Vision Therapy Woes

Not to discourage you but we did exercises like that for vision problems and they did not work. The problems with head movement just don’t go away very easily. He would literally want me to hole his head still and then he would do much better but what is the point. I think this points to more of a sensory type problem that requires a different approach. We have been doing therapy now that involves standing on a balance board with big piece of velcro around his head and coming forward and back to my hand which is wrapped in velcro also. Sounds very strange I know. But it was amazing how floppy he was when we started and he has really progressed. And when he focuses now—he actually can read without skipping words. Still too much work for him but we’re making progress.

I think if something is not producing change after a reasonable time, you need to wonder why. What you are doing may work for most kids. It didn’t work for mine.

Does your child have other sensory motor based problems? Most of my child’s problems seem to be at that level. When therapy has not addressed this level, it has not been very successful. I have learned this the hard way.

Beth

Some believe the best exercise for tracking issues is reading. For now, I am buying into that. If he couldn’t read I might do the exercises.

My son was also diagnosed with sciatic eye movements. I seem to notice that the better he gets at reading the less he loses is place. Or, maybe he is getting better at reading because the muscles are improving. Hard to tell.

I have to wonder if children learn to control their muscles in other areas of their body through occupational therapy or interactive metronome or even the mouth muscles worked in speech therapy, does this skill transfer to the eye muscles.

Can dyspraxia be dealt with in this way?

Hi,

I think the term is “saccadic” eye movement. The movement where eyes jump to the next set of letters and refocus is called a “saccade.”

I tend to agree with Beth that it’s probably not the right exercise if you child hasn’t responded to the therapy in any meaningful way.

The problem with vision therapy is that it works for a lot of kids, and is needed by a lot of kids, but there is so much variability in both the availability and the quality of the therapy. Most vision therapists work for a behavioral optometrist, and they are trained to provide such therapy. And, even then, there are big differences in the type, cost and time of therapy, unfortunately.

Beth may be correct when she suggests going into other gross motor exercises. And, there is also the possibility that your child’s vision therapy should be addressing convergence facility (both eyes easily focusing on the same spot quickly and easily following each saccade.) Your speech/learning therapist may or may not be trained in this area.

Also, Jan, your comment about having difficulty with the exercise yourself is interesting. I have found that almost every child who needs vision therapy has a parent or uncle/aunt who had some trouble with early reading instruction. Of course, you may not have had any trouble, but for the others reading this, consider a vision problem to be more likely if other siblings, or one of the parents, also struggled with early reading.

Good Luck….Rod

Rod,
I appreciate your comments. I think my problem with the exercise is that I definitely need glasses. I am of the age of going farsighted. As far as I know I began reading when I was six and never had any problems. It has only been recently that I have trouble focusing. We have never had anyone diagnosed with dyslexia in either my dh’s family or my family. Of course that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t have it.

I don’t mind doing the exercises with my dd, but it is becoming a weary thing when my dd has absolute fits about doing it. I’m even willing to try this for a month or so longer, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I guess I would go nuts if my piano teacher made me do scales constantly and would not let me play real music. I am wondering if this could be the case. I would only practice my scales for 5 minutes or so and then play real music the rest of my practice time. I don’t know if this is a very good analogy, but that is how I am viewing this situation.

Jan P.

Linda,
I have been wondering about the act of just reading to help with the saccadic eye movements. I have been thinking of getting the Great Leaps program. I don’t know if it would address this problem.

By the way, my dd just finished the Interactive Metronome therapy. I was hoping IM would help her. However she didn’t do well on her posttest due to jumping about with her reading. The speech and learning therapist wanted her to do these vision exercises to see if that was the factor influencing the post test. I had been working with my dd before IM doing vision exercises, but we dropped everything to do IM since IM was so time intensive.

Thanks for your input.
Jan P.

Jan,

I have mentioned a number of times that I was doing exercises for visual perception from a book with my son. These were not exercises to work the eye muscles per se. I think what they accomplished for him was the it helped him to look at the forms he was required to draw as separate parts that make up the whole. Nomally he would approach the drawing of a form by looking at the whole and not seeing the parts. These forms were very difficult. He had to learn to break them down. He scored very low on the on the block design section of his WISC.
He was also doing interactive metronome during at same time. We were at the middle difficulty level of drawing the forms and all of a sudden he developed the skills to do even the most difficult forms. I think IM was a factor.

