Finally got VT test results!!! Hoping to start next week...

That sounds like one great evaluation. He really pinpointed specific areas.

I am sure that the work you have done has meant that there is less to remediate. Now you know what to focus on.

Great news!!!!!

Hi Linda,

This was a great evaluation. Very expensive, but I think it was worth it because we did get specifically to the weaknesses and therapy will address these exact areas. I’ll explain some of the testing to you since I know you find these things fascinating too.

One really interesting test result was the Ayres Standing Balance with Eyes Open and Closed. The test is basically the way it sounds. A child stands on the dominant foot and a timer is used to see how long it takes before the child loses balance. According to the test description, the time measured with eyes open should be substantially longer than with eyes closed. This is because with eyes open the child’s brain should balance the spatial inputs better. With eyes cosed these cues are lost. My son’s test results indicated age 8.11 with eyes closed (which put him in the average range at 50%ile), while his score with eyes open was age 5.8 which put him at 1%ile). According to the testing information. If the overall times are both significantly reduced, there is likely a generalized motor problem. If the eyes open score less than the eyes closed, it indicates a visual processing problem (my son!). And if the eyes open score is better than the eyes closed it indicates a general balance or vestibular problem. I thought that was really interesting!

Another interesting test was an auditory working memory test (Learning Efficiency Test LET II Webster). This tested long and short term memory. The child is given a series of non-rhyming or phonetically non-confusable letters then asked to repeat the string (immediate recall). For short-term recall the student must count aloud a series of 10 numbers and then state the letters previously given and for long-term recall the child must repeat a sentence. Scores are given for “ordered” (correctly sequenced) and “unordered” (all the letters but incorrect sequence) score. My son scored 75%ile in immediate and short- term unordered, 84%ile in immediate ordered.
Then his scores dropped dramatically to 1%ile for short- term order and 2%ile for long-term ordered. Overall auditory memory was 34%ile with some strong highs and weak lows. There’s a similar visual memory test (visual analysis skills) which had test results as low as .4%ile. In fact, his highest scores in vision were immediate ordered and unordered which were only 16%ile!!!

Hope I haven’t bored you with all this! I thought the different tests were kind of interesting.

Laura,

Sounds good. I remember my son doing an exercise like the standing on one foot as part of an OT evaluation. I personally think that is a very good sign. Vision just can’t be segmented from other systems.

Beth

That does sound great, and very interesting. We are going to the “best” VT in the city, but their exam wasn’t nearly as comprehensive. Makes me wonder if we are getting exactly the right remediation. Ah well…

They did that balance test with my son but I did not get that specific feedback. He tested at the 5 year old level. I know that his balance has improved dramatically with all the work we have done since then.

My doctor’s approach seems to be that he has the reigns and knows what the information means but does not get into the details the way yours does.

I think I have to ask more questions about the specific tests and what the tests mean.

You were right, I do find this fascinating. I think the specific differences in each of our children is fascinating. I guess it is one more argument against broad lables.

I think having this type of information will really help to target the therapy to get at the specific problems. I can see why they did not recommend IM for your son after reading these results.

Laura,
this is very interesting testing that you got done. Was it an OD who did it?

Ewa

Hi Karen,

How is your son’s vision therapy going?

The previous VT we went to didn’t perform this much testing, but he does have a very good reputation. Also, the “best” VT out here doesn’t do this much testing either. I think the only reason this one does is because he combines other therapies with VT.

I don’t know if one is more helpful than another because I have heard of a few people having good results from these other doctors. One raved about the doctor close to my home, and another raved of this other doctor who is a little further from my home (the one we’ll be going to is very far away! :-(

One more thing, I referred a mom I’ve known for many years to a local PACE providor, and she had FABULOUS results. Last year she had been fighting the school because they wanted to hold her daughter back in third grade. I gave her the name of an advocate, a PACE provider and just recently we met for coffee and she told me that at her last IEP (end of 4th grade) she was told her daughter is right on targe t and no longer needs to be in any type of remediation. Apparently her daughter had attentional issues, math difficulties and some reading difficulties (it didn’t sound like her reading difficulties were as severe as my son’s). She feels that PACE made a huge difference. In the beginning she didn’t see such a big difference , but later she added MTC and following this everything seemed to come together. It’s kind of exciting when this happens to someone you know well (I’ve known this mom since our older kids were in kindergarten together).

