DS started VT yesterday with the exercise that Linda ( I think it was her!) described. The child reads a line on a wall chart, and then a line on a piece of paper he’s holding . All while wearing an eye patch. This exercise is meant to strengthen focusing and tracking.
What was interesting was how much harder it was for him to do this with his left eye. I suspect everything is less developed on his left side.
Linda, have you seen non-reading/vision benefits from VT? I’m wondering if working out the left side of his brain will produce other improvements in motor planning. New neural pathways , ya never know.
Re: Vision Therapy begins - ?? for Linda
Laura, what was your son’s diagnosis? Just curious since there have been so many similarities with our kids!
Re: Vision Therapy begins - ?? for Linda
Hi Karen,
Hope I don’t bore you with the details! Here’s what the vision report said:
According to the screening we had with the first vision therapist he is mildly farsighted, has poor tracking and aiming skills, reduced eye-teaming ability, significantly reduced focusing ability, very weak bilateral integration, very weak with reversal frequency. Exceptionally strong in almost all areas of visual perception (mostly 95+%ile).
Interestingly, his visual sequential memory tested at 99%ile while his dynamic visual sequential memory tested at 1%ile.
Visual motor integration, visual motor speed and precision, and sentence copy were very weak as well.
This testing was done quite awhile ago so I’m not sure how accurate it still is. We only did a couple of sessions of vision therapy with this doctor (In fact, we started about a week after Linda). Unfortunately, I wasn’t completely thrilled with the office so we discontinued it. I did find another doctor I really like who’s quite far from our home, but I’ve decided to go ahead and make the commute. I think it’s going to be worth it because he combines a lot of other programs with his vision therapy (LMB, PACE, IM, and more!). My son’s scheduled for another exam next month. In fact, I just started filling out a 10-page questionaire for them which I need to complete and mail by Wednesday!!! Yikes!
In the meantime we’re working on exercises we got from the previous VT and others from Dr. Lane’s book.
Hi Karen,
We have that exercise (the Hart Chart?) from the Vision Therapist we started with too. Interestingly, I noticed that when I made it more difficult by moving the larger chart further back than where we originally had him reading from, he also seemed to have more difficulty with his left eye.
We’re also doing another exercise I like a lot that shows a page of horizontal lines with vertical lines which are either: (1) up - right, left, or middle; or (2) down - right, left or middle. My son has to read across indicating direction. He starts off okay, but then quickly begins slowing down, losing his place and having a more difficulty. Visually and directionally it’s a good challenge!