Back from the consult with the optometrist doing VT

[Laurie4b]

I took dh with me for the consult with the optometrist where we've been getting VT. After the initial eval, we've seen only techs and assistants.

 

This is going to be long and is part me processing our experience and part vent. Fair warning! However, if you've not yet done VT, you might want to read it so as not to make similar mistakes.

 

I made the appt. because we have been seeing no results. Neither did any improvement show up on the VMI, which was readministered as part of OT. I've bored the board :) before with all the difficulties of this particular practice. Bottom line is I could put up with those if we were seeing results. I tried to be positive, starting off by saying, "Common sense would tell us that we would be throwing good money after bad by continuing because we see no results. We are coming in asking for a reason to continue that makes sense to us."

 

Thus began a long circular conversation.

During the conversation, however, I found out that

 

1) ds only had minor ocular motor tracking problems when we started VT--like a thumbnail off of normal.

 

(Years ago, he had severe tracking problems that both the regular optometrist and the OT could see. He could not keep his eye in one place more than a second or two. I saw this constantly. After our first round of OT, the ability to focus was normal, the optometrist declared his tracking "almost normal." Ds no longer used the little thingee I had made him so that he only saw one line of text at a time. Lots of observable differences.) I guess I should have deduced this from the intial report, and I did ask, but the answer was a little fuzzy and I was eager to start, so I didn't press it.

 

2) She diagnosed ds in April with esophoria. This also was close to NORMAL when we started and HAS NOT IMPROVED .

 

She said, "We haven't started to work on that yet." Huh? This is 4 1/2 mo. into therapy. I did not follow the explanation of all the other stuff that had to be worked on before the esophoria could be directly worked on. Dh took a stab at understanding it---there are linked pieces that could be contributory components that they've been working on. (I will say, the exercises at home have challenged him. Some he's improved on.)

 

3) When we started vision therapy, I stated that one of the problems that most concerned me was ds constantly skipping words & lines. Today, she informed me that skipping words and lines is normal, that everyone does that and it doesn't affect comprehension.

 

I hope that you, my special ed board friends are proud of me that I did not YELL at that point. Excuse me, but it certainly does affect comprehension if you skip the word "not" or a whole line and the next line sorta fits, so you don't go back. I just worked with older ds's on PSAT prep and boy, you had better have read and understood every word in the passage and the question to get the answer correct.

 

Ds's comprehension has not been affected to this point because he can anticipate the meaning of the text. That is going to change with high school and above texts, journal articles, etc. written by people who never had SWB teach them to write!

 

4) This about took my breath away: She said that her testing that she does sometimes reveals problems that are not reflected in the client's concerns and sometimes she doesn't find anything in her objective, optometrist testing but the clients do report concerns like headaches, etc. IOW, the lack of correlation between her test results and client complaints wasn't a particular cause of concern, that science was really an art (or something like that.) (I did not faint. Another cause to be proud of me!) So if I went to my doctor and he found that my glucose was 85, but I felt like my blood sugar was out of control, he would treat me for diabetes. If my glucose was 178 but I felt fine, my "feeling fine" would be determinative---or maybe he would also treat me then.

 

This has my head spinning. I've wondered this all along. Do VT's ever say someone doesn't need therapy who has complaints? Are they treating kids for diagnoses that are actually present in children who are achieving normally--in other words, do these various diagnoses actually NOT affect reading, visual processing, etc? How do they know or not know?

 

5) Somehow she kept coming back to what OUR goals are and if we feel like we're wasting money, then she wouldn't want us to continue, or if our son feels like he is reading better (despite my observations that he's not) that would be good reason to continue. I finally said it didn't matter to me whether I feel like I'm wasting money. I was asking whether I am wasting money or not.

 

6) She couldn't articulate the phases of treatment in a way I understood. Somehow, however, she decided that we could now skip part of the treatment and proceed to processing exercises. ( The other, even more important reason we are pursuing vision therapy is because our son's visual /spatial processing is an area of pronounced weakness. I'm trying to be proactive about developing those areas in preparation for algebra, geometry, etc. So far, he's had no math problems.) Since processing was my concern, she said we can skip the next stuff in therapy and jump to that, and jump back if he's staying stuck on something.

 

7) I pressed for a reason to continue. I pressed for how she knew that VT would work for my son. She said, "20 years of experience. "

 

8) I had asked early why a set of test results were all over the map. (This test had been administered 3 times. The scores of the subtests looked like a roller coaster. zero consistency. I had inquired as to whether that might be due to attention issues, and had mentioned maybe looking into medication) Today she told me that they had seen this very kind of scatter mentioned at a conference, that it was attention issues, but that she would NEVER put a child of hers on Ritalin.

 

9) I was originally told therapy would last 6-9 months. We've done 4 1/2. I was told today that the estimate for the end of therapy was another 15-20 WEEKS. (That's skipping some stuff.)

 

We have contacted another provider (someone recommended on this board) for a second opinion/consultation. That provider thought we should definitely have seen results of some kind by now. It is much further away, but half as expensive. And the assistant has already spent a lot of time listening and consulting with me.

 

It was a weird observing myself processing all this on the way home. On the one hand, don't I have every reason in the world now to stop therapy? I'm nuts to even think about continuing. (thinks self) On the other hand, it is so hard to give up an area of hope when science offers no alternative for the visual processing deficits. We'll see what the second opinion person says.

 

<sigh> I can get "testy" but dh generally interprets people in the most benign way possible. He had a hard time, too. Dh thought that she sounded like she primarily processes things through emotion (all the FEEL language) and that at the least, it's a bad fit with people who want to understand why they should keep spending $1000's. Maybe she's just inarticulate. It felt like trying to nail Jello to the wall, though.