I’m not even sure if VT will help my son, but I’m definitely willing to give it at least three months to see if we make any progress. Most of the VT’s I spoke with told me that therapy generally should be finished within 6 months— unless there are more severe vision issues.

Laura, Your detailed description of the auditory memory testing caught my attention. I would never have guessed my daughter (undiagnosed - great reader/can’t spell) to have a memory problem since she can quote almost verbatim long phrases from a book she heard or read. But she would have totally failed the test you described.

Just today she told me that copying words off the board takes a long time since she can only remember a few letters at a time and has to keep looking up and down. And at home when I spell a word out loud for her, she gets down one or two letters and asks me to repeat it. I have to spell it three or four times, or slowly letter by letter, so she can get it written down correctly. In contrast her younger sister gets annoyed at me for repeating a spelling since she heard it the first time!

You wrote about going for vision therapy. Will the same office also work on the auditory memory? How are these problems remediated?

GeorgiaCA

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that the headstands that I describe in post to Linda F (angles) have made a big difference in my son’s tracking. I think it is quite bizarre (as does my son) but therapist told me that we would see this. She has been convinced that his tracking issues are not purely visual but vestibularly based—but has had trouble getting that piece in place.

His skipping has decreased about 75% in past couple days. One a page of Harry Potter he now is only skipping about five words (We had an earlier reduction of about 50% doing auditory motor exercises—that was even stranger–and probably more particular to his odd set of problems!!!).

Beth

I think this is an interesting difference. I believe my son used to have vestibular issues, but after years of having him climb at the school for an hour a day while we waited for his sister to get out of school, OT as a toddler and constantly taking him to parks and consciously arranging activites to help this…we finally seem to be in the “average range” (Yeahhhh!).

Another thing that may have helped is my son spends some time every single day on the trampoline. I think my son unconsiously seeks out therapeutic activites. Even when he was a toddler he’d do things like pull himself up and then down on the bottom stairs in my house. When he eventually walked he insisted on wearing a pair of my high heels around. That was funny and odd to others (future transvestite! :-o), but his seeking of this type of thing made sense to me. I never discouraged this because I knew the behavior related to his SID and motor planning difficulties.

One more thing with the trampoline. My son put a little basketball hoop on the side and he likes to jump and toss a ball through the hoop. Again, he does this type of thing just about every day (on his own. I never tell him to go jump on the trampoline he automatically does it). He also thinks of a lot of games to play on the trampoline.

One kind of interesting “game” he thought up, and this is something that’s not done on a trampoline, but on the carpeting, is he has me take a “swim noodle” at one end, and while I quickly swing it across at shoulder level, he tries to squat down quickly (like an action hero or PS2 character. I’m assuming that’s where he got the idea from), next I’m to quickly swing it just under his knees and he jumps. Another is to swing it downward and he moves aside. He tells me to do this quickly and change the movements so he has to quickly decide what way he needs to move. Eventually he gets tired. I try to make it slow enough that he’s successful, but fast enough to keep him happy. I think this is a pretty clever little OT-like game that my son doesn’t even realize is good for him!

After seeing these test results, it has made me realize how much of these particular areas (motor) I still see some weakness in, may be due primarily to vision. It will be interesting to see if therapy makes a difference.

Yes.

My son took gymnastics for about a year and a half but then decided it wasn’t for boys. I think it is great for integration.

I found your story interesting–how our kids can exhibit similar symptoms but have problems in different places. A lot of it is integration—and so it can be the integration itself or some aspect of what needs to be integrated that is problematic.

My son’s vestibular system has come so far–it is amazing but clearly we still have some issues.

My son did vision therapy several years ago with a doctor who took a very “flat” approach. We saw improvements–he could do a worksheet for example. But it did not resolve his issues—which are more vestibular and motor based. You seem to have the piece in place and I suspect you will see some nice results. I also think it is always better to be working with someone who is broadly trained/oriented like your therapist. My son’s vision therapist really didn’t know enough to deal with his other issues connected to vision, I think. He tried to convince me he was OK, when I knew he wasn’t. We have someone like that now—and it makes a world of difference.

Beth

Hi Georgia,
A good relatively inexpensive program for helping the auditory memory is Brainbuilder. Here’s a link for it: http://www.advancedbrain.com/bb_activity.html

I have it here and although we haven’t used it a lot (I was focusing more on phonics and fluency this last year), I did notice that my son had an easier time with auditory memory. Also, there’s a visual flash setting and my son gets really lost with!

