tracking - what have you found that works?

[LaughingCat]

I'm so bummed -- I thought I had DD's tracking issue (skipping sentences)  handled by doing a certain PACE exercise (inside columns working to outside columns) -- only to find that now that we have stopped doing it for a couple months the issue has returned.    The only real improvement I see now is that for word based loss of place rather than skipping words altogether, she has pauses where she re-figures out where she is and then continues on (sometimes reading a couple of words over again).   Line to line losing her place usually takes her a few words to realize what happened and then she has to back up and find her place and restart from there.   So basically she is understanding what has happened and is working around it (which is a huge improvement) -- but how to stop it from happening at all?

 

Obviously I plan on starting the column exercise again  (note:  I don't plan on returning to VT again -- did that twice with no improvement at all in this particular issue)

 

What has worked/not worked here:  

• Ann Arbor Letter Tracking (find the letter) -- did nothing
• general VT exercises  -- did nothing
• mazes -- did nothing
• follow (complex) tangled lines from one side of a page to the other -- did nothing
• PACE column exercise -- worked while she was doing it

Here are some tracking related exercises she did only a couple times each (at VT):

• Putting a golf tee into a hole on a spinning platform
• Watching a projected slide of (simple) tangled lines circling on the wall -- had to follow line from one side to other
• Watching a hanging golf wiffle ball -- and batting it with hand or other 'bat'

It seems to me I have seen people say they had improvement with tracking from midline exercises?  Can't seem to find those posts now.  So my question is --  what specifically has worked for your child to improve their tracking?

 

 

[PeterPan]

Have you had an OT eval?  If you're losing vision skills that dramatically after you've done VT, you've got something else going on.  Maybe retained primitive reflexes?  

[prairiewindmomma]

For my kid, it was the Marsden ball and Hart charts that helped. 

[LaughingCat]

To be clear, DD has not lost any vision skills she gained during VT.   VT never improved her tracking in any visible way.   It did improve her convergence and as far as I can tell (by Brock string etc) after the 2nd VT session she has retained that improvement.  Reading wise the only improvement from VT was speed which has also been retained.  

 

What she lost in the last couple months is a tracking improvement that came from a modified PACE exercise -- reading columns of words  (original was numbers) in pairs from inside pairs to outside pairs.  This exercise was not done as part of VT or other outside therapy.  It was part of an in home, Mom created plan.  It's possible it was only a perceived improvement too - I guess I'll see that when we start up again. 

 

Which doesn't mean it isnt retained primitive reflexes of course --  although in the past I did some 'testing' I found (not finding it again in a 10 second google) and she passed all the tests.  I suppose I'll be googling again though LOL!

 

Marsden ball is interesting -- apparently a more complex version of the golf wiffle ball thing she did once at VT (hmm, maybe it wasn't a golf wiffle ball - they gave us a golf wiffle ball on a string to hold over her head and move around while she followed with her eyes -- maybe I was conflating the two since she only did the hanging version one time).  Did you use hands or something else to hit it with? 

 

She did do Hart charts in VT.   It was a convergence exercise though -- a near chart and a far chart.   

 

She did do a chart tracking exercise that I forgot -- with 4 charts on the wall where she had to read one thing from one and move to the next (while jumping on a tramp)-- no improvement.   (although it might be worthwhile to try this again -- I'm sure it was affected by working memory at the time).

[PeterPan]

Has the symptom occurred over multiple days so you know it's not just a bad day or fatigue?

[LaughingCat]

Has the symptom occurred over multiple days so you know it's not just a bad day or fatigue?

Oh!!!!  :svengo: No, and in fact she is getting over pneumonia so there is definitely fatigue (nothing like a week ago but still).     And I hadn't listened to her read aloud for awhile -- so definitely freaked out when I heard.  Ok, I will definitely give her some more time and repetitions before going crazy :thumbup1:

 

ETA: apparently I'm very definite :lol:

[PeterPan]

LC, I only asked because I do that too.  :D   

 

And yes, it took me a month to get even close to normal energy back after I had my bout in January.  Even 6-8 weeks out I occasionally was noticing things (tightness, etc.).  When I'm fatigued my eyes get really wonky.  Maybe wait till she's a couple months recovered and then conclude from observations over a number of days.  :)

[Lecka]

I am one of the people where midline exercises helped for tracking.  But his tracking issue appeared to be extremely related to his midline issues.  He also had midline issues apart from his tracking issues.  

 

So it did seem to be something where had had midline issues and then tracking was one manifestation of his midline issues, along with every other thing that required more advanced skills than what he had at the time.  There was a long list at the time.  

 

I also took him to a VT eval at this time, and he saw the same thing the OTs were seeing, and no other vision issues.   (His issue was having his eye "jump" when he crossed the midline and losing his place from that.  He also had a phase where he would skip lines that had a paragraph indentation, but he was also new to reading text with paragraphs, so he might have been having a bit of a normal learning curve with that.)

 

Unfortunately I didn't observe much of his OT, and I never even really knew too much about what he did for OT at school.  He had an OT goal to catch a ball a certain number of times, so apparently he was catching a ball sometime.  They told me that even bringing his hands together to catch a ball was a midline issue for him.  Also after several months of OT, I saw him try an activity where he needed to raise his left foot and right arm.  He could do it with intense concentration, for 3 steps at the most.  Sometimes he couldn't bring his arm up even one time, he would bring up his left arm and left leg.  So when for PACE they have that activity where you march around and touch your left elbow to your right knee -- he was below that level at the time.  

 

I think he was, to some extent, brought up to the point that he could actually do PACE exercises.  Then that meant he could start to do all those other things.  I don't know exactly, but something like that.  

 

But anyway -- I I have read about other kids' tracking issues, and they either sound just like his, or nothing much alike.  He did not have a lot of problems.  Just this one.  As far as I know. 

 

But I hope she was just tired!  I can get eye fatigue or just start to misread things, too, when I am tired, especially when I have been sick and I am just not at my best.  It can take a little time to get back to myself.  

 

 

[Pen]

Using a finger over or under the text, or a blank white sheet of paper to slide down below the line being read.