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MichelleW
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Location: Oregon
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| Posted: July 17 2006 at 5:36pm | IP Logged
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Elizabeth mentioned this here and so I thought I'd ask: Does anyone have advice for a 9yo with these problems. My 9 yo ds is not yet reading. He struggles with math workbooks, but he is a whiz at adding and subtracting quickly (lousy at multiplication and division). He is a natural scientist (his life is a series of experiments), a perfectionist, a fine artist (when he can get past his perfectionism which is almost never). I am most concerned that he is still a non-reader.
Thanks,
Michelle
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ALmom
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| Posted: July 19 2006 at 12:34pm | IP Logged
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Michelle:
I don't know if I'm much help - but you could have been describing my dd at that age. I think I had an instinct that something just was not right and we had to figure out how to help her. I'm not for getting my dc labeled - but I am for finding out what is their particular challenge so we can adjust our schooling as needed and work on whatever we need to work on to help. You need to know the specific processing problems and whether or not they are related to eye muscle problems - a developmental optometrist should be able to help you with that. In our case, vision insurance and medical insurance at least pays for the testing and diagnosis.
Our particular path took us to a Developmental Optometrist - you can look at the website I referred Elizabeth to in an earlier part of this thread for some real detailed information. Our particular optometrist (and we drove 3 hours to get to him), tested near and far vision (she had 20/20 acuity) - but he also checked for eye movement control (hers was jerky but this is hard to see unless you know what you are looking for), for her ability to adjust from near to far and back, her ability to converge her eyes when being asked simple questions, and even her ability to cross the midline (she couldn't do things like jumping jacks or skip). Because of what he saw here, he referred us to his therapist upstairs for another 2 hours of testing. This caught a number of visual processing problems - I cannot remember them all now but there was a page full of them. I know visual closure, visual form, left/right and directionality and visual memory were all a part of this. There were others.
It was a relief to my dd. At the time, she thought I was crazy - there wasn't anything wrong with her eyes. However, when we had a diagnosis, she suddenly realized that she wasn't just "dumb". We never compared her nor did we push schoolish things - but she sensed that her friends were doing things that she wasn't even close to doing. I don't think she really noticed this until around 9 - but when we got her diagnosed she was just beginning to see this herself. Her friends were writing her letters in cursive that she couldn't read and she was still trying to get the basic letters facing the right way. Funny thing - the only letter she didn't write backwards were the b and d (but I had used a rhyme to teach it with the sound. The b is made with lips together in a straight line and the b begins with first the bat (straigt line) and then the ball, while d is first the little c (like an open mouth), then little d. Phonics was critical for her - but she couldn't read anything with small print (even your standard phonics readers). She finally got the cat, bat type reading with CHC program. It had them reading one line and she could handle that - no more, not even if the words were the same. She still sounded terribly stilted and it was far from something she liked to do.
For math, I noticed that she couldn't do math sheets - but if I rewrote a few of the problems very large and spread out on a page, she could do them fine - even the most difficult ones. Of course, orally, she seemed sharp as a whip! She would sometimes mix up numbers like 12 and 21, so I always had to look for visual mistakes when correcting papers to try and determine what was understanding difficulty and what was plain not seeing it correctly. Once we knew the vision problem, I simply gave her a handmade sheet of 5 problems to a page, high contrast, lots of space between problems. Anymore than 5 problems on a page and she couldn't do it at all. She also could not stay with close work very long - 5 minutes was her maximum ability to concentrate, literally! We discovered all this as we were still looking for a diagnosis and I was trying to figure out what worked and what did not with this child.
We found that our dd was suppressing (alternate eyes), so we suspected that close work was triggering/aggravating this. We dropped almost all school for that year of therapy, deciding that we would not play tug-of-war with her eyes. This was my gut instinct and not brought up by the therapists. I had one therapist, locally, that was a jewel and she supported me in this. I, of course, continued read alouds, and religion discussion and practice. However, we dropped any kind of formal English (reading, writing, or grammar, phonics, etc.) and we didn't do any assigned history or science (obviously nature walks and some of the read-alouds were historical fiction). I had very little written work - only the single math page with 5 problems. I did continue my homemade math sheet (5 problems to a page) but obviously we weren't making a lot of quick progress here (and I had many math manipulatives which she could play with). I did the written math more to meet the technical, legal requirements of my state.
We used red/green glasses and colorforms (only the red and green where she had to copy pictures she made from one side to the other alternating colors used) and things like this. I know the therapist used red and green legos with some of the lego fan older boys.
We also used a Marsden Ball (this was hung from the ceiling about armand distance from her nose). Laying on the floor with her head still and one eye patched ( alternating eyes patched, ie 10 - 20 swings with each eye) , she followed the ball (calling out numbers or letters written on it as it reached its borders) while we watched her eye movement. We started with just horizontal swings, then as eye movements were reliably smooth, we moved on in difficulty (from horizontal to vertical to diaganol to circles). You are looking for perfectly smooth movement of the eyes - no stops and starts, no jerks and definitely no drifting and no head shifting!. With her, we were sometimes instructed to do a little extra with one eye or the other. However, I did ask the therapist if this exercise would hurt anyone (ie we wanted to know if the others wanted to try it out, would it be safe). It was fine as long as both eyes were worked equally - ie if we did horizontal movement with the left eye patched, we needed to do it with the right eye patched as well for the same number of swings. I don't quite know why it works so well, but it really does help the dc make progress with eye muscle control! From there we did things like the Brock string, trying to teach her to converge her eyes. This was really hard for her and we struggled through this. However, by the time we had completed 36 sessions (2X per week with the therapist and everyday but Sunday with me), we all had noticed major changes, including her. She was excited about things she could do that we never even knew she couldn't do before. It was like seeing the world all over again.
