Can this be a problem with vision, language or both????

I suspect that these things all being names has something to do with the trouble, because as names they don’t have their own meaning and they’re not already in his lexicon.
Taking a pencil and lightly “scooping out” under the syllables can help him make the connection (so Hud son is more clearly hud and son). I’d also tell him *why* — that “son” is a common prefix for names, because a person was “JOhn’s Son” and -ton is a common suffix for towns and it comes at the end of “popple” (and normally that weird “ple” pronounced ‘pel” comes at the very end of a word).
This is probably not a new and different problem — he’s just worked through it with words he knows well. He may have mispronounced pneumonia for an entire book when he first encountered it.
Repetition can be a good thing — but less so when it’s not exercising hte part of the brain that should be processing the word. WHen he repeats the “ton” he’s just repeating a sound — not reading “poppleton” so when that happens (when he’s reading) he goes back to the old processing pathway and makes the old mistake. Making a flashcard with the troublesome words (perhaps with the syllables in different colors) could help, especially if he traces under the syllables to help him read.

Your idea with the flashcard and using different colors is a good one.

I wish I knew more about language, because I’m really wondering if this is a language problem. Or maybe it’s related to RAN and wordfinding.

What I think he may be doing (or what I’m guessing), is with all the reading practice, he’s natually beginning to move toward more “automatic” reading, but with RAN and wordfinding deficits, he’s picking up pieces he’s more familiar with. Maybe sound combinations that are already more automatic? With a child who does not have these deficits, they may make similar mistakes, but MUCH less and they have an easier time correcting (they may only need to be reminded of the correction 3 or 4 times - maybe even 8 or 9 - while he needs 100 —or more!). This is pure hypothosis.

I have to guess this is also connected to language and also general processing as you’ve pointed out. It’s funny, some words really aren’t a problem. For some reason Pneumonia and many other words have not presented this problem. Or at least not consistently a problem. He may read it correct once or twice and then the third time look at it like he has never seen it in his life.

I think my son’s reading difficulties might be slightly unique. He has a severe RAN deficit along with wordfinding difficulties.
And very high phonemic awareness and blending skills (above 150. Someone told me the other day that anything above 140 is genius). So I have a child with a reading disability who is a genius in phonemic awareness and blending. Neither of these strenghts are in any way obvious. My son is the worst reader in his class.

Thanks for your suggestions! :-)

Hi Laura,

If your son is indeed the worst reader in his class at age 8, take him to a developmental optometrist who has a vision therapy dept. I would bet that a deficiency of binocular vision skills are at the root of his problems.

I worked with a second grader with much the same profile a year or so ago and that child needed vision therapy, though it was anything but obvious at the time.

He needed it, got it, and his reading began to improve. He too had good phonemic skills going in, incidentally…..Rod

I’d say to keep up the corrections, each and every time, no matter how many hundreds of times it takes. He’s learned that he can get away with sort of kind of close guessing, and this is a hard pattern to break.
Also, phonemic awareness is a very very good thing; but the next step is to put this knowledge into practice, and this is where he is falling down. Get a good basic phonics workbook (I personally use Scholar’s Choice Check and Double Check, which are complete, correct, and cheap) and work through it *with* him, step by repetitive step. Yes, it’s slow. However, if you invest the year or two now, he’s got it for the rest of his life, so invest. You will start to get payback from a good phonics program after halfway through Book 1, and a BIG payback halfway through Book 2 when all the digraphs and vowel patterns have been taught.
He has to learn *not* to do a quick glance and guess (Harry for Henry — typical of glance and guess, correct first and last sounds and fill in something in the middle), but to scan words left to right and look for those patterns. It’s a combination of knowledge and habit, and a year or two is reasonable time to work through it.

Rod’s suggestion of having a detailed vison exam and look at vision therapy may also be helpful, certainly worth looking at. But you still have to teach reading skills.

