mominbc Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 I wanted to share our story in case there is someone along the way that can benefit from the journey we have had with our dd. I have lurked on this part of the forum for a couple of years as we have been puzzled with our dd's learning difficulties. From early years, learning to read was slow but not too bad, however when the larger words came into play we began to notice a lot of guessing at words despite all of our efforts. As time went on spelling was impossible, copying sentences difficult and despite being very artistic had poor handwriting. We eventually decided she must have some sort of dyslexia. When she turned 12 she began to notice she couldn't keep up with her music theory class and her theory teacher informed us that she understood all concepts but when she would write things it wouldn't come out right. As a gifted piano player she began to get farther and farther behind in her sight reading and despite practice she just wasn't improving. This past September we were registered with a new school that had access to dyslexia screening and visual screening and set us up with an appointment. The screening came back negative for dyslexia but positive for some sort of visual tracking problem. We have an optometrist in our church who said he could do some further tests. He found she had a vertical imbalance in her eyes that could be corrected with prism glasses. The results were amazing:D...she was able to read and her theory teacher said she had a new student. When sight reading she said that sometimes the notes still "danced". We had never heard of this symptom before but the optometrist directed us to Irlen's syndrome and with color overlays they stopped dancing. She is so much more confident and happy, and her reading problems are virtually gone!! Spelling will take time now that she can see correctly but we are so excited. I am thankful this was discovered!! Visual problems can cause so many difficulties I thought I would share our story in case there is someone out there dealing with the same thing. Thanks for listening.:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misty Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 This is the exact conclusion we are coming to for our 7yr old. Dyslexia has been ruled out.. And the developmental optometrist says she needs vision therapy and has a retained primitive reflex (moro reflex). I have been looking at the Irlen website.. Thinking about getting her some overlays or glasses from them and some vision therapy this summer with the dev. optometrist. Hopefully, all will be good after that! Thanks for sharing your journey! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mission-Driven-Mom Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Thanks for sharing...my ds10 just had a vision exam. We haven't gotten all the results yet but he did get glasses for being farsighted and that his eyes aren't working together as a team. I am sure there will be more to come from Part 2. So, I think we may be in the same boat as you. The spelling has me puzzled though...my son has a terrible time with that as well. How do you think this is affected by the vision issues? Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nature Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 That's great! Thanks for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mominbc Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Thanks for sharing...my ds10 just had a vision exam. We haven't gotten all the results yet but he did get glasses for being farsighted and that his eyes aren't working together as a team. I am sure there will be more to come from Part 2. So, I think we may be in the same boat as you. The spelling has me puzzled though...my son has a terrible time with that as well. How do you think this is affected by the vision issues? Any thoughts? The optometrist said that when the eyes aren't working together the brain can get confused and cause a lot of problems including letter reversals. I also think that when they can't see the word properly it takes away their ability to recall how it should be spelled. He said that with time the brain will correct the pathways. I am excited to see how much more things improve.:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmgirlinwv Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 I'm so glad for you! I know that's a weight lifted off of both your shoulders! I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get cheap colored sunglasses to try on my dd. She does have light sensitivity and I wanted to try it out before wasting more $$ on things that don't help. Any input appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dobela Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 COngratulations!:D Your story is so much like ours. I was told dyslexia and not given much hope by professionals. My son then started vision therapy and 18 months later there are no signs of dyslexia - in fact the professional who said dyslexia in the beginning has changed her diagnosis. My son had severe tracking issues. If he was looking at something his brain would switch from eye to eye trying to get the whole picture. He also had the primative reflex problem, not seeing in 3D consistently and convergence problems. The spelling has me puzzled though...my son has a terrible time with that as well. How do you think this is affected by the vision issues? Any thoughts? My VT explained it this way: If you are teaching reading and spelling phonetically your brain must connect the sound to the letter(s) that are presented. If your child is not seeing the letter(s) consistently or correctly, the sounds will not be connect properly in the brain. This leads to guessing in reading and not being able to spell. My son would give me the counds of letters verbally but if he saw a letter he would rarely produce the correct sound consitently for reading. My son's handwriting was also effected by his vision. After 2 years in OT he could still barely write his name and only a few letters from memory. The reason why? His eyes/brain never saw the letter the same way twice. It can't memorize a figure that is constantly changing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mominbc Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 I'm so glad for you! I know that's a weight lifted off of both your shoulders! I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get cheap colored sunglasses to try on my dd. She does have light sensitivity and I wanted to try it out before wasting more $$ on things that don't help. Any input appreciated! To see if color helped my daughter we bought clear colored page dividers in different colors and placed them over her music or whatever she was reading. She noticed a difference right away. People with irlens will have to find which color works best for them. The irlens.com website is awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mominbc Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 COngratulations!:D Your story is so much like ours. I was told dyslexia and not given much hope by professionals. My son then started vision therapy and 18 months later there are no signs of dyslexia - in fact the professional who said dyslexia in the beginning has changed her diagnosis. My son had severe tracking issues. If he was looking at something his brain would switch from eye to eye trying to get the whole picture. He also had the primative reflex problem, not seeing in 3D consistently and convergence problems. My VT explained it this way: If you are teaching reading and spelling phonetically your brain must connect the sound to the letter(s) that are presented. If your child is not seeing the letter(s) consistently or correctly, the sounds will not be connect properly in the brain. This leads to guessing in reading and not being able to spell. My son would give me the counds of letters verbally but if he saw a letter he would rarely produce the correct sound consitently for reading. My son's handwriting was also effected by his vision. After 2 years in OT he could still barely write his name and only a few letters from memory. The reason why? His eyes/brain never saw the letter the same way twice. It can't memorize a figure that is constantly changing. I am so happy for you guys as well.:) Thanks for this explanation, it makes perfect sense. That is exactly what my daughter would have been experiencing as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mominbc Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Thanks for sharing...my ds10 just had a vision exam. We haven't gotten all the results yet but he did get glasses for being farsighted and that his eyes aren't working together as a team. I am sure there will be more to come from Part 2. So, I think we may be in the same boat as you. The spelling has me puzzled though...my son has a terrible time with that as well. How do you think this is affected by the vision issues? Any thoughts? I hope this will be the beginning of some wonderful help for your ds. Just knowing what is wrong so you know how to help is so relieving.:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 I'm so glad for you! I know that's a weight lifted off of both your shoulders! I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get cheap colored sunglasses to try on my dd. She does have light sensitivity and I wanted to try it out before wasting more $$ on things that don't help. Any input appreciated! I would buy her book, which includes a set of colored filters. And her filters are not just colored overlays. They have a non-glare surface. :D If you can afford the testing that would be idea. It only cost me $100 but that was 20 years ago. I think when I called it was around $300-500 now, depending on the tester. I ended up needed a combination of two colors, pink and blue to get the best results. They wanted to do glasses, but I was a poor student with no insurance and I have managed without them. The way it was explained to me was you see some colors faster than others, which distorts everything you see. I know I also have dyslexia (Irlen is often refereed to as visual dyslexia, and traditional dyslexia as auditory dyslexia), so I both have issues with seeing the page correctly and hearing the sounds. Not a good combo for spelling. But my vision issues are minimal. Most of the time the problem is glare, and a sense of movement around the what edges. A really bad day and I will have blurring like a bad photo copy where you see several shadows, but that isn't very often. BTW, the tester told me that he could trace the colors to different nationalities. He told me that pink usually indicated a German background, and in my case it was correct. Yellow was Mexican, which I asked after because yellow is one of my worst colors and I couldn't imagine anyone needing to use it. ;) Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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