vision therapy questions

[caedmyn]

Should I plan a lighter school year for a kid who's going to be doing vision therapy?  My 10 yo's evaluation is mid-September.  I have no doubt that they're going to recommend vision therapy.  I'm not sure what to expect as far as how tired his eyes are going to be.  They fatigue very quickly just doing a couple minutes of tracking exercises.

Also, if a child's eyes are doing a lot of bouncing and losing focus when trying to track an object, is it likely that he's going to need vision therapy?  This is my 6 YO...I think he's having at least as much trouble tracking as DS10 ever did, if not more.

[PeterPan]

My dd was extreme on the reaction side, because her sensory is SO hyper-responsive. Like she just went to the ER with mild gallbladder inflammation and they put her on morphine immediately because she looked so bad. Horribly sensitive sensory. She could do about 30 minutes of academics in the morning, then her VT homework, and after that she was TOAST. But we've had other kids here who took it totally in stride and kept going with their full load. So the sensory is really maybe the difference there.

Also, between now and September, maybe go ahead and test for and do the exercises to integrate every retained reflex you can find. Two months is enough time, and the vision might straighten up just doing that. The retained neonatal/primitive reflexes (ATNR, STNR, that kind of thing) glitch the rest of the reflexes (vision, postural, etc.). So if you want out of VT, doing reflex work is your best chance.

[kristin0713]

My DS started vision therapy last month.  The first time he went, he had a killer headache afterwards.  Now I give him ibuprofen in advance.  At home, he can do his vision therapy practice in the mornings (20 min max) and then still be fine to do a little reading and math review, but I give him a long break before asking him to do that.  For the school year, I am planning his therapy appointments to be in the afternoon so his work will be done first.  I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the practice.  Probably right after lunch.  The whole thing really stinks but I'm trying to keep in mind that it is only temporary and after he's done, he'll be done.  

[EKS]

You are going to have homework, which, at least in our case, was about 30 minutes daily and included a good amount of reading aloud.  I'm pretty sure I compensated in other areas of our lesson time to accommodate the extra activity so that we could still end the lesson at the normal time.  But I don't remember specifically deciding to make the year lighter.

[ChocolateCake]

I gave my ds less reading and writing on vision therapy days.  Also, I may have varied his work depending on his specific homework.  Sometimes, it was more writing intensive.  We did therapy in the mornings so he would be fresh and ready to work.  After we finished therapy, I added in VT as a subject by having him label maps for geography and do word searches for spelling.