Some of the specific processing exercises were on a computer at the therapists or using games. OUr house was plastered with various charts and exercises. I cannot remember all of them now - and many were specifically geared to her problem - and done only once an earlier skill was developed through other therapies.
Some of the common things we did: We used things like a balance beam (my dh made one), balls, that game that you have to race a timer to place all these shapes into their position before the thing pops up. We also played concentration a lot (she had visual memory problems). We also got those 3D books where there are hidden pictures to see. These involve a certain eye muscle control and using both eyes in order to see the hidden picture - and is how we figured out the rest of us had some sort of problem since we couldn't do these and the therapist had to give me a cheat sheet to know if dd was finding the pictures or not. The therapist also worked with lenses (obviosly this would need to be done with medical supervision) - alternately using plus and minus lenses while reading small words, etc. We did some exercises with peripheral vision, reading off a chart on the wall and some tracking exercises.
As soon as we finished therapy, we resumed school - only this time dd was drifting away from stuff as she was bored to tears. We actually did an informal assessment through St. Thomas Aquinas just to see spelling level, etc. I had not taught spelling at all for a whole year - and this child had been barely reading when we started therapy and certainly wasn't a top notch speller at that point, she was barely writing letters and then they were almost all backwards. She was several grade levels ahead of where we had left off, even though we hadn't done anything at all in most areas. All her reversals disappeared. I was floored as I really did expect we'd have to do some academic catch-up after the eyes were corrected. Obviously we hadn't gotten to a lot of concepts in Math, but she just breezed through that. Today she is my best reader and writer and loves Math. She'll be doing Algebra next year in the 9th and never has any trouble with it. Our biggest weakness is science - but that is more becasue I haven't taught science well to any of my dc - not because of vision problems. She doesn't have any residual problems now and we no longer do any therapy - but I do know that sleep and exercise are important. She might tend to drift back to these old habits if she were really, really sick. So far we have been very, very thankful that basically we don't see any processing problems anymore. These are trickier as sometimes therapy helps and sometimes not. I can only say I have never seen such a dramatic difference from such simple things in all my life and am very thankful that in our case with this child (and most of our dc with vision problems), the processing problems were corrected along with the eye muscle problems and there aren't any recurring difficulties. We are thankful that we found this optometrist and this therapist! I could not believe it when this child had to be fussed at for staying up, reading in bed till past 2 AM within about 3 months of finishing therapy. This was the child who disappeared like Houdini as soon as any kind of book appeared just 6 months before that!
I guess I probably should just say that if you are interested in real specifics, I can go look up records and all and you can certainly PM me. We've had so many slightly different processing problems with 5 of our 6 dc. I do have their therapy notebooks stored somewhere so I could retrace who did what for which problems - but I don't know if you have a specific diagnosis and you would want to work directly with someone who will work closely with you to taylor what you do for your specific dc. Therapy was expensive, but our therapist was a valuable collaborator in the process - she listened to my descriptions and my observations combined with her knowledge, and this meant the best possible work for my dc. This therapist really worked at making therapy as fun as possible - finding games on the market that would do the same thing and switched out activities frequently so this dd would not get bored with the same old stuff over and over - or discouraged (even if we were still working on the same skill, if the game was replaced with a new one building the same skill, then it wasn't as obvious to her that we were still working on the same old thing). She could also adjust based on interests - art was one of our dd interests so we used red/greeen glasses with lots of drawing using a red pencil, etc. and the colorforms and light bright. There were also specific activities on the computer and manually in the office and sometimes the therapist would pick up something I'd miss because she had experience with body posture tricks that these dc use to avoid working the eyes!
Janet
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LLMom
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| Posted: July 19 2006 at 7:01pm | IP Logged
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Michelle,
That describes my son who is 13. He was not reading much until he was almost 10 and he struggled until just a year ago.
The best math books for him are ones without any extra's; i.e. pictures, boarders, etc. Math U See works wonderfully for him. It very hands on which helps him.
For the visual processing, we have done 2 things. ONe is a booklet called Brain integration therapy by Dianne Craft. It has specific exercises to help with visual processing problems. We also got something called Brain Builder, which is a computer program that helps with digit span, both visual and auditory. I am not sure if these helped or if it was just time for him to learn to read but he is reading now.
The attention issues have been harder. I hate reminding him because it feels like nagging to both of us. Seton recommended a little timer with a beeper to just remind him to be on task. We haven't tried that yet. He does have a list he checks off for school work and chores. HTH.
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Lisa
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4Real Forums : Special Blessings
Topic: Visual Processing and Attention Issues
