Anyone here NOT convinced that Vision Therapy works?

[Storm Bay]

Oh yeah, the visual processing stage was where it seemed like my child actually got delivered to me. I guess that sounds crazy, but seriously that's how it was. It pulled it all together and allowed all those PIECES to start working. Before that she was just so fragmented functionally. By the time we had gone through the visual processing stage, she was so much more whole, functional, confident. And things just continued to get better, with a lot of the academic stuff starting to gel. It was a huge shift for us. Still dyslexic, etc. Just a lot better on the visual side of things.

 

Yllek-Do I dare to suggest you research and see what options you would have for working on it on your own? You already maxed out available VT docs, didn't you?

 

Did you do exercises with a swinging ball??? Those are fabulous.

 

Ok, you're confusing some things. An activity BECOMES therapeutic when you do it intentionally and systematically to create a certain effect. If you just do something randomly, without building the precursor skills, without having a plan that moves them forward step-by-step, you're just playing.

 

Then we spent several more months working on visual processing, how the eyes interpret and apply information. Vision therapy builds neural pathways (they've seen this on MRI's), so it's not merely about strengthening muscles. So some kids, once they do the initial work to get the eyes working together correctly, are able to go quickly to good visual processing..

For further info on this, my ds is working on visual processing, and he's only had 4 therapy sessions. However, the doctor did give ds an exercise to do during the initial assessment, so he didn't make him wait for the therapy to start to get him going. This is why it's good to get a good VT who does the proper diagnosis for your dc. In his case, the eyes not working together are a processing problem.

 

As for the games, the process makes all the difference. eg, one card game ds plays is a modified Slap Jack; you have to something differnt for J, K, Q & A (and for one you have to sing a song and once a song has been sung it can't be repeated the next time that value comes up.) In addition, at the end he has to then count his cards a certain way and then calculate how many the other player(s) has(ve) and the therapist is concerned with how he does it because it relates to processing. One of the connections he had to make was to count for each card he put down; at first he'd get off when he started counting in the 20s, but no longer. The swinging ball has many, many things you can do with it and at least one of them goes far beyond any other cross body therapy, etc, I've seen so far (we havent done them all yet.)

[LizzyBee]

The other thing is to play games like Memory with variations they can't process auditorily. I found this version at the school supply store that has faces, and I found a Dr. Seuss memory game at walmart around Christmas. With those, they can't think up words fast and are just using their visual memory, not saying the words to themselves.

 

On that note, our OT recommended Guess Who for my now 9 yo. She and her older sister love that game.

[peacefully]

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