I recently started using Brainbuilder again when I learned my son had a very low score in reverse digit span (this I learned from a speech and language evaluation at a local university). I just have my son play it for a few moments every day. It’s an extremely boring game, but one of the few things I know of that’s good for memory.

The VT will work on auditory memory in additon to my son’s other weaknesses. In fact, he may use something like Brainbuilder. When I visited another doctor I saw a patient there using a program that may have been Brainbuilder or something similar.

Beth,
I’ve been thinking of your son and wondering, if like mine, he may have a relatively severe visual memory problem. According to this doctor visual analysis problems (which would include discrimination, figure ground, imagery, closure, memory and processing speed) make sight word acquisition difficult — and I’m going to guess, this includes recognition of orthographic patterns.

My son’s deficit in visual analysis is primarily memory and processing speed. Your son might be similar, although he may have some of these other deficits too? Although our boys are very similar, it could be that different (yet related) deficits are creating the same symptoms.

Who needs a neuropsych when you have “type-A” moms like us!!!?

Yes, now the IM results do make sense. I was surprised about directionality too. One of the tests was something called a “money roadmap” where the child is asked to tell the direction each time the line turns (32 times total). My son scored in the 42%ile which was very average…and which tells me that any leftover directionality difficulties would most likely be due to visual memory and processing speed.

He does have a sequencing issue too, but this would also be most likely related to visual/auditory memory and processing speed as well.

One more thing…according to this doctor poor processing is characteristic of many (if not most) LD kids. (the Tachistoscope is used to determine visual processing speed). Most of these kids can successfully complete visual processing tasks if they do not have time limits. The whole thing boils down to automaticity. Which is exactly the approach any type of therapy should take! Even though that’s obvious, it’s still kind of interesting.

Type A moms unite!!! My son does have a visual sequential memory problem—I think this is what you were really testing too. He used to have a visual discrimination problem too but some piece of therapy rid us of that. I have the Critical Thinking Books and the only Visual processing exercises he can not do easily are those with visual sequential memory (he can do the visual memory if it is not sequences.) Speed wise, he is faster than he used to be at. On the PACE posttesting it was the only area he actually made a good improvement in (we did exercises where you circled certain letters as you tracked across a page). I think he is fairly average now.

I do think his visual memory for patterns is mostly due to this. I am hoping that we will get some significant movement here doing AVKO for spelling. I have read that it builds visual memory for patterns. What does your therapist recommend? We have done some Seeing Stars and Glass Analysis as well, which do the same thing but I think AVKO is a bit less painless and seems to have more of a point to my son.

When my son was in first grade, he could not learn sight words. As he learned to decode, he would have to exposed to word a zillion times before he would know it. Now, he seems quite average in acquiring new vocabulary and last time he was tested (last summer) his sight vocabulary was grade level. Decoding skills….well that is another story. So he seems to learn and retain whole words but have trouble with recognizing the same pattern in another word.

His NN therapist tells me that it is very hard to separate visual memory from auditory because most people translate visual informaiton into auditory. The only true visual skill, it seems to me, is when you visualize the sequence—which gets us back to patterns and Seeing Stars type approaches.

Beth

So automaticity = faster processing. That just makes so much sense.

I wonder sometimes if it isn’t just these underlying deficits (like the ability to sequence or directionality) that many take for granted that are not automatic and that take extra time to process tasks.

I have never been comfortable driving places for the first time on highways by myself. I know I have some directionality issues related to my mixed handedness. I just took my son on a field trip far away and kept getting confused. I have to go very slow and map out my route carefully writing down very explicit directions. I just can’t get directions down quickly. When it comes to direction I am a slow processor of information because the fundamentals are just not automatic.

I can process other things very quickly.

This is just so interesting.

Thank you for the insights.

That is amazing. Yes, my son seeks out certain activities that are therapeutic too.

I could swear that the activity that had the biggest impact on his sid issues was rolling across the basement floor on his skateboard and getting the basketball in the children’s basketball hoop.

Laura, I don’t know if you saw my post where I discussed the gym I joined. I joined because of one of your posts where you discussed a gym that had classes for kids that improved agility, speed, balance and coordination.

