Vision therapy? How to help an early reader who also cannot track?

[peacefully]

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[sbgrace]

We did vision therapy. You might call the office two hours away and see if they can work with you (you doing a lot at home and maybe going once a month). Something has to be better than nothing. I feel all my son's progress happened at home during our assigned practice.

[Twinmom]

If you cross-post this on the special needs board, you will get a lot of responses! This is a common topic there and there are folks with good experience in the area both personally and professionally who can give you great advice! It is there that I first learned enough to identify my own DD's visual processing disorder/SPD and how to deal with it.

 

For us, VT was invaluable. We sucked it up and did the 3 hour round trip to VT in another city 3x a week for 3 months, and boy did it pay off! She gained 2+ years in reading ability in during that summer of intensive work! For us, it was worth every penny and every sacrifice we had to make. Of course, not everyone is in a financial position or family situation that could handle it the way that we did, but if you can I'd encourage you to do so.

 

For tracking, you might consider making a cut-out window in a sheet of paper so that the only thing your child sees while reading is the line visible in the window. Not a cure-all, but it helps! Also, you can place a piece of paper directly below the line you are reading and that will help him keep his place. For my DD, tracking did not resolve until after VT, but we could help her along with these tools so she could at least manage to get through a paragraph without tears.

 

A few resources that may help, no matter which way you go with it:

 

http://www.covd.org

Perhaps there is another dev. opt. closer to you? Someone who can work with you on developing a good at-home program? See if you can find another doctor on this site.

 

http://www.diannecraft.com/

Dianne is a former special ed teacher who has a lot of terrific information and practical helps for kiddos with learning disabilities/visual issues etc. and whose goal is to help parents become their child's own "therapist," so to speak. You can order books, CDs, tools, vitamins, etc. from her site to help with both visual processing and SPD.

 

Best of luck...I know how hard this can be on Mommy! :grouphug:

[Laurie]

I took my dd to find out about vision therapy for tracking issues several years ago. FWIW, I didn't see anything at the initial exam that looked any different than what our regular opthalmologist did. I also was not impressed with what seemed to be a lot of secrecy surrounding some computer program that we would eventually be doing at home...no details were forthcoming about cost, time, how many follow up appointments might be required, etc. And of course we would have to come in and pay for another office visit before we would get any of this information. We didn't go back.

 

The vision therapy optometrist did tell me that the best tracking exercise is to use string to hang a ping pong ball from a doorway and have the child watch it swing back and forth. She also said to do maze workbooks.

 

There's a website with free vision exercises, including tracking, that you could try at home:

http://www.eyecanlearn.com

[FO4UR]

I took my ds7 in to see a dev.opt. and she did a full evaluation on him, explained it all to me. Then, sent us home with an armful of paper-based therapy to do at home.

 

She said he was too young for some of the therapies she does, but to come back at about age 8 if he's still struggling, or gets easily fatigued reading.

 

He's improving, but REALLY must have a clean white page with bold black letters in large print in order to feel comfy reading.

[Guest]

I agree that despite the inconvenience of a long trip for vision therapy, if you find a good practitioner it will be well worth every minute of driving and time away from other things. A good practitioner will give you some intensive therapy at the beginning and then help you set up to do a lot of it at home, coming in to the therapist less frequently but perhaps for longer to show you the exercises.

 

My daughter went through two rounds of therapy, one exclusively paper-and-pencil-based and one sports vision therapy -- the kind that uses the hanging balls, rocking balance boards, beanbags, folding and tearing paper, doing various body exercises in combination with focus exercises around the room. The first was basically worthless in her case. The second did the trick.

[Jana]

The New York Times had an article on vision therapy. I found it very informative.

[Laurie4b]

Ds5 is reading at about a second- to third-grade level when I point at the text for him while he reads aloud. He cannot really track text on his own. When he tries to use his own finger, he skips words, loses his place in the line, skips lines on the page, then gets so flustered that he can barely read the words anymore. When I point at the text for him, he totally reads fluently, with great comprehension and sometimes even some dramatic flair. He would love to read independently, but he is so frustrated that he absolutely won't read outside of our special read-aloud time.

