Visual Perception Disorder???

Push the school to give him an Occupational therapy eval. This can help with the handwriting issues these kids often have.

Outside of school bring him to a developmental optometrist for a full vision screening and therapy.

At home you can do audiblox with him, www.audiblox.com. It is a great program for this type of issue. This program is especially good for younger kids as you can play it like a game, let him test you and then you test him.

My son is in third grade and was diagnosed with this at the end of first. He is doing great in a regular class thanks to therapy. You ABSOLUTELY can reverse these deficits, especially with a child this young. Pat yourself on the back for being such great mom and finding this out while he is so young.

In addition to Linda’s ideas, I’d take a look at Jerome Rosner’s book “Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties”. He has a series of exercises in it to help children with visual perceptual difficulties. He says that children should not be taught handwriting until their visual perceptual skills are at (I think) 4 1/2 year old level. I am sure your son’s are not, given that he has been diagnosed at age 5, so you might find his book helpful.

Beth

Welcome Kim!
To our little party of mom’s of kids with a variety of learning issues, including visual processing problems. You will find this board to be filled with really great mom’s who have been down this path. I was totally freaked out about 15 months ago, and the women on this board saved my sanity.

Linda’s right - you are on this so early!! You will be able to make a big impact on his academic experience now by starting early. Hang in there!!
Karen

I just wanted to add to my “what you can do” post that you really are ahead of the game. I was still pretty much in denial when my son was in K, a fact I regret. He had been identified as having a language disability as a preschooler and I still thought he’d grow out of it, even though he was classified as a K. Also, I was given feedback by his K teacher that he didn’t track, had poor visual motor skills and didn’t make the best use of this information. I took him to an optometrist who told me he’d grow out of these problems. Well, he didn’t.

I didn’t start working actively with my son until he finished first grade without really reading and the school told me that “you need to accept that you have a child with a disability”. Then I got mad. I found this board and have worked with my son (who has a slew of issues both auditory and visual) ever since. He is now 10. His reading is on grade level for sight vocabulary and comprehension now, although he still doesn’t decode as well as he should.

I think schools do even less for kids with visual perceptual problems than those with auditory problems so I would not depend on them.

Beth

Please feel free to email me if you want my outlines on how to tutor reading and handwriting.

My general advice to parents of kindergartners is to start *now* teaching them to really read, and avoid the mess of having them taught counterproductive memorization strategies and then having to play catch-up for years and years. This is *not* an issue of rushing the kid into reading — exactly the opposite. Take the time now when you have plenty of time, teach him gradually and teach him right, and then he won’t have to rush to catch up later.

MY NT (neurotypical) daughter is the beneficiary of everything I have learned from you and the other reading experts on this board.

She just graduated from Kindergarten and is starting to decode. I am able to help her learn properly from the get go - if only I had had this knowledge back when my LD son needed it!

My 6 year old son has also benefitted. We have so many books and I really know how to teach reading now. He is a cinch, after his older brother. And it is so interesting to watch a normal child progress, after being overly sensitive to everything that can go wrong. His progress also makes clear the huge disadvantages under which his brother has labored.

