http://www.acadianeyes.com/index.htm That's the website for the VT place we were at. Not much info to be had off of it to figure stuff out.

I know I make myself sound like not a good mother when I say this, but I have no idea what qualifications this person has. She did the testing and the tallying for the 'dyslexic' testing and didn't seem to know much about what she was doing (Do half the test and realize she was doing it wrong), saying "ax" rather than ask (part of our dialect in South Louisiana, but still...in testing, you should say it correctly). And again..she didn't get much VT in..mostly just dyslexia testing after the initial nystagmus and convergance diagnosis. We have paid for nothing at this point. They filed with our insurance and we have heard nothing back. The 'dyslexic testing' will cost I THINK $175 a visit (I think we had 3 or 4), the VT visits are just $45 (I think maybe we had 2 of those). The initial 3 visits we had (before christmas) are significantly more money b/c we met with the doctor. They haven't actually charged me for anything yet. I know we are several hundred dollars into this doctor though. :(

Well really..she hasn't. We can't get enough appointments in to make progress. When we do get appointments in, they are dyslexic testing. I DID call another VT in my state (1.5 hours away) and she said this doctor is not VT specialized (she knows of him) and even worse...should not be diagnosing dyslexia (as you guys said). I told her (I talked to the doctor herself even) some of what was going on and she is dumbfounded at what we are dealing with. *sigh* I hate it that I made the decision to bring her who I did and it was wrong. Lots of money down the drain. Lots of time wasted. We are visiting the new doctor on Monday. Let's hope it goes better.

I've been calling every day to reschedule. She's still out of the office (third day now). I don't know...they said that they were also able to diagnose dyslexia? I'm actually not so sure that the girl that is doing all of this is anything other than a nurse or PA. She's not 'Dr. Anybody'. We just call her by her name. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Ugh. There is no other VT's close to here. I have to drive an hour and a half away to get to another one.

My dd has been getting tested for Dyslexia for "5 weeks" now. She still gets her VT sessions in, but they are also testing her after the VT work. We missed one day b/c my daughter was sick. The VT had to cancel her 2nd apt yesterday. She's out today. The receptionist said "We'll just continue next week as normal." NO, that's not what I want. This disrupts our weekly schedule like you wouldn't believe. I need the Dyslexia testing to be DONE. I need to know what I'm dealing with here, not to mention, my daughter does not like the testing so she constantly has it hanging over her head. Last week, she got the VT but not the testing. They were running behind. It usually takes 30 minutes so I scheduled an emergency appointment with an orthopedic a hour after her appointment. They were a half an hour behind so they couldn't get all her work done. :( I'm very very annoyed right now. I know people get sick...but 3 visits (in the last 4 weeks!) have been disrupted b/c of them 'getting sick' or being late. I'm ready to have answers, for our appointments to get back to normal, and for our weekly schedule to get back to normal. UGH Sorry..just venting. UPDATE: Update: She was not diagnosed correctly (she does NOT have nystagmus). After hours at the eye institute today, we find that she has Convergence Insufficiency (pretty bad)...double vision and sometimes quadruple (horizontal and vertical). Her eye muscle test tested her at a 5 year old level meaning that she has a VERY hard time reading more than at a 5 year old level. Same with spelling (requiring visual memorization of which she has none according to the tests). She was diagnosed with 5 disorders today...all of which make it nearly impossible for her to read and spell and comprehend (when being read to) anywhere close to grade level. Most disturbingly, she has deficiency in ALL of her primitive reflexes. Read about that here: http://visionandlearning.org/blog/?tag=behavioral-optometry and http://drdanechiro.com/custom_content/c_148348_primitive_reflexes.html It explains SOOOO much about her...about her little quirks that she has. WOW. The doctor..without talking to me at all, described Raelee like she knew her all her life. Things like not wearing jeans, hair bands, jewelry, socks, shoes, scared of loud noises, carsick, etc. Those are all tied to primitive reflex problems. The reflex problems have to be fixed before the vision problems. She will go through occupational therapy first, then vision therapy for the other problems. I am MUCH more happy with this place I am bringing her now. I have charts, books, etc all describing her problems. I have a money breakdown, I have paperwork to send to insurance company, I have a time frame, etc. Thank you guys SOOO much for helping me through this!!

Gosh I hope they are not taking away the private option!!!