 

We have seen a developmental optometrist, but he doesn't offer vision therapy in his office. The closest office that does VT is over two hours away. We also see an OT for ds' SPD issues, but her suggestions for ds' vision are not that helpful.

 

I wish I knew how to help my kid. It's like one part of his brain is totally ready to read, but it's getting roadblocked by this other part that is not wired in an organized way. I'd really love to hear any suggestions by anyone who has gone down this road. Thank you!

 

The OT may help his tracking issues even if what she gives you for vision isn't working. My ds had "the most severe tracking issues" the OT had ever seen and the optometrist (not a vision therapy one) agreed it was severe. After really good OT for sensory processing disorder, his tracking was "almost normal." We eventually went the vision therapy route and despite supposedly testing perfectly in the office by the end of VT, it made no difference at all in my ds's ability to read without dropping words, etc. I think for my ds it is related to ADHD.

 

Before driving hours for VT, I would try a simple notched notecard, or make a view finder with a piece of cardstock where only one line is visible at a time.

[kalanamak]

Ds5 is reading !

 

I lean towards what Laurie and 3blessingmom said. 5 is rather young. After a bit of a kerfuffle because my son would cover one eye to read, I had him evaluated and given a few home exercises (which we never did) and simple magnifiers. That worked fine for us. And a little time.

 

5 is rather young (I repeat), and while there is a vocal following of vision therapy people, much of it, I suspect is "entertaining the patient until nature invokes a cure". A web search 2 years back failed to turn up any double blind studies about improvement with therapy vs. sham therapy.

 

I also wasn't interested in joining what was happening to all my son's little play-chums....each and every one had diagnosis of some sort, which was worried over and take for treatment, etc. Once I knew his eyes both saw, I relaxed. 5 is young...

[Dobela]

I lean towards what Laurie and 3blessingmom said. 5 is rather young. After a bit of a kerfuffle because my son would cover one eye to read, I had him evaluated and given a few home exercises (which we never did) and simple magnifiers. That worked fine for us. And a little time.

 

5 is rather young (I repeat), and while there is a vocal following of vision therapy people, much of it, I suspect is "entertaining the patient until nature invokes a cure". A web search 2 years back failed to turn up any double blind studies about improvement with therapy vs. sham therapy.

 

I also wasn't interested in joining what was happening to all my son's little play-chums....each and every one had diagnosis of some sort, which was worried over and take for treatment, etc. Once I knew his eyes both saw, I relaxed. 5 is young...

My son is dramatically different and I believe it is from vision therapy. In the year now of therapy he has gone up 2 grade levels,his confidence has increased,he is playing ball sports forthe first time, and more. While regular opthamologists and optometrists kept telling me he had 20/20 vision, he couldn't read, couldn't do horizontal and vertical math proboems on the same page, and more. His was mostly a tracking issue, with some other problems like depth, convergence,and so on. I wish that we had found the VT sooner and that we could have corrected this before we lost so much ground academically and self esteem wise. I have said it before, and it is true - if I had to work 2 night jobs to get him VT, I would.

 

Two years in OT didn't help. The OT also told me that she didn't have enough background in serious visual tracking problems to help. We did the notched cards, we did the academics orally, we enlarged the papers so he could see them better, we tried colored overlays... but he was just getting further behind and we were all becoming more frustrated.

 

Our initial evaluation was 3 hours long. It began with a regular eye exam to make certain there were no other eye issues like astigmitism and so on. Then the VT part began. It confirmed what I was describing - that his eyes were tracking separately and that the brain would switch from one to the other eye trying to make sense of what it was seeing. We also found out that he wasn't seeing in 3D all the time. He couldn't move his eyes to track without moving his head as well.