Hi Laura,
Someone in the field told me recently that a “normal ” person (and I use the word loosely) only has to see a word 4-5 times for recognition of that word to be automatic, while a dyslexic person has to see it 1000-1500 times to achieve the same automaticity. Seems like repitition is required even after the necessary skills have been built.

I’m also curious about what you’ve decided with respect to vision therapy.
Karen

I read a study last summer somewhere that found that it took 100 x the number of exposures for the LD students to learn, whatever it was they were teaching, vs. nonLD students.

I believe this, even with multi-sensory teaching, I still have many students who have radically high requirements for exposure and repetition to learn, say, the sound that is represented by a letter or group of letters.

There is another intersting piece, let’s see if I can communicate it well.

For preschool and K children, auditory phonemic awareness training is fine. Once the child is exposed to print, the focus needs to be on the written or spelling patterns. LD students, for whatever reason, do not get the correct letter sequences mapped on to their auditory representation of the sounds (kind of like that).

I have long noticed that the students I teach do not generalize patterns within words. When I was in my second or so year of teaching resource I had an eye opener: I had a half dozen upper graders reading a passage for testing purposes. The word “clay” appeared in the first line. 4/6 could not read this word. Despite the fact that I have always worked with word families and my students could read “play, day….” most could not begin to manage “clay.”

Yes, I do a better job teaching decoding skills now. But, when reading connected text, I still find that most of my students adopt what appears to be an impulsive style, often failing to APPLY the skills I teach and we practice and practice and practice.

I believe that frequently there are several different processing issues that are misfiring in the LD reader or the one we would term dyslexic. I am also coming to believe there is more to mechanical visual issues than the profession likes to acknowledge. Many parents who post here have reported good success with vision therapy.

I am eager to test a student who has been parentally placed fulltime in a private LD clinic that uses PACE, FastForward and all the pricey programs that some folks claim fix LD. I have never had a chance to check out these programs first hand. I get to do his annual review soon, thus I should have the chance to determine whether the $12,000 per year the parent is spending and the therapies have really produced any results. Perhaps I’ll post whatever I learn, in this one situation anyway.

////

Anitya,

from this post (and others of yours I read) I have the “gut feeling” you are very right- whatever you say makes sense when I look at my son.

Yes, he needs thousands of repetitions and yes, for whatever reason he does not apply automatically what he already knows. With Laura’s post I felt like she was talking about my son.

PS. My son is now in private school for LD and yours $12,000 ticket seems quite short for the amount of money they charge, but we certainly hope it will be worth it. The school does not use FastForWord or PACE, but they make the student to master reading passages to 150 wpm before they advance to next passage. They also have to read words in isolation (70 wmp to pass) and decode nonsense words (50 wpm). For the last task, my son had really horrible time with a sheet with words like “bad”, “dad”, “bab” “badabad” et.c. The only word on that sheet that he automatically read was “tabadabad”. In the first reading he could not decode the word, so my husband said it (big mistake, but..) and since he has heard that word, he could read it without the mistake every time he read that page (easily recognizable since it was the longest word on that page). But it would take him for ever to decode the other words. I believe he had made a very good connection between the visual representation of that word and could discriminate it visually very well, while the other words looked very much alike to him (with all these “b”s and “d”s and “p”s) so he really needed to decode letter by letter. Thus, my believe is that he just needs to read and read and read until he will easily connect strings of letters to words/parts of words and needs to build the “sight” vocabulary that would allow him to read automatically majority of text and use his mental energy to get the meaning (and automatically “catch” the mistakes he made realizing that what he just read does not make sense). Obviously, he needs to learn how to decode, so he can approach an unknown word and produce the auditory output to get the meaning.
The major “shortcoming” in the public school and resource room I saw in his school, was the fact that he just did not read that much at school and he did not get reading assignment from resource room. He mostly read decodable readers during his resource room (but that was once a day at best) and in regular class he hardly had a chance to read, since the reading material was just too difficult for him. WE read at home, but I felt it was just not enough for him to really master the skills. This creates the “catch 22” situation and the child is just more and more behind.