It is great! They work on the mini tramp, have to run in place and stop when the coach calls out a color and touch the cone with that color, do a backwards crawl with their hands behind their back, jump rope while running, etc it is very interesting, like extremely cheap OT.

Actually, this is the whole premise of Neuronet. You have to make processing fast and automatic—otherwise you use cognitive resources. Look, for example, at all the cognitive resources you expended because you don’t have directionality automatic. We call this compenstating. All of us do it to some degree, because we all have weaknesses, but if we have to do it too much we don’t have the cognitive resources necessary for learning efficiently.

Beth

Interestingly, I have an extremely good visual memory for directions. I can go to a location once and have it visually memorized. Also, I can imagine directions in my head when someone explains them (a bad habit I have is not writing directions down and just imagining them in my head). On the other hand, I have a horrible memory for names. I have to practice them in my head over and over, assign symbols, etc…. and I still forget them! With numbers I have the same problem.

It’s fascinating how complex and varied memory can be. Come to think of it. I can visualize words and pages of words extremely well too. But names and numbers elude me. That’s weird. It might help for me if I imagined a page in my mind with a name or set of numbers….. I’ll have to try that!

Beth,
Now that I think about it, Audiblox was fairly good at seperating visual and auditory memory. It’s done too quickly for verbalization (especially larger sets of blocks —that requires real visualization and sequencing skills!).

Back when we were doing it my son got stuck early with the visual exercises and progressed further with the auditory exercises.

One thing that I’ve wondered about is how some children with vision problems become great readers in spite of their vision. Maybe visual memory has something to do with this(?) Maybe the difference is some children with visual problems have such great visual memories somehow they are able to piece together reading in spite of this.

Hi Linda,
I did see your post and recognized the similarity with the gym in my area. How NEAT that you found something like it!!!!! It sounds great!

We never did get a chance to check out the gym here (between karate, piano, school work, etc….. But once we finish vision therapy I may look into it for both my children. It seems like an awesome program for any kid!

PACE, which we did two summers ago, actually has visual sequencing exercises too. But we never got that far with them. I think that is the difficulty—doing things over and over again only works to some extent. I think there has to the underlying foundation. Perhaps, after much more therapy, my son could do them. I wonder though if kids like ours also need to to be taught explicitly to see things in their heads. I just didn’t see my son start to visualize just because you needed to do so to do the exercises.

And hopefully, the vision therapy will provide your son with that foundation so that he is teachable. That to me, is the the frustrating part. Sometimes our kids aren’t even teachable.

We’ve done some visualization work too now so maybe my son could succeed with these types of exercises now. I haven’t tried them for a long time.

I may return to PACE next summer. I really don’t feel like he benefited from the program that much when we did it two years ago. We’re doing AVKO, Neuronet, and work on verbal/nonverbal comprehension/logic this summer. And math facts and fractions. More than enough, I think.

Beth

Automaticity - that’s the key. DS can decode almost anything, but reads very slowly. I mentioned this to a psych. who is a friend, and his response was “its not automatic” .

Short of neuronet (which isn’t available here) what else can we do to impact processing speed? Thoughts?

I think its too soon to tell what the end results are… but the exercises are increasing in difficulty. I’m sure it will yield positive results, it makes so much sense!!

Interesting to note though - I spent some time with a friend this weekend who is a DO in CA. He was largely responsible for my persuing VT at all (plus all you ladies!!). So I asked him if he does the balancing evaluation etc. and he said he usually doesn’t . His reason was that often he gets kids after they ‘ve done OT anyway, so alot of times they are somewhat remediated. He also said, however, that he recognizes that motor issues are usually part of the problem with “his” kids, and he’ll incorporate floor exercises, balance etc. intuitively as he works with a kid. He didn’t think it was necessarily a bad thing that our doc. didn’t do it. He’s a big proponent of VT, as you might imagine, having spent 15 years working with LD kids.

Karen,

PACE works on automaticity—and processing speed. It works best when underlying sensory motor deficits are remediated and you are working hard at that!!! As I have said before, that wasn’t the case with my son and I think we did it prematurely at age 8. I may do it again next summer when he is 11.

Neuronet is totally sensory-motor while PACE has a sensory- motor component but is mostly cognitive. Both work on processing but at different levels. If the sensory motor is not in place, then the cognitive does not have a firm foundation—and cognitive resources are being spent on sensory motor activities. I knew all this when we decided to do it, but just misjudged the extent of my son’s difficulties.