 

That is where I would ask the VT if you could visit occassionally. In the early days of VT, the therapy was very involved. He came home exhausted and with homework. Even though he has 20/20 vision, he was prescribed glasses witht he smallest Rx available to help his eyes work together. The therapy involved fun activities while wearing prisms and other special eye gear. The homework involved activities called Secades, Ann Arbors, and the morrow (sp?) walk among other activities just to work on tracking. We often spent 30 minutes a day just doing vision homework. This same VT does have some children that only come every 2 weeks or once a month from further distances (we have 4 VT in our state so most people are not near one). She works hard with them when they come visit, assess any changes, and send them home with homework. If the parents work hard and are diligent, they can see some serious changes that way. Fortunately we live a few miles away and insurance pays for the visits so we have always been able to go weekly.

 

5 yo is not too young to begin. VT can begin in infancy if it is needed. The younger the child, the easier it is to catch and correct. My dd just turned 3, was born at 26 weeks and had Retinopathy of Prematurity. She will begin VT in a few weeks as she is showing early signs of stabisimis. My son began at 8 yo and I so wish he could have begun sooner.

[Susan in KY]

Ds5 is reading at about a second- to third-grade level when I point at the text for him while he reads aloud. He cannot really track text on his own. When he tries to use his own finger, he skips words, loses his place in the line, skips lines on the page, then gets so flustered that he can barely read the words anymore. When I point at the text for him, he totally reads fluently, with great comprehension and sometimes even some dramatic flair. He would love to read independently, but he is so frustrated that he absolutely won't read outside of our special read-aloud time.

 

We had the same scenario with my ds. He was reading-ready very early, but when we tried to read, he was only fine with very large font. As we moved on and the font became smaller, he said, "Why are the letters swimming across the page?" Poor fella.

 

I just backed off on the reading. We did lots of stories, books on tape, all sorts of other things, and within 2 years he was reading just fine. Now he reads just about anything. Sometimes very small font bothers him, but he can keep his place with a finger on the page.

[nrg]

My husband is an optometrist and a fellow in the COVD. I would like to second the free exercises route. You could have your child do these, systematically and regularly, until you can get an idea of what is going on. Also, you will have made any progress you can without professional intervention. Then go go to the optometrist who specializes in visual development for an assessment and prescription.

 

Our oldest was told at a kindergarten screening, after reading all of the books in the waiting room aloud to the other children who were waiting, that he might never learn to read because he had NONE (visual, auditory, attention) of the requisite skills. We did backtrack and work through visual and auditory skills, sensory stuff, etc.

 

best wishes

[peacefully]

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[ElizabethB]

You could also try a cover card, here is the right way to do it (from my dyslexia page)

 

Again, I highly recommend "The Complete Handbook of Children's Reading Disorders" by Dr. Hilde L. Mosse for anyone with a dyslexic student. For each type of reading disorder, she includes explanations of the problem and also helpful tips and techniques for treatment. In her example of treatment of Linear Dyslexia with a cover card, she talks about how the use of a card below the line, while often used, is actually not the best method of treatment. Instead, she explains:

 

A folded piece of paper or, much better, an unlined card should be held above the line the child is reading, not beneath it. This is the so-called Cover Card Method of treating Linear Dyslexia. The reason for this position of the card is that it can steady the eyes, which have a tendency to wander above and not below the line being read, and it can connect the end of one line with the beginning of the next, thus indicating the return sweep and making it easier on the child's eyes. By blotting out all the text that has just been read, the cover card helps the child to concentrate on just that one line he is reading. By holding the card at a slant with the left corner slightly lower than the right, and by pushing it down while he reads, the child steadies his gaze and at the same time pushes his eyes from left to right and down via a correct return sweep from one line to the next. This is by far the simplest, cheapest, and most effective treatment for Linear Dyslexia.

[mum]

I have dd10 with the same tracking issues, apparently muscles that work to bring the eyes together to focus are weak. She was prescribed certain glasses that take the strain off her eyes and they sure do help. We couldn't do the VT, not compliant enough.

[Twinmom]

http://www.children-special-needs.org/vision_therapy/vision_therapy_books.html

 

Try this link for a list of books related to VT. Best of luck!

[peacefully]

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