I read your post about automaticity with interest because we are one of those parents who have done a lot of private therapy including Fast Forward, Interactive Metronome, Neuronet ect. One thing I have noticed about my son over time is how much faster he learns a new word. I remember when we first started with PG, after doing fast forward. I can’t tell you how many times he sounded out “most” before he recognized it. It was almost painful. Now, I would say, that he will recognize a word in a text after only a few exposures to it. There is a big difference in his ability to learn.

I can see this across the board since last year. We did IM as school was ending and continued with Neuronet this summer. We did not do any academic work this summer except reading out loud. In math, he is getting easily the concepts he struggled with last year. He is actually acing his math quizzes and tests. That only happened last year when it was multiplication facts (we used Math Facts the Fun Way at home). And as the work got harder towards the end of the year, he was lucky to bring home a C.

Beth

yes

Hi Victoria,

You wrote: “Rod’s suggestion of having a detailed vison exam and look at vision therapy may also be helpful, certainly worth looking at. But you still have to teach reading skills.”

I agree with you. However, I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that the worst one or two readers in a class probably have an undetected vision problem that has kept them from making sense of the code.

I have seen the results. Fix the vision, and they quickly are able to absorb the code information. No more 100 repetitions, etc.

I realize that my position is out of the mainstream. But I have worked with a good many very poor readers over the past three years, and almost all of them have needed, and benefited from, vision therapy.

When I get a referral from the vision therapists, I end up with a relatively easy client in most cases. When I get a very poor reader referred from an outside source, that child almost always turns out to have an undetected vision problem.

They still need to learn the code, and they often have to learn to change to a decoding strategy from a guessing strategy as well, which can be the tougher challenge.

I routinely ask if an incoming client reads for pleasure. The bulk of the very poor readers do not. Following vision therapy and reading therapy almost all of my clients have begun on-their-own pleasure reading. And I am certainly not having to do hundreds of repetitions to get things to “sink in.”

Rod

Hi Ron,
My son is weak in visual motor activities including binocularity.
I recently got the results of vision testing and am currently researching to see if I might be able to get therapy covered under insurance.

By the way, do you happen to know if therapy for binocularity includes “occular” exercises? If there’s a difference, do you know what it is?

Thanks for your suggestion!

Hi Karen,
Right now I am seriously considering vision therapy, but am researching to find out if my insurance may cover some of the costs since it is quite expensive….and I have a feeling my son is going to need more than vision therapy.

Fortunately, I may be able to get help with speech through his school. He does have a minor articulation problem (he says “f” for “th”) and since this is no longer developmentally acceptable it looks like he will now qualify for speech. I plan to find out if the SLP can also help with expressive language, word retrieval and RAN.

Although I did order a book that has therapeutic exercises for word retrieval difficulties. It should be arriving at Barnes and Noble any day now! :-)

We started Audioblox this week. I don’t know how helpful it will be, but so far it’s very simple and easy to do – so we’ll give it a try. The exercises seem like they may be useful for us in that they may help increase my son’s processing speed.

There’s a couple of other things I’m researching and waiting to get informaiton about.

You never told me how IM went! What’s your final assessment? What kind of gains (or what areas of improvement) do you feel your son may have made during and following the program?

I’ve come to think it’s definitley important to do “something” rather than nothing.

Whether it’s an expensive program or just putting a lot of time and work into the LD child, I’ve noticed it does make a difference.

It’s funny because this is something I intuitively felt when my son was younger, but intellectually ignored because a typical child often learns almost without being “taught” (they have an easier time automatically picking up things in the environment that some LD children need to have pointed out, repeated and pointed out and repeated again!)— and back then I still assumed that my son was “typical” even though I had this nagging feeling that something was different.

