auditory learner

This was my son to a T. Gosh, I wish I had him in vision therapy back then. My son was the only child I knew who didn’t like T.V. and avoided video games like the plague. He avoided coloring, puzzles, all work that required the use of his vision.

He couldn’t process those letters. He avoided all close work because it was physically painful for him. He has many vision issues including tracking, focusing (accomodation) visual perception issues, directionality issues etc etc…

I don’t know which of these made it difficult for him to learn to recognize his letters and numbers. Maybe it was all of them.

Since you have pre-determined that the letters are *going* to look “wavy” to her, and you may have already biased the issue by asking her if they look that way, well, she is probably going to give you what you want and agree that they look wavy.
If you wait a while so she forgets this idea, and you ask her to look at a page and ask her why she doesn’t like to do it, without any suggestions implied in the question, you may get a more meaningful answer.
It is entirely possible that she has a visual tracking issue — it does happen. It’s also possible that she’s a highly social child who prefers human interaction. It’s also possible that someone in the past has tried to get her to do worksheets and she is rebelling. It’s also possible that’s she’s a highly physically active child and doesn’t care for sitting still.
She could also be farsighted and have troubel with close focusing — rare in small children, but it does happen, in my family for example. You need an intelligent optometrist to diagnose this, because many don’t bother to look.

Victoria,

That is what everyone said about my son. He was just active, just a “boy.” I cringe when people say things like that now.

There were glaring signs that were missed by me and I consider myself a pretty attentive mom.

An evaluation could help answer this.

Absolutely an evaluation would help. I am saying that to do a worthwhile evaluation, you cannot start be pre-judging what you are going to find, nor by asking leading questions to get the answers you expect.

I’m not denying that vision problems exist — I have some nasties myself that have messed up my life in many ways (I’m essentially blind in one eye due to *deliberately* ignored and mistreated amblyopia). But you have to start with an open mind and look at *all* the possibilities. In my case, the people in schools at the time were so convinced that Freudian problems undelay everything that they ignored a real vision problem. Whatever your bias, a bias can lead to misjudgements.

And I have real questions about the “wavy letters” and “words running off the page” reports. Three things: first, *I* can make the letters go wavy and run off the page, if I tense my eyes in certain ways. Used to do this often when bored as a child. If you ask the child leading questions and make her think this is what is supposed to happen, you can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, the people who report this and have “cures” for it seem to far too often fall into a certain political camp/ belief system — and that makes no sense if it is a real physical problem; a real problem would be spread all over. Finally, in thirty years of tutoring and teaching, I have never run into anyone who complained of this. My students get to know me and talk to me about almost anything, and if this were such a common thing I would expect to have heard of it somewhere. But of course I don’t ask those leading questions …

Victoria,

To set your mind at ease, I did not ask her leading questions.

I let her look at pictures of distortion and tell me if that is what she saw.

I was only “thinking to myself” that distortions might be the problem. Yes,
she definitely needs to be evaluated by a doctor to see if there is a vision
problem.

I did give her a red overlay and she told me that “really” helped. But, I agree,
she definitely needs to go to a doctor and be officially evaluated.

Thanks for the input.
BE

Most kids who have a problem with letters running together can not explain it. It is the way they see letters and they don’t know that it is not supposed to happen.

My adult husband told me that the letters run into each other when he is tired but even that was after many probing questions on my part. It had been like this for so long he didn’t even realize it wasn’t normal.

That’s the sad part, Linda. They don’t realize that it isn’t normal; therefore,
it is so often, too often, overlooked and never diagnosed.

BE

> And I have real questions about the “wavy letters” and “words running off the page” reports.

> Three things: first, I can make the letters go wavy and run off the page, if I tense my eyes in certain ways. Used to do this often when bored as a child. If you ask the child leading questions and make her think this is what is supposed to happen, you can create a self-fulfilling prophecy

Hi victoria,

I’m going to take a shot at your three points. With regard to the first, yes, people can cross their eyes and make letters do strange things. The problem with the kids who it happens to all the time is that they can’t then refocus to stable binocular vision. They keep seeing what you have to work to see.