 

vent over. thanks for reading. Or if nobody got this far, thanks for the bandwidth for me to do some self-therapy, SWB.

Edited October 22, 2008 by Laurie4b1

[JudoMom]

I have no direct experience with VT.

 

All I have to say is "GAH!!!!!" and you get some kudos for not yelling and for not passing out.

 

Hope you get some answers that make sense soon!

[JenneinCA]

I am sorry you didn't get answers to your questions. I felt much the same way when we did VT. We lasted 8 weeks and I called it quits.

 

I hope your second opinion helps you figure out what to do.

 

:grouphug:

[cillakat]

{{{{Laurie}}}}

 

Frustrating. Irritating. Maddening.

 

Katherine

[Stacy in NJ]

Sorry for your experience, Laurie. Sounds incredibly frustrating.

[ELaurie]

Laurie,

 

I'm sorry to hear about your continued frustration and lack of clarity about continuing VT for your ds.

 

We've had similar struggles as we've attempted to sort out the options that might be most helpful for ds9.

 

It can be just exasperating . . . and discouraging at times.

 

I hope the 2nd opinion will offer you some helpful perspective.

 

Keep us posted.

[Laurie4b]

I knew what you'd be thinking about all this, LOL!

[Laurie4b]

Thanks for the sympathy, everyone! (I can't believe you all read the epistle!) I actually do feel better now. I just talked with a friend with a PhD in reading and she confirmed that the research indeed does show that the best readers actually attend to each letter in a word. It's done smoothly and automatically, but this "normal readers skip and it doesn't matter is hooey. She also was affirming of the sensible part of me saying, "Time to move on."

[MicheleB]

WoW.

 

That sounds incredibly frustrating. I would be fainting, yelling *and* pulling my hair out!!

 

Thanks for posting all you did because it does help someone like me, who is entering this phase of our lives.

 

And I hope you have much more success with VT#2 and that there will be NO need for VT#3!

 

:grouphug:

[PrincessAriel]

nt

[Nancy in NH]

{{{{{Laurie}}}}} from me, too! I'm sorry you've been through such a frustrating experience. I can certainly understand how it feels like the hope has been ripped out from under you.

 

I've had my own frustrating experience with the OD who diagnosed my ds. I have an authorization for insurance to pay, but he doesn't "deal with insurances" for his VT group. Insurance is investigating, as he represented himself as a provider of VT services, but didn't disclose to them that he runs that part as a separate business. Don't get me started. We aren't going forward with VT (for several reasons), but hearing your story has me feeling less guilty about it.

 

I hope things get better.

Nancy

[Stacy in NJ]

I knew what you'd be thinking about all this, LOL!

 

I really am hoping that you will see positive results and that this ends up being a worthwhile investment for your guy.:001_smile:

[Rod Everson]

 

I've had my own frustrating experience with the OD who diagnosed my ds. I have an authorization for insurance to pay, but he doesn't "deal with insurances" for his VT group.

 

Nancy

 

Hi Nancy,

 

More than likely your OD doesn't "deal with insurance" because he would have to hire one or two additional staff to handle the paperwork, only to find that most insurance companies don't cover vision therapy.

 

If your insurance covers VT (and not just the optometrist's diagnosis of the problem) then you can certainly turn in your claim yourself and be compensated, but as I said most insurance doesn't pay for vision therapy (which is separate from the diagnosis.)

 

The OD gets in an awkward situation in these cases, especially if parents assume that just because the initial diagnosis is covered, everything else will be also.

 

To others reading this, if you are going to attempt VT, and you think it's covered by insurance, double-check to see if VT itself is covered before deciding what to do. Very few insurance policies cover more than a few VT sessions and most cover none at all, in my experience. An incorrect assumption can put people on the hook for thousands of dollars, not to mention the stress it creates between the provider and the patient's family, a stress that the child will often pick up on.

 

If VT was fully covered, people would try it and most would probably be pleased with the results. The rest would move on looking for other answers, or additional answers, such as phonics instruction. When it's not covered, it can result in a lot of ill feelings because parents are understandably upset that a major obstacle has been placed in their path when all they are doing is trying to help their child succeed.

 

With all that said, my experience has also taught me that VT is often the missing part of getting a child reading. I've worked with a lot of kids one-on-one and I don't usually have any trouble teaching them phonics after they've had VT. Some of them do really still need the phonics instruction yet though. VT alone doesn't teach reading.

 

Rod Everson

OnTrack Reading

[Twinmom]

Wow. Just wow.

 

Having had some similar discussions during the process of our VT, I sort of understand what the gal was trying to say, albeit very awkwardly. I think your DH is correct about her method of communication being feeling words...but this is completely inappropriate for the setting. You needed specific, clinical information and quantifiable results. You didn't get it. Not only did you not get it, you got the runaround. If this were the only time you'd gotten it, I'd not be as concerned. However, it's been this way from the beginning. Nothing has changed but your pocketbook! Yes, VT is somewhat of an art form. However, there are reasons why it works and she should have been able to articulate them.

 

I give a vote of no confidence here. If it were me, I'd be leaving. I'd be leaving for the communication problem alone...it's that serious. You MUST have a belief in your therapist and understand why what she is doing will work. If she can't communicate and can't make you believe in her, there is something wrong...esp. when you cannot see results. And a sidenote...it is none of her business whether you put your child on meds or not. She should have kept her opinion to herself. :glare:

 

Please do go meet with the second therapist. You will have a different experience. Feel free to challenge her...she can take it. The doctor is great, too, and can explain everything...though he'll forget all about you after the initial consult. He's kind of a goober that way! The VT will explain things thoroughly and go the extra mile for your child. And, she takes skipping lines and words seriously. DD did that in the beginning and she doesn't do it anymore. ;)