I noticed that when I gave him what might be considered an excessive amount of attention, verbalizing, teaching, etc… it made a big difference. While, if I gave him a “break” from constant attention he would sort of slip “backwards” and it almost seemed like he’d stop learning (or just focus in on what he understood well and was interested in).

Well, I’m not sure what to say about the IM. He didn’t get his overall scores down to the level the IM people like to see, but he did improve a great deal. We did it in August right before school started, and we do see some improvements , but we are not sure how much to attribute to IM , and how much to attribute to natural maturity gained over the summer. What we’ve noticed is: much more focus and stamina at home during homework, less clumsy (I think?) , less obsessive talking. However, his attention at school continues to be a problem… this is not to say it isn’t better than last year - 3rd grade demands more. His reading is improving - better decoding and more sight words in his vocabulary and we are seeing better fluency. I do see a big big improvement in his visual tracking - he can read without using his finger under the words! None of these improvements represent any kind of a breakthru, and we are looking into private LD schools.

I think he had/has visual issues that have somewhat resolved - but I”m thinking about getting an evaluation from a good behavioral optometrist.

But how do I find one - Rod?

Beth,

Math is much improved in my son since IM. I think it is related to sequencing. He can now tell me the number before 10,000, a few months ago he couldn’t tell me the number before 100 even though we went over it many times.

Other things he can do that are math related:

Read charts and graphs
Use a numbers chart to skip count
addition facts are a breeze
He can read a clock without nearly as much of a struggle. He used to stare at it for a long time now he will figure it out in about a minute.

Some of this may be related to visual perception exercises but I believe the sequencing area is all related to IM.

Laura,

If you go the vision therapy route, make sure that the therapist you select does “body work”. In other words, he or she ought to incorporate some things we might think more typical of OT. This is not necessary for all kids but those with integration difficulties really need it.

We did 7 months of vision therapy that was “flat”. We saw improvements but the tracking difficulties persisted. We are finally getting improvements with more therapy using our Neuronet provider. She had a vision therapist she would recommend or she could do it with us (after sending us for another exam). Being into one shop therapy, we opted to stay with her!! But my point is that a good vision therapist does this.

BTW, I have since met several other parents of LD kids who saw the same vision therapist and had the same mediocore results. And he was COVD approved. Of course, these are all kids with complex issues like my son.

Beth

Beth

I have a 9 year old son Hunter who is in the 4th grade, we had Hunter tested for vision problems in August of 2001, after the testing the doctor informed us that Hunter had visual perception and visual spatial and eye tracking problems, at this time vision therapy was recommended I asked the doctor to figure up how much therapy Hunter would need in all, after she got through figuring up the total the amount for vision therapy was almost $6,000. My husband and my jobs are not looking too steady at this time to allow us to borrow the money for the needed therapy, I called my insurance and they said it was not covered, the doctor who performed the vision testing told us that virtually no insurances would cover vision therapy because it is still a controversial means of treating vision difficulties. I think people who have children with these types of problems need to contact some of the high level politicians and get them acquainted with what vision therapy entails and how much it help students in school and everyday life. If you find some insurance that will cover vison therapy please let me know the name of the insurance I have been searching for over a year to find someone to cover this therapy but have been unable to find anyone. Thanks Teresa Sewell

Although you asked Karen, you may want to hear what my son said after IM. He just plainly stated: “it helps me concentrate”. He is 10.5. I do not really think he might have overheard the statement anywhere, because when we started the program, I explained to him that it will mostly help him with his motor skills (like doing better in sports, or dealing better with utensils- not much improvement with the utensils, I should say).

He did not get to 20’s yet- he did 18 sessions, but he was border line on initial assessment, so more likely he just need more sessions. His final score was 33.6 and we plan on doing a few more sessions during winter break.
PS. We did it with a chiropractor and she managed to defer part of the cost through our insurance, not mentioning the fact that my son absolutely loved the body work she did for him after each session…

Hi Beth,
I know what you’re saying regarding “body work.” This place did did test my son’s bilateral integration (ability to coordinate the two sides of his body) and directionality (consistently knowing left from right — he knew when he thought about it, but after he was tested and not thinking about it, during the next test, he held up the wrong hand and didn’t realize it!). Both areas were weak (bilateral integration - age 5, reversal frequency - age 6).

