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As you know jym626 pointed us in the direction of vision therapy after we had a general evaluation for ADD and many of my son's poorer sub tests were in visual tasks.
I will just share with you some of the questions on the questionnaire we did at the Optometrist's office, which is used to screen for vsision therapy-related problems:
Afraid to catch a ball?
Afraid of heights?
Bad handwriting?
Motion/car sickness?
Rubs eyes, blinks excessively, red eyes?
Tired during or immed after reading?
Headaches?
Won't stay focused on homework, needs lots of help?
Can't do "word problems" (mental math) but can do numerical sums?
Moves head while reading?
Holds book close or at an angle?
Loses place easily, re-reads same line or skips line/word unknowingly?
Uses finger or bookmark to keep place while reading?
Both my sons have 20/20 vision.
Son #1 (horrid handwriting, forgetful, poor attention, uses finger) has mildly crossed eyes (you wouldn't notice it)... though he is able to "hold" them straight with effort. Every time he focuses from far to near or back, his eyes cross slightly, then straighten with effort. This just makes reading and focusing (visually & generally) quite tiring. Looking from teacher to desk is an effort each time and after a while can just make him disengage mentally. He has always been a decent reader but when wearing corrective glasses his speed & fluency went way up.
When I was filling out the questionnaire for son#1, I realized with horror that my litttle boy was a "yes" answer on many questions too, so I had him evaluated too.
Son#2: (has every problem above except he has good handwriting and is not afraid of heights) His problems are quite significant: his eyes do not move in a coordinated, smooth way across a page. As a result, he basically reads with one eye only-- and it is very jumpy & uncoordinated (but I guess this is easier than trying to coordinate 2 eyes that won't behave.) Oddly, his reading skills are above grade level and he got 10/10 correct on comprehension questions. So he is compensating-- just gets exhausted and cranky when he has to do this sort of work. When I saw what his eyes were doing (they have special goggles with sensors that track where your eyes are looking as you read) it was unbelieveable he can read at all. I wanted to cry for every time he has gotten frustrated during homework and I have been sharp with him thinking he was just being obstinate. Reading with his eyes would be like trying to thread a needle while drunk.
Both boys will do 12 weeks of specific eye exercizes, training the muscles--just like physical therapy would work for an arm muscle that needed it. Supposedly this is sufficient for most people.
The poor attention aspect of both my kids *can* have an ADD component as well; the question we had was to what extent is the vision the culprit, and to what extent is there an ADD issue? Before medicating, we wanted to try the vision therapy to see how much improvement could be achieved with it alone. If there is enough improvement, we can skip the medication.
I was absolutely shocked that nobody mentioned this at edpsych, school, etc. I am very grateful to jym626 and CC for pointing us in this direction.
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