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Vision Therapy

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

My son had his first VT appointment. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this doctor (who is 5 minutes from my home) as much as I liked the one who is over an hour away. The other doctor uses IM, PACE and a slew of other therapies in his VT practice. He mentioned that he grew up with vision related learning disabilities, so he’s very passionate about helping LD kids.

It’s just my luck that this whole doctor situation couldn’t be reversed.

Regardless, I want to share some of the exercises we received:

***(1) “Hart Chart Near-Far Focus Change” This exercise is for learning to control the focusing of eyes at both far and near and to rapidly switch from far to near and back again efficiently and accurately without losing place.

Materials: (a) Large chart with letters (10 lines) approximately 22 font. This chart has capital letters, but I think lower case may be better since most written words are LC.
(b) Small chart (the same exact chart of letters reduced to about 12 font). (c) Eye patch.

With a ruler make lines horizontal and vertical halfway through chart. Tape chart to eye level and stand back, hold small chart up in such a way that you can see both charts at the same time. With eye patch on one eye, read first five letters from one chart and next five letters from the second chart. Continue until finished with the entire thing. Move eye patch to other eye and do again.

***(2) Ballgame activity to help with tracking a moving object in space and eye/hand coordination.

Hang a ball on a string a little lower than waist high in a fairly large open space. Draw letters on the ball .

(a) Hit ball back and forth between child and helper. Use whole palm of hand. Alternate from right to left. Use eye patch and alternate eyes.

(b) Read off letter that is at the highest point.

(c) Lower ball to about knee height. Have child lay underneath ball. Helper swings it in large circle while child watches ball travel. Some head movement may be required, but it should be minimal (not more than an inch or two).

***(3) A page of smile/sad faces 10x10 on a grid. Each square is about an inch, or inch and a half, tall and wide. Give child empty grid and while sitting have them write S or F on the grid for smile or frown.

We didn’t do this exercise, but I watched while another child was doing it. While wearing eye patch give child the egg holding side of an egg container. Put a marble in and have them move the marble from one part to another. Change eyes.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/18/2003 - 10:36 PM

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We have similar exercises but when we do the near far hart chart we alternate each letter rather than each line. He finds this one very difficult. I would guess alternating each line would be easier.

We also do the ball exercise but he is not to move his head at all.

We have another exercise which I know is for balance. It reminds of something I did in ballet. You hold your R arm and R leg straight out in front for 5 beats of the metronome then move leg and arm out to the side without touching the ground for 5 beats then back in front for 5 beats all without touching. Then do left side.

We don’t have a metronome so we clap.

Laura,

Does your son find these difficult?

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 1:56 AM

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Linda,
what settings on the metronome do you use?, i.e. how fast does it
beat?

Ewa

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 7:01 AM

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We did a ton of the ball exercise. from side to side x minutes then circularly for x minutes then near/far for x minutes circularly for x minutes. We began with one patched eye at a time and then both, inceasing the number of minutes as we went. I tried it myself with both eyes and it made me quite ill! I discovered that I use mostly one eye!

The eye is following a moving object therefore constantly refocusing but on the circular motion it is a much more complex focusing problem.

It did a lot for us. I used to have a child that cried when I made her read-headaches, rubbing eyes, inattentive, unhappy after a just few minutes of reading. Last night I had to take the flashlight away-she was reading under the covers-but had had two late nights in a row. Normally I am so tickled that she reads for pleasure I pretend I don’t know about the flashlight.

Good luck

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 2:25 PM

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We were supposed to go for our first appointment yesterday, but got snowed in! I’m going to call and reschedule today. Thanks for sharing the info.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 2:28 PM

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I don’t have a metronome so I do about 1-2 second claps. It should be fairly slow.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 2:31 PM

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What a wonderful story. I know that there is a reader in my son, somewhere.

I really like the ball exercise too. I can see how it really gets his eyes moving and works those muscles.

It is weird he seems to lose the ball in the same part of his visual field (lower left) each time it goes around.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 10:32 PM

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Hi Linda,
The only exercise my son finds difficult is the “happy/sad face” one. But it’s fairly difficult. There’s 100 faces and the only difference between them is the smile or frown. It’s easy to lose your place. My son said he’d do things like try to remember a sequence and then write it down so he could move quicker. But by “quicker” I have to say, my son is not in any way “quick” with anything!

One thing that was kind of funny. The therapist gave us a grid (for him to write on) with room for only 9 of the 10. My son figured this out immediately and drew a line through the 10th. When I later questioned the therapist she said they do that to “throw the kids off.” I guess my son wasn’t “thrown off” since he came up with a solution(?).

I’ll have to have him try every other letter with the Hart chart. Right now it’s not one line at a time but 5 letters or half a line at each distance.

Wow! I like that “ballet-like” exercise!!! That sounds neat! I come from a family (three generations of ballerinas and studied it for over 10 years so I can relate to the comparison! ;-) I’ll try it with my son!

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 02/19/2003 - 10:47 PM

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Ooooh! How neat! I WISH my son could be remediated with VT only, but I’m beginning to realize his reading problems are more than just vision. He cannot “get” the orthographic patterns even when he sees them.

We’re going through the Seeing Stars Decoding Workbook I. My son did GREAT until we got to page 16 “Short Vowels and Final e”. He has an extremely difficult time making long vowels when “e” is added. The non-words seem too small to visualize — or rather too easy??? — he thinks he’s beyond this —. We’ve been using the SS visualizing with much larger multi-syllable words and have gone over final “e” a million times already (over a year now!!!). I thought he had long vowels. But somehow he just cannot “get them”….

I made flash cards and am trying to get him to recognize them automatically.

But we’re going to keep doing the VT exercises just in case they help in some way.

Thanks for sharing what you did with the ball exercise! :-)

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 02/20/2003 - 7:20 AM

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didn’t want to give the impression that just VT did it. She had a angel of a reading tutor who took her from 2.1 to 2.8 reading level in about 20x45 minute sessions over 5 weeks in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. My daughter got it but couldn’t sustain it. Minimal fluency and that only when she was not tired or stressed. Second summer she worked with the same tutor mostly on writing but there was a huge reluctance to read. The VT enabled her to use the reading skills she had learned. It also took time to unlearn that reading was a horrid struggle and learn instead that reading was interesting. She’s in gr 6 now and her writing and spelling are coming along. She works hard. She still doesn’t perform at her high IQ level but is able to hold a B+ average with minimal accomodations.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 02/20/2003 - 1:17 PM

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…and I should have added-for which I am extremely grateful.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/25/2003 - 2:21 PM

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Laura:
My 10 year old son’s reading tutor is recommending PACE. After watching the video, I and my husband are skeptical. it looks like a lot of $$ for “hope”. Our VT tutor was not impressed w/ the PACE handout. We have done the 28 sessions of VT (computer exercises) and have seen solid advances in his reading but he is still having dificulty getting his thoughts down into wrtten words. What is your experience w/ PACE? How long have you been doing it and do you see results? Thanks.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/25/2003 - 7:28 PM

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You need to post this at the top of the board under new topic-it is unlikely anyone will look this deep. My daughter had a dynamite tutor-a sped and reading specialist teacher whom I paid to tutor her 4 to 5 times a week over a summer. But there are very qualified people on this board who can give you specifics. Janis highly recommends Steps to Writing. We had problems with planning the writing and used graphic organizers to brain storm writing ideas. See www.graphicorganizer.org

But writing, reading and spelling are not the same cognitively. I encourage you to post at the top of this board or over on teaching reading. Some very knowledge folks here.

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