The optomotrist told me that they’d be doing a A LOT of therapy related to these concepts in addition to vision therapy.

Although, I have to think, IM would probably be great for helping to make these particular concepts automatic.

Laura,

IM would help, I’m sure, but it depends how bad he is now. My son scored over 300 ms off when he was first tested for IM. The therapist, newly trained, suggested we do some other type of therapy first. That is what the IM folks she called thought too. We did Neuronet. He then tested at 215—still high but in the first category off the chart rather than the absolute worse one!!!

I think that the therapy we did first made IM much easier and is a critical part of why it was so successful for my son. In making a decision, you might see how he tests on an IM pretest. If he is really off, I would def. do the other therapy first.

It also sounds like to me like you have found someone who has a broad perspective. Vision is intimately linked to other systems and, in my experience, can not be treated in isolation. I was actually told by an OT we saw for Sensory integration issues that many kids who make little progress with vision therapy suddenly make great progress once they do OT. I asked the vision therapist at the time about this and he told me it made more sense to work on vision first. I foolishly bought that line!!!

We are getting gains now in tracking by doing body work (on balance board with velcro and ball) that is differentiated head and eye movement. Turns out that is at least one part of my son’s problems which were not treated at all by the first OD we saw.
Beth

I do know one person (a woman who worked at the office of my son’s previous school). Her insurance covered it. I don’t know what her insurance was, but I know it only covered a certain number of sessions. At the time I spoke with her she was in the midst of requesting (or rather “fighting”) to get coverage for more treatment. Sometimes you do have to write letters and fight to get extra coverage for these kinds of things.

I think they said Cigna had good vision therapy coverage, but I’d have to double check on that. I’ll try to find that out within the next few days.

In the meantime, there are exercises you can do at home for visual perception. I know there’s a book by a guy…I think his last name is Rosner???? It’s at the book store and has a series of visual perceptual exercises that help strengthen visual perception. I remember someone here was using it and finding it helpful. I’ll try to find out the name and correct author. I don’t have it, but I did see it at the bookstore last winter and thought it looked quite useful.

Wow!!! How neat that you were able to get this through a chiropractor and got some medical coverage! That is sooo great.

My son has very good concentration skills. I’m curious to know if IM might might help with processing and/or motor “timing.” Although he’s “bright,” my son seems “slow.” He speaks slowly, moves a little slower. He is not great with sports, but does really like them. Since PACE helps with processing speed, it’s hard to know which program might be more useful.

Although improvement in sports sounds pretty good (a nice confidence builder!).

Laura,

If you do IM make sure you mention the bilateral issues to the therapist. My therapist was actually very receptive to my input. She sensed that I knew what his issues were. (She has a child with ld and I think she saw a little of herself in me.)I wish I had asked her to do more bilateral exercises ; Right hand/left foot, left foot/right hand.I think she didn’t do that enough for him. It is the only thing I regret.
It is really the area that he remains weak when doing IM. To my mind it is the reason that we will be going back.

Hi Karen,

You wrote: “I”m thinking about getting an evaluation from a good behavioral optometrist. But how do I find one?”

Try www.covd.org to start. Use their “Find a Doctor” button and then check the listing in your state, or nearby states.

Then, I would suggest making some phone calls. You are looking for a behavioral optometrist who regularly refers to, or runs, a vision therapy department. You would not be out of line to ask the vision therapists for the names of a few satisfied parents to contact. The VT’s I know could supply dozens of names, for instance.

As for programs, it is possible to structure vision therapy so that it is relatively inexpensive ($500 to $1,000) by visiting the therapist, getting a set of exercises to work with your child on over the next week or so, return for re-evaluation, get more exercises to do at home, etc. Of course, some issues may require more time and expense to address, but generally I don’t see parents complaining about the expense when it’s set up the way I’ve described above.