Beth

Hi Karen,
Ditto on the PACE. My friend said it made a BIG difference for her daughter. She didn’t notice it at first (I was so excited that she was trying it — and I was the one who told her about it! — that I kept asking her every week, “So how’s PACE going?”).

She fought the school to get her daughter into 4th grade, did PACE, finished the program. Waited awhile and then did MTC. Pretty soon she told me she’s going to be starting “some math program” with the PACE provider (The provider will be doing it for free because she wants to “try” it on someone). I don’t know what it is, but I’m curious to find out.

Anyhow, she was so angry with the school, she moved her daughter to another one (it’s a school nearby that she works at — she teaches reading intervention) and at the last IEP meeting they told her that her daughter is doing great, doesn’t need any type of intervention, no special ed. nothing!

She said she feels PACE really helped. I think, like Beth said, it’s the automaticity. Also, intensive multi-tasking practice. From what my friend has told me, it didn’t sound like her daughter had any sensory-motor problems. I’d guess hers were specifically processing with attentional issues (possibly due to the processing deficits?). By improving processing, my friend said her daughter’s attentional difficulties have decreased substantially.

Karen,
Take a look at vision builder. It really has helped my son’s speed.

It has a piece where he looks at words and decode them very fast.

I don’t fully understand what this is doing but it really has worked wonders. Maybe it encourages him to focus harder and think faster. It reminds me of one of the audiblox exercises where you throw a word card down and then cover it up quickly and they have to tell you what it said.

He has definitely taken a jump to the next level in reading and we do this more than anything else so I attribute it mostly to this.

Karen,
From what I understand, it can take a little while before you see results. The doctor we’re going to is estimating approximately 14 weeks before we see measureable changes and I think that’s about the time frame in which Linda started noticing results in her son.

Laura,

I was watching the class the other day and the instructor was doing some boxing with them. They had to hit his hands crossing to the right then left and then duck fast before he could swing around at them.

It reminded me of your exercise.

These are exercises are based on programs done by professional sports teams to condition their athletes.

What do you do with vision builder? I looked at the web site but got a bit confused. Perhaps I was not in a patient mood!

Beth

Beth,

They have stories that your child will read using a guided window that moves at a preset pace and they have to keep up. You set it a little faster than their current reading rate, then there are comprehension questions to answer.

They also have the ability to just read the text without the window and time the child then have them answer the questions.

They have words that flash on the screen for the amount of time you set (these are very quick) then they have to find the word in a list after it disappears.

They have the same exercise but with random letter patterns that you have to find from the list mostly a typical pattern would be pqxd.

They also have an exercise with arrows that go left and right and you have to hit the right or left key to match the arrows.

All exercises seem to have a speed component to them. You try and improve your speed and accuracy.

I think he may be doing vision builder at the eye doctor’s office. I peeked in one day and found him on a computer matching arrows. I’m going to ask if that’s what it is, because he liked it, and if there is ANYTHING I can get him to do at home that he likes then I will. He hates the VT exercises we are doing - he does them but complains.

The therapist gave me several lists of random letters. He said, “He is good at these but do them anyway, they will help with visual memory.” He has to look at the letters for a brief second or two and then tell me what he saw and sometimes he has to tell me what he saw in reverse. I said, “This reminds me of vision builder.” He said, “Yes, they are similar. I forgot I gave you vision builder. That must be why he is so good.”

I told him, “The new exercise reminded me of vision builder but the doing it in reverse reminded me of seeing stars.”

Maybe the LMB people got this from VT.

Interestingly they also gave him a focusing exercise using a special lens to take home. They had me practice with the lens and I couldn’t see a thing. Then they gave me an easier lens and I STILL couldn’t see a thing. They all sort of chuckled.

Maybe I am not ADD, maybe I just have a vision issue.

BTW, Vision builder is one of the few exercises my son finds tolerable. He enjoys it because there is significant feedback when you improve in one area. I think the other exercises seem pointless because it is harder to notice an improvement.

