Dyslexia, VT, primitive reflexes, incontinence, oh my!

[Sharilynn29]

I've been doing a ton of research that has my head spinning. First, my 8yo dd is behind in mostly her reading/spelling skills. Her opthamologist recommended that she be checked for VT. We are so broke due to my own disability, so I started my research.

 

I have found numerous exercises to try with her for both convergence, tracking, secaades (sp?), and helping cross the midline. This is when I started to read about primitive reflexes.

 

My dd has had numerous testing done for her incontinence. She has no problems (typically) with holding her urine, and then out of the blue she pees. She's been doing kegel exercises for over a year without it helping. Now I learn that the Spinal Galant primitive reflex (which she has) can cause incontinence. Wow!

 

My mind's a little blown. I've found exercises to help rid her of this reflex. We'll see if it helps with the incontinence. It couldn't hurt.

[SKL]

I'm glad you found out about that! I had read that recently and it would be nice if more parents were aware of it.

 

My daughter also has retained primitive reflexes. Incontinence isn't an issue, but visual learning, listening, awkwardness, and inconsistency in behaviors are issues for her.

 

Unfortunately I have had to pay everything out of pocket because they don't fall under the usual categories of child health care. Also, my HMO refused to screen or test her because she hasn't yet been failing in school. :glare: It occurs to me that homeschoolers probably have this problem a lot. :glare:

 

See if you can get the professionals whom you're going to to break down the services into parts that insurance usually covers, and parts it doesn't. Hopefully this will save you some money. Some other folks on here may be able to suggest other ways to get the cost subsidized.

 

In my experience so far, the therapies are life-changing, so if there's any way to make them happen, I will.

 

Good luck!

[laundrycrisis]

Very interesting. This is something I will have to look into for DS1.

[PeterPan]

Two things. One, a good VT doc will screen for retained primitive reflexes (because they can hold back the effectiveness of the VT), and some VT docs will know the exercises to do to integrate them. Otherwise you're looking at OT. Maybe there are some online resources, now that you know the specific name? I've got a handout that mentions the spinal galant reflex and it refers to Sally Goddard's book in the bibliography. Does Goddard's stuff tell how to integrate them?

 

Two, some VT docs have a "no child leaves untreated" policy. They have a sliding scale that basically goes down to nothing for certain income levels, etc. So it might be worth your time to call around. Might be able to kill two birds with one stone.

[Dobela]

My dd was struggling with incontinence earlier this year. As a first intervention her pediatrician suggested we have her eat one chewable Vitamin C tablet every day. Within 3 days the incontinence stopped and we have not had another problem. We give her a child's tablet since she is only 5. Before we tried this we were really, really nervous. She has several issues and incontinence was a possible sign that she may be having nerve damage in her spine. Apparently the vitamin C changes the acidity level in the bladder and when the acidity levels are at optimal levels, the body can control the bladder more efficiently (or is more aware of it somehow). I don't know exactly how it works, but I suggest you try it.

[PeterPan]

My dd was struggling with incontinence earlier this year. As a first intervention her pediatrician suggested we have her eat one chewable Vitamin C tablet every day. Within 3 days the incontinence stopped and we have not had another problem. We give her a child's tablet since she is only 5. Before we tried this we were really, really nervous. She has several issues and incontinence was a possible sign that she may be having nerve damage in her spine. Apparently the vitamin C changes the acidity level in the bladder and when the acidity levels are at optimal levels, the body can control the bladder more efficiently (or is more aware of it somehow). I don't know exactly how it works, but I suggest you try it.

 

Well that's interesting! Does it help *nighttime* too or just day? Ds got out of daytime diapers a little after 3, maybe 3 1/4, but he still wears nighttime diapers. He'll be 4 in a month. Once in a while he wakes up at night. I definitely think it's a sensory thing. And sometimes in the daytime, especially when busy, he has an accident. I'm more careful to make sure he goes, so it's usually dh who gets the wet lap, haha... I don't know, just one of those things. Wasn't sure how you could improve sensory down there, mercy.

[Dobela]

Well that's interesting! Does it help *nighttime* too or just day? Ds got out of daytime diapers a little after 3, maybe 3 1/4, but he still wears nighttime diapers. He'll be 4 in a month. Once in a while he wakes up at night. I definitely think it's a sensory thing. And sometimes in the daytime, especially when busy, he has an accident. I'm more careful to make sure he goes, so it's usually dh who gets the wet lap, haha... I don't know, just one of those things. Wasn't sure how you could improve sensory down there, mercy.

No not nighttime that I can tell. She is still in nighttime pull-ups. My son was nearly 5 before he came out of them, sometime after his tonsils and adnoids came out and the sleep apnea ended. My dd's issue was a new thing again, after being dry all day for at least a couple of years. She didn't have a UTI or any other easily diagnosed reason for it to be happening. She is now going thru fewer nighttime ones though, and seems to be wetting them later and later in the night, say 5 am, rather than a couple of times each night. And, when she does wet them, she seems to be waking up as it is happening or just after because she is coming to us asking for help changing. I am not changing sheets constantly as before.

 

Before the vitamin C though, sometimes dd would have no idea that she was about to pee. She would start crying as she felt it begin. I felt terribly for her.

[PeterPan]

Hmm, that's not encouraging, lol. Well thanks for explaining. I'm just in be patient mode about this one, since I haven't found anything to actually do about it.

[Sharilynn29]

I will looking into the vitamin C tablets. The snow angels exercise used to help with spinal galant reflex is supposed to help with overnight incontinence if that is a retained reflex.

[PeterPan]

That turned up a ton of hits! Thanks for the tip! :)

[Seasider]

Two things. One, a good VT doc will screen for retained primitive reflexes (because they can hold back the effectiveness of the VT), and some VT docs will know the exercises to do to integrate them. Otherwise you're looking at OT. Maybe there are some online resources, now that you know the specific name? I've got a handout that mentions the spinal galant reflex and it refers to Sally Goddard's book in the bibliography. Does Goddard's stuff tell how to integrate them?

 

Two, some VT docs have a "no child leaves untreated" policy. They have a sliding scale that basically goes down to nothing for certain income levels, etc. So it might be worth your time to call around. Might be able to kill two birds with one stone.

 

 

Our VT treatment plan included PT type exercises (administered by the OTherapist) to integrate the non-integrated primal reflexes. Out of the bunch, my child had only two that didn't need work - one of those was the one related to continence. (Honestly, if this one had been involved, I think we would have had been clued in to the vision issues earlier.) I believe these exercises were of equal importance with the actual eye exercises.

 

We were able to use funds from our medical savings plan for this, but wow, it still cost a good bit out of pocket. Ask if your office offers any kind of discount for appointments during school hours. Our doc charged appx $125 per OT session, but if we went in during school hours (9am-2:30pm), the rate was only $95 per session.

 

It was WORTH EVERY PENNY! But yes, not always easy to decide what we went without some weeks in order to pay that bill.