Where I believe it gets expensive is when the vision therapists want to do all the work, requiring many move visits, and much more money. And then, of course, there are areas of the U.S. where just about everything is way overpriced.

Hope this helps….Rod

Hi,

Vision therapists argue among themselves over these same issues. I suspect that when gross motor functioning is weak, that it should be addressed along with, or even prior to, vision function. However, a lot of fine motor activity is directly tied to visual functioning. For instance, handwriting often improves during vision therapy, because the child is finally seeing accurately what he is writing (and where his fingers are going.)

Again, I stress the importance of calling the vision therapist and getting the names of satisfied parents….and then calling them….especially where the cost of the therapy is in the thousands of dollars…..Rod

Hi Beth,
Please explain the tracking exercise you’re doing! I’d like to add it to my “home therapy clinic” ;-)

Laura,

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. Based on my experiences, I would not do PACE with a kid with sensory motor issues. PACE has some sensory motor exercises but it is primarily a cognitive development program. We got some gains from doing it, but not enough to justify the costs or time. Basically, we hit a wall very early. In a shorter period of time, for less money, we got more gains from IM. If I were in your situation, given what I know about your child, I would do the vision therapy (given the approach the OD has) and then IM.

We didn’t get any attention gains from PACE but got major ones from IM. I think it is because of where my son’s deficits are located—on the sensory motor level.

Beth

Actually, I was thinking about starting with IM. For one thing, it’s a shorter therapy and it sounds like something that just might help with these timing issues. And, if anything, it may help forge some neural connections to help automate bilateral integration.

So far, the biggest hurdle has been to get a hold of the closest provider. She’s been out of town and it’s difficult to reach her on the phone.

It makes sense to do IM before PACE. You have to keep beat with a metronome with PACE.

Beth

It is hard to explain and really it wouldn’t help your child unless they had the same kind of problem. My son moved his head when he tracked so the underlying problem was lack of head/body and head/eye differentiation. The exercises involve standing on a balance board and either using velcro on his head and my hand or throwing a ball which he follows with his eyes. A good vision therapist, which it sounds like you have found, should be able to resolve such problems.

Beth

Thanks for explaining that. My son doesn’t have a problem with moving his head while reading so the exercise probably wouldn’t be helpful for him.

I’m still in the midst of researching RAN deficits and various therapies that may help (there’s very little information). I did correspond with a researcher at one of the universities who told me that he believes RAN deficits are not related to visual processing or some overall slow processing speed, but instead to problems with verbal fluency that may be the result of poor verbal representations in the lexicon.

I think there are some things visual therapy may help my son with, but I’m still trying to piece together the entire puzzle (as if I can really figure out the answer!).

I wish Neuronet was available in Southern California. It sounds like it might be a good combination of what may be helpful for my son.

Laura, I find that very interesting. My son has (I believe..) a RAN deficit. He had difficulty with the picture naming part of the WJIII, and it would explain alot of what I see with his reading. His speech has always had something not quite right- he’s a fast talker so its not like you notice him pausing and searching for words. He does repeat phrases particuarly if he’s telling a story and is excited. Recently his first reading tutor referred to his speech as dysfluent. His speech therapist didn’t think that was the right technical term, but we all agree there is something effortful about how he produces speech. I wonder if that’s all tied in somehow. Please keep educating us - all these connections between verbal, visual, etc are hard to analyze. I’d love to hear more , as you discover things.

Hi Karen,
Interestingly, today I read a case study about a child who had adequate phonological skills, yet had a naming-speed (or RAN) deficit and a reading disability.

According to the authors, this was the first in-depth study of a reading disabled student with a profound single deficit in naming-speed (as oppossed to a double deficit or a single phonological deficit).