The arrow exercise on Vision Builder is too easy for my son. He gets them all correct regardless of the speed. I think it’s because we had been doing the directionality exercises from Dr. Lane’s book daily for quite some time now (around 3 months?). In the book there’s a page of arrows and (to a metronome) I’d have him say the direction (up, down, left or right). There’s some other directionality exercises too which I used for variety. I think these must have helped! And yet, my son still has to use his fingers to figure out b/d (when he writes I see him making a “b” with his left hand). Also, he wrote a story yesterday and wrote “crads” instead of “crabs.” So I don’t know how much is truly internalized at this point. Maybe it’s that he can do it when he thinks about it, but it’s not completely automatic yet. That must be it….

We’ve only tried using the stories in Vision Builder once so far. What I noticed is my son tried to guess some of the words because he was trying to read quickly with the window. I’ll probably try again and reduce the speed. I don’t recall it being particularly fast. Either there was a problem with speed or my son has once again picked up the habit of “guessing” thanks to his school. How frustrating!

We have been using Brainbuilder a little while about 4 times a week. Concentrating on visual memory and reverse digit span.

Of course, we’re also doing VT, but it seems like we’re doing more PACE than vision exercises which has me slightly questionable on the balance (like maybe we need more vision stuff? But the cognitive exercises seem really good! I am pleased).

Your post has me wondering something. DS tested poorly on visual memory (as we are discussing in another thread) which I understand can impact spelling and comprehension. His comprehension is strong, his spelling is really really bad. And yet, when he did seeing stars he blew me away with his ability to visualize the word and repeat the letters backwards, forwards etc etc. Maybe he was using his superior auditory memory in that case, since seeing stars has them repeat the letters outloud. Hmmm, interesting compensatory skill eh?

Karen,
My son can completely “bomb” on a spelling pre-test, but then quickly learn to do surprisingly well on them (without really “knowing” how to spell the word). I’m certain he’s using auditory memory to compensate. I noticed this particularly with Audiblox. He had an impossible time creating mental “photos” of the blocks, and ultimately he’d have to say the colors to himself. I’m even wondering if my son’s strong auditory memory has been hindering his ability to learn to use his visual memory. Sometimes it’s so much easier to rely on what we know and what we have strength in.

Laura, And I guess that’s OK right? We have strengths, why not use them? I’m sure DS used his auditory memory even on the vision evaluation, when he could.

But as you said in a an earlier post, this memory stuff is complicated. Memory didn’t come up as a problem in his neuropscyh exam, and his reading comprehension is excellent. So the visual memory problem must be narrow - not that its not a problem - it is.

Keep posting on how your son’s VT is going. I’m very curious!

Maybe our childrens’ tests were switched. They talked alot about my son’s memory deficit on the school’s eval but I know he has an at least above average memory, he scored in the 60% on the VT eval and superior on the PACE eval.

It is confusing at times. I think maybe he has a superior auditory memory and that gets him to an above average score with visual memory tests. He might be doing some compensating.

I know he is starting to visualize but it is just not automatic. Spelling has really taken off.

Laura,

You might want to consider the integrating through movement exercises to get that right /left thing down if he doesn’t get there with VT. It amazed me that my son finds these rather simple exercises extremely difficult. It really makes me *see* his deficit, if you know what I mean. My son always seems to fly through the other left right exercises even before VT(we did them with audiblox). He tested very low on reversals on the vision eval. He doesn’t reverse letters but he does sometimes confuse left from right so I know he is not automatic. I also think his writing suffers because he is using extra cognitive effort to avoid reversals. He can avoid the reversals but it steals away from other aspects of writing.

His writing is better and we haven’t really been doing anything but vision therapy and integrating through movement.

Remind me - what are the integrating thru movement ? We have the same problem - few reversals seen in his work, but he scored super low on this at the DO office, which must hurt his reading fluency. Sorry to ask you to repeat yourself… I’m very absent minded lately! thx!

I’m not sure about this, but I think relying too much on auditory memory would not be as efficient as using both visual and auditory memory together. Also, I believe most education is designed for visual learners which would leave auditory learners at a disadvantage.

One more thing, with my son, he scores extremely high in some auditory testing (for example, WJ auditory processing 150 which is very high), but in other testing that seperates different auditory memory skills my son excelled at some, but was quite weak in others (example, although he could memorize a long string of numbers auditorarly, he mixed the order). So not all testing provides the same picture. My son did very well on the PACE testing too (nothing “low” and many of the scores high above age level).

