I feel so stupid for not getting this checked earlier.
In June 2011 my older son's Connecticut behavioral optometrist said his reading prescription eyeglasses were fine. In March 2012 when my son complained they hurt to see through and that he didn't need any glasses to read I listened and didn't get him rechecked. After all, it had not been a full year yet, but he was 14 and going through a huge growth spurt. That is the same time he increased his screen time playing apps on the Kindle Fire and more time on the computer than ever before. He stopped reading books for fun. I thought the reason for not reading was he was busy playing video game apps. The eye change happened near the end of his neurofeedback therapy, leading us to think that the neurofeedback may have helped cure him of the problem.
In fall 2012 he complained about reading textbooks and small font books during homeschool lessons. He actually fell asleep while reading multiple times a week, in the morning even. In November I got his eyes checked at the regular optometrist's office and they said he was fine and did not need glasses. The reading challenges continued with him falling asleep while reading, feeling tired, reading slowly, and getting headaches. After younger son's runaround for eyeglasses then doing great with his first ever reading eyeglasses I made an appointment for my older son.
My older son was just deemed cured from the issues with convergence insufficiency (eye tracking visual processing problem) by our new pediatric optician in Texas. When the eyes relax they both go outward so to bring them in to read and focus in close takes extra muscluar effort that can tire the eyes. His asigmatism is gone so the old prescription glasses with that correction cause his eyes to "hurt" when he looks through them. He is having close focus eye strain. So, he is getting new prescription glasses to ease the eye strain.
I can't wait to see how this can positively help his learning.
My son is angry. He feels defective and resents having to wear reading glasses. I am sorry he feels badly about himself but since I started wearing eyeglasses for distance at age seven and endured years of bullying in school until the day I got contacts at age 15 I have little sympathy for this homeschool kid who has never been bullied over glasses and only needs the glasses for close reading work. Gee whiz, it's no big deal to need glasses for reading, it's nothing like having to wear them all the time to just see basic stuff, believe me.