SYRACUSE, Utah — When a child struggles to read, many parents may immediately wonder if dyslexia is the cause. But one Utah mother says her son's challenges stemmed from something entirely different, and finding the right diagnosis changed everything.
Now, seventh-grader Damian Jump heads to school with confidence, carrying notebooks filled with assignments and keeping up with his classmates, but just a few years ago, reading was a daily struggle.
"I didn't like it because I couldn't read," Damian recalled.
Damian's mother, Annica Jump, said she really noticed something was wrong in 2020. Despite being intelligent and capable, her son had trouble keeping his place on the page. He mixed up letters, skipped the ends of words, and often pointed to the wrong lines while reading.
"He's very intelligent," Annica said. "It would just frustrate me because he would read the word 'and' up here and then two lines down he's like 'are.' I was like, why are you being so difficult? You just read it."
Like many parents, she initially suspected dyslexia, but a friend's suggestion led them in a different direction.
"She said it could be an eye-tracking issue, and I thought, an eye-tracking issue? I didn't even know that was a thing," Annica said.
That recommendation led the family to Dr. Eldon McMurray, a former educator with a doctorate in reading and founder of Eyes Up Reading.
After evaluating Damian, McMurray said he quickly identified the problem.
"In Damian's case, what we saw was the eyes tracked at different speeds," he explained.
Annica said one of Damian's eyes would follow text for a moment, then suddenly make a looping movement instead of staying on the correct line.
To address the issue, Damian participated in exercises designed to help his eye muscles work together and coordinate their movements. According to McMurray, many children experiencing eye-tracking difficulties are unaware of the underlying problem.
"This is most often happening below their perceptual level, so they don't know there's a problem," McMurray said. "They've become annoyed with reading, frustrated by their parents. Expectations that all eyes do the same thing, and that is not the case."
The family says the results were dramatic.
Not long after he began treatment, Damian read with more confidence, and his reading level began climbing well beyond his grade level.
"Now, if the teacher needs me to read something, I can just read it with ease," Damian said. "I don't struggle to read it."
Today, Annica works as a reading coach and hopes sharing her son's experience will help other families consider additional possibilities when a child is struggling.
"He knew how frustrating it was to not be able to read," she said. "And he wanted other kids to not feel like they were the only ones struggling with it. And it's not to do with your intelligence."
For the Jump family, their message to families facing similar challenges is to not rush into the next chapter. Progress happens one page at a time.