Does anybody else not know how many towels you have per person? I honestly have NO idea. I would guess we have about 25-30 towels between 3 people. LOL

Can't help you..but I had to tell you a funny story. We call those "one of those". Even to this day, my 7 year old calls them that. Her and her papa used to play catch with them when she was probably 2. She asked her papa what it was. He said "Oh, I don't know. It's one of those." So now, it's a big joke...playing catch with 'one of those.' LOL

How the heck do I organize this stuff? My 7 year old is very much a crafty girl. Her stuff is taking over my closet though..and not in a neat way. We are overflowing with puff balls, craft sticks, paints, pipe cleaners, pearler beads, mosaic tiles, etc. How the heck do I organize it all so that she can easily access it and try to keep it neat? It's just really all thrown into my hs closet right now. NOT FUN! Thanks Stephenie

I'm not going to get any extra funding or anything. I'm just looking for help with her. I think I'll stay where I'm at for a while and see what happens. The test was just bizarre to me in the way they went about doing it. Stephenie

They started the dyslexic testing at VT today. It was a mixed bag how I think it went... First off, the tester had a very thick cajun accent. She asked my dd to spell "ax". Raelee wrote down ax. She then told her she would use it in a sentence: "I will ax you a question." :lol: I had to clarify for my dd what word she meant. Anyway, she had her read through a list of words. My dd read the list up to the third grade level (she's 7 and in second and far from reading 3rd grade material). It's when it's in context that she starts guessing the words rather than reading them. I guess that could be the Nystagmus that does that. I don't know. I explained to the doc that she has a lot of problems with words in context. We shall see what they say. She also had a TON of problems if given a list of letters or numbers and circling the backwards ones. She just couldn't distinguish which ones were backwards. I don't know what they will say...I'm sure I'll hear more next week. We got sent home with some color discrimination homework for us to do.

I was in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and France in this last year and the only countries they had those in were Indonesia, Sing, and Malaysia. They are disgusting!! Stephenie

The VT diagnosed my daughter as having convergence insufficiency and Nystagmus. We are going through further testing next week and starting VT weekly. I didn't think to ask the doctor what to do about phonics, handwriting, etc in the meantime. Do I keep working with her on that, or wait and get some progress under our belts? The VT will also test for dyslexia in a few weeks. He suspects she has that also. Thank you guys for all of your help Stephenie

I got my 7 year old DD a laptop for Christmas..well Santa did. The reason she got it is because she has family all over the world (grandparents live in Singapore and in Oregon. We are in Louisiana). She skypes with them daily. She takes the computer to her room and they color, read together, and just chat. She was using my Macbook. She is very careful with it, but it still scares me. My macbook was very expensive. I got her a cheap laptop out of self preservation..lol She also has an ipod touch. I didn't buy it for her though. I upgraded to an iphone and she got my touch. Last year, she got a dirtbike from her daddy. She has spent the last year learning to ride and is very very good at it. It's a family activity for us. I also let her spend her $150 she got from family for Christmas at the american girl store. All of it. Not put half in savings, etc. I think a gift is a gift...buy what you want with it. She has no need to save at this time. I will teach her that when she grows up a bit. I wouldn't call us a materialistic family, but we (DD and I) are definitely gadget oriented. I can afford to get stuff for her...so I do (within reason). She will NOT be getting a phone (anytime soon anyway), I will not buy her a new car at 16...etc. Bad thing is...all of her super close friends are in families with 3 + kids and are on TIGHT budgets (military salary)...so my DD is the only one in her group blessed like this. So, when my DD simply tells her friends about her laptop, I think it'll be received as bragging. She isn't bragging, just excited about her gift. I don't quite know what to do about it. We have had issues with this in the past too. If she got a new AG doll, she was excited about it and wanted to tell her friends....they told her she was bragging. Saying "I got a new AG doll" one time isn't bragging. Like I said, not sure what to do about it.

It could be nystagmus although it doesn't look as severe as it reads online? I don't know. My head is spinning. :001_huh:

I came out with a lot of information and not enough at the same time..lol She has some pretty significant problems with her eyes jumping when she is looking left to right. He stated that typically children with this problem only have one eye that does it, but she has both eyes doing it. Would account for reading problems (and I think by default spelling? I'm not sure) because her eyes just don't stay still. He explained that it isn't something you can SEE happening...it's an internal/brain thing? He will do more extensive testing on her on Dec. 28th. We will see where we stand then. At that point, he will also recommend Dyslexia testing once we see how extensive the jumping is. He also said she is good at math, because that's typically an up and down eye movement and she has no problems with that. He named this jumping problem...but I can't remember what it was so that i can research it further. Does anybody know what it is called? I'm exhausted (emotionally and physically). I'll write more when I remember it later. Thank you so much for leading me this direction!

I'm so glad you have answers. I have my daughter's VT appointment set up for tomorrow. I can't wait to find out what we learn with it. I'm almost hoping for a similar result to yours. It would clear up a lot of things for me..questions I have about DDs lack of progress!