(Actually, given your descriptions of your eye history, I would suspect you started with the same sort of problem and overcame it with a combination of good phonics training combined with shutting down one eye…this is the way the brain sometimes resolves the issue, unfortunately.)

> Second, the people who report this and have “cures” for it seem to, far too often, fall into a certain political camp/belief system — and that makes no sense if it is a real physical problem; a real problem would be spread all over.

I’m not sure I understand this one. From all our postings, I would say that you and I are about as close to the same “camp”, assuming you’re talking about approaches to reading, as we could get. And yet, I think I’m one of the stronger advocates for vision therapy on this board.

As to it’s being a “real physical problem,” (which it certainly is) what makes you think it isn’t “spread all over?” I would wager that it’s present in the following populations of students…rich and poor, rural and urban, whole language taught and phonics taught, girls and boys, adults and children, even Republicans and Democrats…humm, maybe not, that could explain some things….just kidding.

> Finally, in thirty years of tutoring and teaching, I have never run into anyone who complained of this. My students get to know me and talk to me about almost anything, and if this were such a common thing I would expect to have heard of it somewhere. But of course I don’t ask those leading questions

How come you don’t see the same thing? Well, there are at least two ways to go wrong when it comes to questioning. Ask leading ones and get the answer you expect (eventually) and don’t ask the question at all because you are sure you already know the answer.

You have taught many kids with vision problems over the years, but you just haven’t asked yourself if there was a vision reason for why some of them were much more difficult to teach than others. There was, but until you are at least willing to concede the possibility that such an answer even exists, you will never ask the question…..the other side of the coin, you see……Rod

PS: I respect you tremendously, victoria, and write the above in all seriousness….you’re really missing something here. I see these kids a lot.

Hi BE,

I’m going to wander a lot here, because your post raises a lot of issues.

We used to not even have Kindergarten, then we had it for half days. The Scandanavian countries don’t even start with teaching reading until about the age of 7.

There’s some good reasons for holding back on reading instruction in the schools…..all kids aren’t ready for it developmentally yet. So, right away, in Kindergarten (!) we set up success and failure.

Kindergarten shoiuld be all about development, not about reading instruction. Kids should learn to play together, when to share, when to assert themselves. They should be doing things that develop their motor skills, both fine and gross, one of which is the fine-motor skill of near-point vision. They should be learning what books are, and how they work, and how exciting they can be, but reading instruction is best left until the next grade.

They should be doing all kinds of word play, but listening/talking word play, not reading/writing word play, so that they start to hear rhyme, begin to hear (and identify) the sounds that make up the spoken words.

I realize that testing is driving sight-word instruction down into Kindergarten, and I think this is absolutely the worst instruction practice that could be devised. Take kids that can’t handle the skills necessary for the task, teach them to read using a method that doesn’t work, and then start labeling them LD/ADD/whatever by early first grade because they “failed” Kindergarten!!!

Now, I realize you’re very likely an excellent Kindergarten teacher and I’m not directing all the above at you. You probably even agree with much of what I wrote, but my gosh, we’ve got to come to our senses one of these days on all this.

As for the vision issue. I agree wholeheartedly with your tendency to be alert for the possibility of a visual issue. What I disagree with is your tendency to label the child an “auditory learner.” The problem with this is that we then decide that this kid needs a lot of “auditory instruction” because that’s how she “gets it.” (I’m not saying you do this….but others do.)

Well, I’d argue the opposite. Her auditory skills are apparently in place, so why not work on her weaknesses….it’s Kindergarten, after all. If we had no Kindergarten, she’d be cutting paper dolls or playing house, or jacks, or pick-up-sticks (Yes, I remember pick-up-sticks) and would be developing near-point vision skills. I know, we don’t do that stuff anymore, but maybe part of the reason we don’t is because the vision issues are so poorly understood.