One particularly interesting thing I noted is that the background information revealed this student had difficulty in motor planning and integrating multiple sensory information. This made me wonder….some of us here have children with RAN deficits. I’m not sure how many fit in the single-deficit naming-speed category as my son does. But, many of us who do have children with RAN deficits also refer to problems with sensory integration and motor planning.

So now I’m wondering if these are connected. And if so, is the SID responsible for, or a product of this? The research didn’t mention anything about a connection specifically with SID, but rather that there can be multiple sources of disruption that cause naming-speed deficits. (I’m sure this is a topic complex enough to require it’s own research).

By the way, the child in this study had very good language skills.

That is interesting. I will tell you that Interactive Metronome somehow helped my son break through the wall we had hit with the fast naming exercise in Neuronet therapy. He still isn’t into a “normal” range but we have made rapid progress. It would behoove me to explain why but does suggest that there is possibly a link between these motor issues and RAN. Now I know his NN therapist thinks that too—and she always does body work first before fast naming. Still, there was something in the precision of IM that movd him along.

Beth

Maybe its not that the motor issues create the RAN deficit, but that all our boys have glitches in a particular part of the brain and it results in multiple manifestations. Just a thought…

This actually makes more sense. I know also that if areas of the brain are adjacent to one another, you can have spillover affects from one area to another (both good and bad).

Beth

Thanks! Who needs a neuropsychologist when you so many dedicated moms figuring this stuff out.

Another thing to consider, if they are related and the problems stem from a similar section in the brain (or adjacent to), and RAN cannot directly be remediated (at least we’re not certain about this since there’s little research data indicating what may actually be of benefit - or at least I haven’t yet found it, but I’m looking!!! ;-), perhaps “remediating” this area of the brain in other ways (as with motor planning and SI) can help either by acting directly or through a “spill over” effect (as Beth pointed out).

I think it might be interesting to run a survey to see how many RAN deficit kids have motor planning and/or any type of general SI issues (and exactly what SI issues…also language problems).

I just spoke with a provider (Unfortunately, quite far away from my home!) who combines the two therapies. When I described my son and some of his previous testing she told me that they’d probably split 1 hour of therapy time between about 30 minutes of IM and then 30 minutes of PACE (they also use numerous other therapies depending on what a child may need). According to the therapist at this office, the doctor who runs this clinic was one of the first IM providers on the west coast, and, over time, he has found that IM is much more effective in combination with other types of therapy.

Interesting. I think we got more bang out of IM by immed. following it up with more Neuronet. I can see PACE being much more effective this way for kids with sensory motor issues. So it may be that you get broader effects by combining IM with other therapy.

Beth

I have read recently about a link between ADD and motor difficulties.I like Karen’s theory of spill over. I think that the brain is like a machine with many moving parts. When one part moves to slow it can affect other parts. When you fix one deficit area (like timing through IM) you allow other parts to work better together.

I think that is why some of us have seen varying effects of IM. It seems to have improved different areas for different children. Timing improves for all but the spillover is slightly different in each one.

Just a thought.

nt

I think what some of the “spill over” is, in my experience, is the ability to learn things that were difficult more easily. I see my son learning to do cursive this fall when last spring it was an impossible tangle of bumbs and squiggles. I see the improvements with fast naming exercises the same way—IM didn’t make him necessarily better at it but IM helped him to learn more easily. This may be why the therapist talks about getting more from IM while combining it with other therapy. The IM makes the PACE (for example) easier to learn.

I also think you get slightly different spillover through different, but related therapies.

Beth

I think the idea of a broad based approach may be pretty effective. One of the providors I spoke with (a different one) mentioned that they worked with a child over the summer and did IM, PACE, LMB and some other things. They told me by the end of summer it was like a different child. She was much more confident, spoke to people (prior to this she’d hide). Overall, she made over a two-year gain (I’m not sure what they were aiming for and if that’s the kind of gain she needed. I was in a hurry when they returned my call).