I will respond to each one of you individually in a few minutes. I have a couple of specific questions first though. In the last few weeks, she has made a big improvement reading wise. She is still very slow and has to sound out at least one word in a sentence. For example the following sentence: Starting and nostrils hung her up. The only reason gorilla didn't is because the whole page was about a gorilla and had a picture. There was also a picture of nostrils but she didn't pick up on that. Being that I AM seeing slight (every so slight..lol) improvement over where she used to be, should I still persue this? Should I give it a few months and see if it's a maturity thing? I have been trying to teach her to read since she was 5. We were using explode the code and the reading lesson. We stopped explode the code b/c we hit a brick wall there in book 4. Since then, I have just been reading a lot with her. So I'm not so sure about the 'strong phonics program'. I have just been doing the best I can on my own. Not working obvoiusly. Yes, the cutting her eyes and spelling are still a huge concern with me. I started the AAS thinking that it would improve her phonics and reading also. It hasn't yet. I guess what I'm asking is that I'm seeing improvement...not much...but some...should I still go through with this or just wait until I see a complete downturn in her reading? Friends are telling me its a maturity thing. Ugh..what to do what to do.

We are using My Father's World Adventures this year. It has been wonderful for American History! We are about to start the States study and can't wait for that. :)

Ok, I got an appointment with a vision therapy doctor for Dec 14. The lady made a snide comment about my saying I just woke up (at 8:30) :glare: Anyway..have that ball rolling. We'll see what happens. She does do one thing with her eyes that has always bothered me. When she watches tv, her head is at a 90 degree angle to the tv and she cuts her eyes back to it. Imagine pointing your head over your shoulder and then cutting your eyes back over your chest. That's how she watches tv and has since she was very little. The eye doctor said nothing was wrong (I continue to have her vision checked..as I'm not convinced that there isn't something wrong).

Thank you SO much for your encouragement. I can do this! *deep breath* I'll call and make an apt with an eye doctor on that list (one pretty close to me..yay) today. One question though...can a dyslexic kid force themselves to read better in front of people? I was just thinking of this, anytime she reads in front of anybody but family (mainly peers), she does better and doesn't stumble and sound out quite as much. Same with my friend that is a special ed teacher that did a reading level on her. She didn't stumble as much. Is that possible?

This is who I would see to get a dx for dyslexia right? I'm close to NOLA...I may be needing her soon.

I posted this on the General board today. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228683 Was told to come here...so here I am. :) Where I am at now is very confused and overwhelmed and feeling like a total failure as a teacher to my daughter. I don't know where to begin to get her help. My school system isn't going to be any help..I know this already. I don't know whether or not to sit on it and watch it and try things to help her out...or whether or not to get her evaluated now. My problem is that I'm not consistent..I know this...it's a fault of mine. It's becoming painfully obvious at the moment. I don't stick with a schedule. I know that I should do 'x' on this day and 'y' on this day..every week. I don't. :( I make her read to me..books...at her level (very very easy) when I can, but she hates it so much, we don't do it near often enough. It frustrates both of us and usually ends up not so pleasant. I just don't know where to go from here. I know I need to alter some things...but with Christmas coming...i don't see much of a point at changing things much until after the first of the year. I really feel like a horrible teacher right now...ready to give it all up. HELP..I'm drowning.

We finished the first book of AAS and that's her spelling after her doing well with the program. No 'real life' improvement despite her 'getting it' during the lessons. Forget about copying...she just won't do it. I'm so frustrated. The kid is GOOD in math though (although...while i'm writing this, she wrote 12:05 rather than 12:50 for her time...rofl). She doesn't like it and fights me on it, but she is really good at it.

I've vented here before about my dd7's spelling and reading. She has trouble reading the most basic sentences with just words like "king, cane, come" etc. Just the same, she can't write those words. She wrote this today (It's a list) daer (b backwards)-bear stokeeking-stocking star-spelled correct stor-star (3 words after the correct star spelling) doe-(b backwards)-bow kandy kane arnuint-ornament Her reading is SO choppy..she has comprehension problems. She has to sound out most words, although, she IS getting better...but not hugely so. She finally got better at writing her numbers correctly, but still writes 1 (the 'formal' way..her choice to write it like that..lol), 4 and 5 backwards about 40% of the time. It used to be 100% backwards. She was able to memorize her addition facts but has quickly forgotten most of them. She can read a word correctly in on sentence and have to sound it out in the next....and sound it out incorrectly. I'm so frustrated. She was reading something so basic yesterday and just couldn't get it. I got mad at her...then got upset with myself. If she is having problems, I have nobody but myself to blame. My friends think I'm too worried about it...I think if she has a problem, she needs to get help sooner rather than later. Her father has dyslexia...that's fairly obvious even as an adult. Thanks for reading this. I need somebody to rest my fears or urge me to get her help. I don't know which way to go. Oh and if you read this: http://www.dys-add.com/symptoms.html The lists for "Reading and spelling", "Handwriting Dysgraphia", "Quality of Written work", and "Extremely messy bedrooms" (although, I'm a messy person by nature..this could be learned) describe my daughter word for word.