Okay, next point….this is the more important one for your situation, by the way.

Optometric research (which teachers/education professionals tend to ignore) indicates that at age 5, approximately 50 percent of kids will have finally developed stable binocular vision. These kids will see just fine at near-point. They’re the ones who can learn to color inside the lines, and who are curious about books.

The other half of the kids (approximately) are further back on the developmental curve and need more near-point visual stimuli to help them develop their binocular vision. That is, they need more directed play, not more reading instruction.

According to the optometric research, in a class of 20 five year olds, 8 to 10 of them will not be ready to read. By age six, that number will drop by only one or two more kids. It will continue to drop by one or two kids for the next couple of years, so that by age 9, you will only have four to six kids who have not yet developed stable binocular vision (out of 20.) These are, of course, the kids we call LD (or who just miss the cut.)

I’m not saying all LD kids have vision problems, but I am saying that most kids with unstable binocular vision by age 9 will be being evaluated for LD services. The exception will be the kid who got a good solid phonics training from the beginning and it stuck. That child may be a good reader, but will not enjoy reading, because it makes him too uncomfortable visually.

It is extremely important for you to be alert to vision issues then. But you need to realize that a certain percentage of those kids are going to be just fine by age 7, sometime in first grade, and that you just need to work on their near-point vision skills.

Then there’s the kid that’s going to be LD. One way to identify him is to pay attention to the family history. If Mom or Dad had trouble learning to read, the problem is more likely to persist. If the child has other fine-motor issues in speech and finger-control, vision is likely to also be affected. If the child has an obvious vision misalignment, with one eye sometimes not tracking with the other, it may go away, but in the worst way, by the brain shutting down one eye permanently.

What to do? Check the family history, refocus on vision-related play activities, develop the girl’s phonemic awareness so that she’s able to make sense of print when she can finally see it, and find a good developmental optometrist in your area (or out of area, if necessary) in case his services prove necessary. (How to refer to him is, of course, another can of worms entirely.)

Once you become more aware of the vision issue, and of it’s huge genetic component, you will become better able to determine which kids are likely to be “late bloomers” and which ones are headed to the LD track. The ones headed to the LD track need to be referred to the developmental optometrist. In a perfect world, all kids would see one before starting first grade, but it’s not a perfect world…….Rod

PS: I ran into a mother of a past client the other day. Her son is now 14 and when Mom was told by another parent that vision therapy wasn’t supposed to be effective, the son told that other parent in no uncertain terms that it made a huge difference for him! Unfortunately, he had to wait until he was 12 before he finally got vision therapy. Whose fault is that? Certainly not his.

PPS: To the one or two of you who read this all the way to the end..nothing further…*s*

Rod - the political camp I am talking about is the camp that goes for snake-oil cures, and if those don’t work, insists that dyslexics are absolutely unable to learn to read (or do second languages, or do math, or . . ) and therefore absolutely must have every accommodation under the sun and some not heard of — I even saw one person who was convinced that her child, being dyslexic, had an automatic right to a passing grade on the high school exit tests. You are not in that camp!

No, I’m not the one with strabismus — that was my brother, and he got excellent treatment for it.
I’m the one with astigmatism and different focus in the two eyes, which didn’t cause problems with moving letters on the page, rather with fatigue and headaches; and I ran into the Freudians who instead of looking at my eyes decided I was trying to imitate my big brother.

Honestly, I do ask my students what they see, if they can identify things on the page, if they’re tired, etc. I get very honest answers about everything, but again never about “moving letters”. I hear that the stories are dull and stupid, that the pictures are ugly, that writing hurts their hands, that I’m just trying to boss them aroungd and make them do things my way, that math is boring, that they got into a fight at school, that they’re hungry or thirsty, everything. But I don’t hear about “moving letters”. I do stop the reading immediately and take a break if I hear about a headache; it isn’t all that common.

