I don’t even know if anyone is still interested in my weekly VT posts but here goes anyway.
We are now hanging a page of letters 30 font on the ceiling where the ball is hanging from. He has to lay underneath track his eye back and forth with the ball twice then stop and read the far left and far right letter on the chart. Then he tracks the ball again and reads the second from left and second from right. We do this down the whole page.
Next exercise: I hold a book out (we are using a book of poems by Silverstein,) and move it up down and in a circular motion while he reads it. He keeps his head still and tracks his eyes wherever the book is. I like this one.
These two he just can’t do.
He is to close his eyes and move his finger around in a circle touching his face. His eyes are supposed to go to wherever his finger goes even though his eyes are closed. When I say stop he is supposed to open his eyes and they are supposed to be positioned where his finger is.
He is supposed to put his tongue up, down, left, right etc and his eyes should go where his tongue is. This is with his eyes open.
I think his eye muscles are just too weak to start these last two exercises. I have him still tracking the pen. The VT told me he should be able to do this now for 5 minutes. He can barely do it for 2 minutes, but at least he can do it. In the beginning he couldn’t do it for 10 seconds.
Re: New vision therapy exercises.
We are finding vision therapy very hard. Some exercises are a breeze and some are just soooo difficult. I realize we need to skip over the easy ones and work on the ones that are difficult because that is where his problem is.
His spelling and writing have gotten worse recently despite the fact that I know his ocular motor functioning is better. He says his eyes have gotten worse. I really believe it is because his eye muscles are exhausted from the exercises. I am hoping this is the one step back before the two steps forward that I have seen in the past.
I remember something similar when we did IM. He was moody and irritable in the beginning because it took so much out of him.
They said we would see a change in 6 weeks. It is almost 6 weeks now.
Hi Linda,
Thanks for sharing these exercises! :-)
I’m very fascianted by the whole thing. Please keep us posted on your son’s progress. We’re holding off on VT at the moment, but may start back up again in the summer (since we’ll have time then for the long commute and won’t be bogged down with homework).