I think we may be doing integrating with movement type exercises (?). One thing we’ve been working on is good ol’ patty cake. My son had to do this 50x without errors and now he has to do it while standing on one foot, counting, reciting math facts, etc… He’s also doing various exercises on the trampoline too. The only vision exercise my son is doing is eye stretching, following a pen, keeping eyes locked while looking in a mirror and moving his head. We have sheets with various activities and are working through them.

Laura in CA was explaining a test done by the developmental optometrist that had someone stand on the dominant foot and balance. I had my children try this. My one child could balance equally well eyes open or shut and the same of either foot. My other child could balance well on the foot opposite his dominant hand but could barely last a second on the other foot. Strange? Does this mean that the child’s dominant had is really the opposite had he uses for writing? He does tend to switch hand use based on activity. Does the large discrepency between the balance on each side signal other issues?

This is a book given to me by my son’s DO that was written by a DO in Washington state.

You can get it through the Rowley Eye Clinic 425 483 8000

These exercises seem very simple. My son has progressed significantly on much more difficult things. I didn’t even want to do these at first because I thought they were way below his abilities. Low and behold the first exercise brought him to tears.

This is the first exercise if you want to try it out:

Lie on back, look at target on ceiling. Arms at side, legs flat on floor together.

1. Arms slide touching mat until the palms touch overhead.
2. Return arms to original position.

At the same time….

[b]Think and breathe [/b]in through the nose wehn thinking ARMS and out through the mouth when thinking ONLY. Movement is slow and steady.

alternate this with

[b]Think and say[/b] Say arms when the arms are moved up and only when the arms are moved down.

It is important that they do this until the get all the pieces done together. It was very hard for my son to focus on the ceiling and control his breathing and move his arms in a controlled steady fashion.

Alot of the exercises are right left exercises. The same exercises as above is done with the legs. Legs out and in saying legs only etc

Then you move on to the right side of the body moving just the right leg and the right arm simultaenously saying right arm on the way up and right leg on the way down. Then the left side of the body is done.

My son has mastered these but it took him awhile to get it.. We are on to harder things.

Cool.Thanks!

Its alot like the swimming exercises my son does. He ‘s been training with a team that does alot of body alignment exercises. Needless to say its challanging for him - thank goodness his coach has a sense of humor (“no, use your other left arm!”)

That is exactly what I thought Karen.

It is kind of like swimming.

My son took a huge leap in swimming this year. His non LD friend couldn’t train with the 9 and older kids. I asked my son if he didn’t want to train with the younger kids too. He wanted to stay with the older kids even though they work them pretty hard.

He is actually swimming fairly straight and doesn’t look like he may drown at any second anymore.

Last year the woman next to me said, “Look at the poor kid in lane 2, is he alright.” That was him of course.

No one would say that about him now.

Linda, could you please give the title of this book once mroe?

One cannot search the old messages any more…:-(((

thank you,

Ewa

We tried the exercises last night, and he could do them. I found the book on some obscure website, but I was wondering if you think its work $32!?

I suspect DS could do the simple exercises precisely because he has been swimming since age 1, before we “knew” he might have trouble with certain activities. ha ha.

The name of the book is Integrating Through Movement A Vision Aerobics Program. I don’t even know if it is truely published or just dispensed through vision therapists.

It was done by the Rowley Eye Clinic and their phone number is 425 483 8000

Karen

As far as being worth it. I just don’t know if it would be worth it for you. It cost us $40 and it was well worth it for my son’s issues. Our kids just aren’t exactly alike so I just can’t say.

I had a long conversation with someone I have become friends with recently who is a physical therapist with a specialty is sensory integration. She believes that floor movement especially games that involve crawling are the key such as crawling with the head up toward a visual target and then crawling backward.
There are some crawling exercises in this book but we haven’t gotten to those yet. Crawling gives excellent stimulation to the spinal column according to my friend.

You could also look at brain gym which is a little cheaper but I think similar.

I do love the idea of fun exercises the kids can do together. It normalizes my son’s “work” and it certainly won’t hurt my daughter. We tried Beth’s headstand last night with mixed results. Both kids seemed to have trouble finding the right spot on their head so they wouldn’t mush their necks. We’ll keep trying.
(PS, I thought our boys were exactly the same! LOL)

Linda, thanks for the info.

We are going to OD this Saturday- so I will see- maybe we can get the book from her and look through this.

I got brain gym- I believe it is a bit different- it is more about excercises that serve for relaxation and stimulation of brain rather than integration.

Ewa