Last week I was working with a boy whom I would consider mildly dyslexic. He does have some moderate language issues, which have been exacerbated by careless second-language teaching — they assume he knows things that he doesn’t, and then blame him for being inattentive. He began writing backwards in K and nobody stopped it, “Invent your own writing” was the style, so working both directions on the page became a habit. Then of course in Grade 2 cursive was a disaster as was spelling. I’ve been working with him for two months and we have about 80% reduced his writing reversals. He actually reads pretty close to grade level, better than all the other Grade 2 kids I’ve seen for a long time, and quite fluently, with good but unanalytic sounding-out skills (he can say the sound of almost any word up to two syllables plus suffix but doesn’t consciously work it out); his basic comprehension is very good but he has second-language issues on the details. However, he was rated by the private “dyslexia support center” as “severely dyslexic”!!! (I’d love to see how they would rate the kids who reach grade 3 not recognizing the alphabet — end of the world??)
So, I gave him a workbook exercise, like ten or so we have done before, reviewing automatic letter recognition. This one however looked specifically for reversals; he had to circle all the b’s and B’s mixed in randomly with d’s and p’s and P’s and q’s and a few other letters, about six b’s and B’s mixed in with a dozen of the others. The funny thing about this was that he did it twice as fast as I could!! No, I happen to be a very very fast reader, and I usually can watch the student doing the workbook exercise and give him immediate feedback without the slightest difficulty. But he just zipped through this one perfectly and I had to follow behind and double-check. It wasn’t a fluke; a few days later he did the same for the d’s and D’s mixed randomly with others including b’s. This is clearly NOT a kid with a perceptual reversal problem. He does however have a writing reversal problem, which I therefore think is a physical habit, and it is slowly coming around with physical retraining. The particular child in question is exceptionally tall for his age but not very coordinated, say low average for his age — I believe his nervous system may still be catching up with the growth of his body.
This same kid was given a green plastic overlay by the “dyslexia support center”. The first day I was with him he read a page with it and a page without — with exactly the same speed and fluency. I put it to the side and he never asked to put it over the page again — it was there and I didn’t say anything, left the choice up to him. He doesn’t care and works just as well without it as with, except that with it, he has an extra distraction to slow him down. This kind of experience is why I am a skeptic about the overlays and that whole system.

Hi victoria,

Thanks for taking what I said seriously and commenting in like manner. I always worry about these exchanges degenerating into personal attacks.

First, colored overlays…..there is very little research support for these and they only are supposed to address one particular vision issue, (scotopic sensitivity syndrome?) which if it exists at all, is rare…not at all like the vision problems addressed by vision therapy.

Second, moving letters….while this may not be as rare, it is rare to have a child be able to tell you, pre-vision therapy, that letters were doing strange things. They figure everyone sees the world the same way. After vision therapy, some are capable of explaining what was going on before, but even this is not that common. What happens is that their symptoms disappear and they become much more receptive to instruction…they learn to read faster, in other words. Again, I see this a lot.

Third, your family history…..like it or not, it’s a history of vision problems, and while I may be on thinner ice here, I would guess that vision therapy would have made some difference had you ever been offered it.

I’m going to elaborate a bit on this, but bear in mind that I’m doing some speculating here. Each eye relays signals to the brain and the brain does it’s best to build synchronization into the process so that the muscles of the eyes aim both eyes at the same point simultaneously. However, this is a developmental process, as are nearly all vision processes.

When the brain is unsuccessful at aiming the eyes accurately, it receives two competing, and different, and therefore confusing, images. The first response is, I believe, for the brain to alternately suppress first one eye and then the other intermittently. This is documented in optometric research, incidentally…the suppression phenomenon, that is, but not the reason for it happening…that’s my speculation.

