfulness. My little girl has suddenly matured into this beautiful and confident little rose bud. She doesn’t struggle anymore and can suddenly DO THINGS!

I now often catch her reading on her own…

I want to encourage any parent who might think that their child is having learning difficulties, or concentration problems, or struggles with clumsiness, or even problems to catch a ball, to please have your child’s eyes tested first. This has made such a huge difference in our daughter’s life and learning abilities. It is just phenomenal!