For us, I’m not sure where we’ll go. This one place (the one I described above) is a bit closer to my home. I haven’t asked them about combining therapies, but they told me they’d call me later today and I’ll ask about that.

The other place I described in my previous post is quite far from my home (over an hour away -when there’s no traffic- and could be much longer with traffic! :-o). But they did mention they could do treatments at minimum 2x a week as long as I’d do extra work with him during the week. If we didn’t have school and I didn’t have a second child with TONS of homework to worry about, this time consuming drive might not seem so overwhelming. Also, they are booking treatments for January/February right now, so it would be awhile before we could start.

I’d think about waiting until near the end of the school year (and put your reservation in!!). I know that is a long ways off but what you describe would be hard to pull off logistically. My son did IM starting in May and that worked well because there were only a couple weeks with a lot of homework. Towards the end of the year, everything slacked off. Of course, they could be more serious about homework longer where you are at!!!

I think IM can be done during the school year but PACE is more intense.

Beth

You have to do multiple therapies, either concurrently or in some logical order. The OT we did when ds was 5 (boy did we NOT know what we were getting into then…) didn’t make him a graceful athlete or proficient writer. But it cleared away some of the paths to other skills he needed. Even though we never had a master plan we just kept dealing with the issues as they arose and I’m sure they’ve all had positive effects.

Now that we are looking at cognitive and academic issues its much more complex but the same principle applies. While we didn’t see alot of immediate impact from IM, I do believe that the improvement in internal timing will only yield positive things in the long run. If he’s a little more fluent, or is visually a little more organized right now maybe that’s why. Or if he’s a little more focused than maybe the reading remediation will hit its mark better.

I feel like with my son we have to bombard him with lots of different kinds of input because there are so many things going on.

This is why I do not accept any limitations for my son. He’s only 8 1/2 and the brain of a child is so malleable!!

Sorry to get carried away but I’m feeling very passionate about this today. PS, we are off to the psychiatrist this afternoon to talk about if meds should be considered. Will report back!

I totally agree. We haven’t always done things in the right order but despite that my son is not the same kid as he was three years ago. Then his teacher told me he just doesn’t retain anything and he can’t generalize from one situation to another. This was a kid who couldn’t learn.

He still isn’t average (did I ever imagine what a wonderful word that would be) but he is at least in the normal curve for his class. And he is learning—getting mostly A’s this year except for reading comprehension (We really need to do V & V). It just is more work for him than other kids.

And how many kids do you know ask a plant breeder for rare palm plants by their latin names at age 9? (sometimes we just have to remember how many other wonderful talents our kids have that may not “count” at school).

Beth

Karen,

Thanks for that! You can’t even imagine what that post means to me.
In the IEP meeting today the principle (a woman with a child entering college who has special needs.) stated that I should not do the amount of work I do with him at home. She said that I should just be his parent.

I just looked her squarely in the eye and said, “Well if I had taken that advice I would have a child who still wouldn’t be able to read.”

How dare someone say that to a parent! It is the old,”Your child has a disability, accept it,” mentality.

This is backwards thinking and clearly a sign that this person is not familar with the latest brain research. I give up on the school ever realizing what these children can attain.

These people wanted him to stay in sped with the modified, dumbed down curriculum. Like we would ever achieve improvement in brain functioning with that strategy.

PS. They gave me what I want. Getting a new classroom on Monday.

Linda,

Good for you!!! And good luck to your son!!!

I do think you give something up by taking on role of teacher ect. but there are rewards as well. We have been working almost constantly with our son since the end of first grade when we were handed the old “accept that you have a child with a disability” party line. He is not the same child and that is not because of the school.

I honestly think the schools cannot do this kind of work but they can support the parents who do. I had to laugh when I mentioned that the tutor wanted me to work 45 minutes a day with my son on reading. There was this collective horror and they started asking me about whether he played any sports ect. Clearly, there was a feeling that I was depriving my son of a childhood. I thought to myself “if you only knew all that I have done.”

Beth