I believe that, through this alternating process, the brain is attempting to train the eye muscles to align each eye properly. First, it’s getting left eye input, then both (do they agree?) then right eye, then both eyes (do they agree yet?) etc. In time, starting with bigger objects and moving to smaller and smaller ones (as in smaller typefaces) this continual cycling back and forth results in the eye muscles becoming sufficiently coordinated so that the images almost always agree. At this point, suppression ceases, as the comparative feedback is no longer necessary (This is again speculation on my part, but good readers rarely demonstrate suppression and poor readers often do.)

Some kids never achieve stable binocular vision and the suppression surfaces soon after they begin reading too fine a print size. The headaches come (sometimes) along with the confusion, the mistakes, the random carelessness, etc. More important, they go out of learning mode and into frustration mode.

And, in some cases, the brain gives up one trying strategy and adopts another strategy, which could have happened in your case (or not.) It starts to go monocular instead of binocular. It simply decides to stop accepting data from one of the two eyes. This can lead to one eye losing acuity (amblyopia) and even to the drifting of that eye so that it isn’t even aimed at the print any longer (strabismus.) I believe though, that most people start with the strabismus, rather than gradually move into it, but I could be wrong about that.

Perhaps it would help if I stated the following: I do believe that even people with some significant binocular vision deficits can learn to read very well. It will take good phonics training and they may never really be comfortable enough to want to read for sustained periods of time, but they can learn and are teachable. What I’m also saying though is that this is often the hard way to go about it. Fix the vision and they will learn much faster, and will also learn to like to read, because they can do it comfortably. I am firmly convinced that this is true, and I am comfortable that there is sufficient research out there to justify my position. But you’ve got to go looking for it somewhere other than the reading research journals…..Rod

Rod,
Thanks for your input.

I am a Title 1 remedial reading teacher for grades K-2 and dyslexia
teacher for grades 3 and 4.

I tested this kg. student with the CTOPP and her blending and
segmenting skills were excellent. Her short term memory is excellent.

Her problem is she does not want to look at print. The decision is
now with her mom. I sincerely hope that she is evaluated by a doctor
soon.

Again, thanks for taking the time to reply.
BE

Hi BE,

Ah, I see I assumed wrong about you being a Kindergarten teacher…..that’s what’s so hard about these “you talk…I talk” exchanges….we end up making assumptions that aren’t correct all the time.

I hope I didn’t press too many hot buttons then on the reading instruction issues….sorta got on the soapbox and couldn’t get off.

Anyway, I would really quiz the mother about a family tendency to avoiding reading in the early grades. If there is none, I’d worry a little less, but would still want to see her actively using nearpoint vision for games, coloring, etc. When using print, use really big print, so that she’s not as frustrated by the instruction.

As for the doctor, I assume you mean a developmental optometrist. It’s going to take someone who’s looking for these sort of problems, right? In your line of work, if you can find competent vision therapists, you’re way ahead of the game….good luck….Rod

Try touch. Give her wooden puzzle letters in a bag where she cannot see them but can touch them.

Good idea, Sara. Thanks.
BE

Yes, Rod, so many parents think that if the child is tested for 20/20 vision,
and nothing has been found, then the child’s vision is ok.

I did send some information to the mom about being tested by a developmental optometrist. Now the decision is hers.

Thanks for your reply.
BE

I answered you last night, but the computer swallowed it and burped.
Try again.