He too is struggling with IM. He can find his rythim, he is scoring in the 50s with his hands but he can’t seem to get bursts of 4 in a row perfects.

She thinks that after these sessions are over he should do it again in 6 months. It is strange that despite the difficulties, I am seeing changes in him that I can only attribute to IM.
He also has this weird tic he does with his hands. He wiggles his fingers between beats. It throws him off. I think it is nerves. He is someone who puts alot of pressure on himself. He really likes to please.
If anyone has any input on what might help make IM easier, I am all ears.

Linda

I can’t tell you too much to help with IM. My dd’s speech and learning therapist did the IM with dd three times per week. However most of the time the S&LT had to model the appropriate clapping and stepping. I know that my dd’s left hand lagged behind the right during clapping. I wonder if this is an indicator of the problems she has reading. Sorry I can’t help here.
Jan P.

My son, as linda knows, as about half way thru IM. But we’ve had to add extra sessions to allow him to learn the foot movements. (he’s got motor planning problems) His therapist is also patterning, demonstrating and doing the movements with him. AND his left hand won’t make circles!! She told me that almost all the kids she sees have this left hand thing. I asked her if all the kids had probable right brain issues (NLD, ADD etc) and she said not necessarily. But they all have left hand movement issues. AND she thinks we should look into vision therapy after IM.

Jan, Have you seen any change in your daughter? When did she finish? Will you keep us posted. I hate to think we’ve been thru all this time and money for nothing….

Linda, my son also is doing weird things with his mouth. I think he’s counting or something else forbidden.

Karen,

Is your son prone to weird tics. My son used to do this strange thing with his eyes this was before IM and seemed unrelated to anything. The optomotrist said some kids just do that and it goes away. She didn’t think it was related to any eye problem. I also asked my friend the eye surgeon who just shrugged.

Now it is the hands but just with IM. I think it is a related to stress. The therapist said that he has some weird head movements that went away when she lowered the extra sounds.

Jan,

How old is your daughter? My son doesn’t have the left hand problem. I think. I will make sure.
My son was actually ambidextrous for awhile. I was told to get him to gain one hand dominance, which he now has on the right. I think his left is still pretty strong.

I took my son to an OT for evaluation for sensory integration problems. She told me that many kids who do OT therapy speed up the results of vision therapy. Again, I would suspect that is because there are multiple things going on. Perhaps that is one route to consider.

Your child’s difficulties with IM suggest sensory integration problems. We did Neuronet therapy, in leiu of OT, before doing IM. Before NN, my son tested in the most extreme category (305 ms off beat). Afterwards, he tested at just over 200. Because he did other therapy first, I think, we were able to get scores under 20 consistently in 15 sessions.

My son is the only one with any sort of learning issue in our families too. And noone had trouble learning to read so it isn’t that it wasn’t diagnosed.

Beth

I think you have a good analogy with your piano practice. In reading tutoring, I spend some time on basic phionics, some time on word study, some time on writing, and some time on reading connected text. The phonics just doesn’t have a point if it isn’t applied to a real book, no matter how basic.
You might try the same — ten minutes of vision therapy followed by twenty minutes of real reading, or something similar.

Speaking of moving to rhythm — My daughter simply could not move to music in elementary school. She couldn’t clap on a beat, sway in rhythm, dance, or anything. The funny thing about this is that she is musicaly talented and sang on-key in a beautiful little bell-like voice, with excellent rhythm. In Grad e7 her school choir loved her — they needed tenors — but during the gospel song everyone else swayed left and she swayed right. Then in high school everything finally came together, and she taught herself to play clarinet and trombone, well enough to be in the University of Maryland marching band. This was partly maturity and partly a heck of a lot of work on sports and her own tenacity.
For her development, I treated her as academically four years above her age, socially a year or two below, and physically three or four years below. You might ask your IM therapist to forget what your child looks like and use the speeds, progress levels, and expectations for a child three to four years younger. This often works wonders, giving a kid expectations he can meet and a speed of progress that he can keep up with.

My dd just turned 10. HTh, Jan P.