Got a diagnosis (partial), so now what?

[cajunrose]

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

[AngieW in Texas]

My dd had convergence excess which caused double vision and eye suppression. She also had nystagmus, focusing issues, and a lot of difficulty with tracking moving objects and sweeping her eyes from side to side.

 

My dd also had dyseidetic dyslexia and visual processing issues on top of her visual efficiency issues.

 

I didn't stop working on reading during VT, but I didn't expect progress.

[PeterPan]

If you suspect dyslexia, maybe you'd like to make a change to an OG-family program like WRTR, SWR, AAS, Barton, or... One of the first things our VT doc asked when we went in was whether I was teaching her with an OG program. I assured her I was.

 

We got SUCH profound changes, but it took SO much work out of us. I would give yourself a little flexibility and grace. Maybe yours will be much easier? I don't know, maybe I have a bad kid. The whole process was hard, painful, tiring. I had to bribe her endlessly to do the exercises, because it made her eyes hurt so badly. That ISN'T the case with everyone. I'm just saying that IF it's yours, I'd cut yourself some slack. Take an early summer vacation, kwim? They wanted us to do 20-30 min. of VT homework a day. My dd could manage to stretch it to an hour and a half, I kid you not. But within a month we were seeing radical change. So any changes you do make, any cutbacks you make due to feeling overloaded, are OK.

 

Now for the good stuff! After 2 months of vision therapy, my dd started trying to sound out words!!! She had read very well, but it was all sight. She couldn't sound out a word for anything, and this was even with years and years of SWR instruction. Two months of VT and she starts asking me out of the blue what sound the letter C makes and how to sound out a word. Blow my mind! So to me, in your position, if you're thinking about making a change to a new OG style curriculum, you might use that to your advantage. The first few weeks of VT, rats it just isn't here yet. The next week, well the program is here but I'm learning how to use it. The 4th week of VT you're in a groove on how to get the homework done, make those days pleasant, have enough rest, and well you start learning the phonograms. By the time you're in your 2nd month of VT you're seeing some results and you're doing a bit more with the curriculum. That's what I would do.

 

Did they test her visual processing? You wouldn't even believe how ugly ours was. My dd got all crabby when they retested after 5 months of VT and she saw her some of the visual processing scores were age equivalent 9, 11, and 14 years. She said she shouldn't have to do anymore, because clearly she was done! Hahaha. I didn't tell her she had started with age equivalencies of *2* in some areas! She was 11 and reading quite well but couldn't sound out words, do a word search, etc. There was just no visual discrimination to facilitate such things. So of course the phonics isn't going to stick well, because they're not seeing it well and not able to process it.

 

Well congrats on your diagnosis! It feels good to have words for things, even if it is scary and shocking and expensive and new territory. But we've btdt, and the results were FABULOUS.

[Dobela]

You may want to take a wait and see approach. When my son began VT, his deficit was so severe that he was left exhausted mentally from the sessions and the homework. He had convergance, depth, and tracking issues. We would just cover the basics at home. Later on he could handle much more and we covered more subjects daily. Handwriting was one we let fall to the side because there is so much needed visually - how far from the line are you, how large is the letter, tracking from the examples to the lines for copy work, and so on.

 

I also highly recommend an OG family program. While my son began making big strides with just VT, he also very much needed the special formats of the OG program. I don't think he could have ever learned to read with the typical reading program methods.

[MerryAtHope]

I think with a 7 yo, that I would take a very game-like approach to phonics instruction. Play with words and sounds, if he's reading keep easier books in front of him to work on fluency etc... and so that the font is larger & easier to track with. I'd probably want to do some things just so he doesn't forget what he's learned, but I wouldn't be pushing a lot of new things. If he can read some simple words, make up little books that he can draw pictures with or color something, and let him have fun reading those. My kids used to help make up books (they dictated, I wrote) & always liked that.

 

Merry :-)