First, I looked up “victuals” and found something interesting — if you didn’t see it, message a while ago “More than you ever needed to know about the history of English”

One thing where my experience diverges strongly from yours: yes, my family has a good deal of eye problems. No, it wasn’t hard to teach us to read, and no, none of us are reluctant readers. Quite the contrary. My brother did resent the word-memorization that the schools were doing, so Mom taught him phonics as Grandma had told her, and he got it in a month or two, sixth birthday. I was hanging around in the kitchen and got it too, fourth birthday. My daughter saw me working with other kids and crawled into my lap and insisted on getting in on the fun, at age 2. This is a family where the common instruction is “Get your nose out of that book and go outside for some fresh air!” Brother has strabismus since birth, I have amblyopia, and daughter has a weird retinal defect. Both of my parents were regular readers, mom getting back on the internet at age 81, and both farsighted, father also colour-blind. Out of five people here, the only vision problem that *might* be worsened by close work is my amblyopia. So your generalization about people with vision problems needing a lot of training and having difficulty sustaining reading just doesn’t hold.

My experience is that people who have had a lot of *bad* training are reluctant readers and can’t sustain reading, but that is a different story. I am convinced that a lot of beginning reading programs actively teach bad habits that cause a lot of trouble later. These bad habits include bad tracking and stress and looking away from the print and staring at the pen-point when writing (thus developing strained posture and non-fluency), among others. I have seen these being actively taught and I have worked hard re-training many kids who have been taught this way.

The same people who sell the plastic overlays as a supposed cure-all for everything including autism also are the group that promotes the “wavy letters” and “words sliding off the page” diagnoses. I doubt these theories first from experience, and I doubt them even more when I see them in company with other unproven and overstretched claims.

If a kid will tell me that a textured pen feels yucky and a noisy fridge bothers him and the lunchroom smells awful, why should the sense of vision be different and he is in some way blocked from telling me that the page is hard to see or focus on? OK, some kids don’t verbalize complaints and some kids don’t know what they should say, but overall if there is something in this complaint, some people should be verbalizing it independently, without prompting.
And they should have similar detail problems with pictures, which in general they don’t — most of my Grades 1-4 students are a heck of a lot better at finding details in pictures than I am, and five times as fast.

I find that in general I can retrain tracking. The main question is how long the bad habits have been ingrained; one to two months of retraining for every year doing things all mixed up in school, on average. This is probably the same thing you’re getting from vision therapy as far as reading skills; yes, VT could proabably help a lot of other things too.

Hi victoria,

First, yes I did see and read the “victuals” message. I was trying to think of a question I wanted to ask you about the Oxford dictionary at the time but couldn’t remember it, then time passed…..I think the question I had was—does the Oxford dictionary recognize the schwa? I read somewhere that it didn’t, I think….just curious

Back to vision. Your family is certainly not typical of the type of vision issues I’m seeing. Once strabismic or amblyopic you are down to one eye and you won’t experience the confusion that those with reading-related vision problems experience. Also, these kids can learn to read, but probably only via phonics, but they will either not like to read or will be uncomfortable enough that they won’t do it for long stretches.

It is a rare child who verbalizes that something is wrong with his vision in this regard. Even the reports of moving or doubled letters may be simply misinterpretations of what is actually going on with their vision. What seems to be happening is that both eyes are receiving different messages and that the brain intermittently shuts off first one message, then the other, with periods of time when both eyes’ inputs are being received simultaneously. This stuff can actually be detected, or at least the suppression can. All you do with them is put red/green glasses on them and have them read through acetate with red/clear/green transparent stripes. A child who is suppressing (or an adult) loses vision through one of the colored stripes when it happens.

I would really suggest that you read at least a little of the optometric literature on this before you drop it. In my opinion, the kids who are taught to read without having their vision needs addressed are very difficult to teach, but CAN be taught using the type of method that you and I use. However, it takes persistance and the right approach, as you so often say. My experience has been that if you first address the vision issue, you will then get a much more eager student, he will learn much faster, and he will start reading for pleasure.

I sincerely believe that what you’re doing is working, and working well, but that you’re taking the long route around with the kids who are visually challenged. I also happen to think that most kids who have trouble learning to read have vision issues that have gone undiagnosed, and that many people with vision issues who learned to read using a good phonics system avoid reading because it makes them uncomfortable. If you start looking for this, you will almost certainly see it yourself…..Rod