Beth

Dear karen, Beth, & Linda,
Thanks so much for responding….I keep going back and forth - feeling that this is just a phase to “Oh my God, how am I ever going to help him with this?” I think from all I have read so far is I need to find a happy medium and just do whatever is best for the time he is in. Right now I am collecting a ton of information and alot of it is “help” classes for him. There are so many I want him to do but I know at age 5 it would be way too much for him. So far, for the summer he has a tutor for a half hour a week and small group speech class 2x a week for a half hour each - do you think this is enough? (I have about 10 more things/classes to choose from! LOL) I also got some inexpensive card games, etc. for him and just set them out in the open - no pressure to play them for him but he is slowly taking interest and his older siblings actually are playing with him - so it seems like fun for him. he goes to the eye doctor on Monday - should I ask for anything specific for the doctor to check, etc? I really do apologize for all the ??? - but I just am so insecure right now - hopefully I will feel more confident in a few weeks or so. I also have his IEP meeting (final setup meeting) on Tuesday and I am definitely ready for that - just finished my notes, comments, and ????. The district already thinks I am a pain in the butt so I might as well not disappoint them for this meeting. LOL I would love to keep in touch and learn your stories/situations. I am a teacher for Grade 5 and definitely know how to understand and work with children who learn differently - who knows maybe one of these times I may be able to give you ladies some wonderful ideas/advice like you have in the past few days!!! :D By the way, a bit off topic but what is the difference between BBcode and HTML? I cannot figure that one out! LOL School is officially done today for the kids! Hooary! I am going to spend the summer learning more about Reilly’s situation and just plain hanging out with the kids (I have a 10 year old son and a 7 year old daughter also!) We had a hectic summer last year with moving to a new house and other busy work so this summer we are going to be slow and lazy!!! Well, hope to hear from you ladies soon and have a great weekend! Fondly and with much thanks, KIM

Kim,
It sounds like you have plenty to do this summer. Don’t worry about fixing everything at once, you can’t.

Just make sure the eye doctor you see is a developmental optometrist. Many of us brought our kids to opthamologists only to be told they had 20/20 eye sight - but they don’t look at the whole visual processing system.

Like everyone else I am a mom of two boys who are ld. I am also an adult with dyslexia. I was diagnosed in kindergarten,spent aproximately two years? in vision therapy. I am 37( good god) While I admit early intervention is key,I do not admit that LD can be “cured” nor that it should be. I have severe visual spatial perceptual difficulties. I drop things,I stumble over thread on the floor, I miss judge,I get headaches in certain visually difficult situations that are individual for me,like when I try and focus through the liitle holes in mini blinds.(go figure) I wrote for many years in reverse fashion,I still do not have very legible handwriting,and was basicly a nonreader until age 12.So,my point? Well I learned compensatory strategies,but I didn’t lose the benefits of being ld. I am creative,I understand others,I am determined,I visualize everything in picture form,like a motion pictures in my mind. It’s kind of like being spanish,speaking engilsh but visualizing the words in spanish, in your mind, before you speak in english. I do this,but I do this in picture form,not words. VT helped me alot with the stress in my eyes. I used to feel like my eyes would hurt out of my head (okay this is how I explained it at 5) But the exercises he taught me helped and I continued to use them in class automaticly when my eyse started hurting and tired. My point of all this is,I just can’t look at being ld as a totally bad thing,just because the world wants it to be. There are whole groups of people out there incredibly successful,happy,and fulfilled. They are still ld. So what? These are the people running the show,life would be boring as heck if only neurtypical people existed. my two cents for the day.. Remediate,but don’t break them, they aren’t broken.

Reily’s Mom,
Two great games for visual perception are Rush Hour and Set—you might want to add them to your collection.

issue.

I find that I rarely meet anyone who is truely neurotypical. Anyone who is interesting is wired a little differently in some little way. I just know that my son was suffering a terrible blow to his self esteem because things that should have been easy were very difficult for him. I saw how frustrating it was for him and made it my job to do whatever I could to relieve him of that burden.

I have some mixed wiring and I think back on things that were difficult for me and that caused me added stress because I was forced to circumvent these little wiring problems. I really liked being a cardiothoracic ICU nurse and was very good at it. I used to get crushing chest pain from the stress of circumventing what are probably some hidden LDs or maybe ADHD.

I really do wish that someone did for me what I am doing for him. My husband thinks vision therapy is the greatest thing that has ever happened to my son and he is a born skeptic.

I constantly remind my son of his strengths and make sure he knows that everyone has things they have to overcome.

It is nice that he can do the things he wants to do like swim, write, and read. I see it as my job that he gets the chance to pursue whatever he wants to pursue. He really does want to pursue so many things that I think not helping him would really be more like standing in his way.

He loves to read books. He gets the chance to nurture his incredible imagination by sitting down and devouring a great novel. That just wouldn’t have been possible if we relied on the school’s help. Even the best the school had to offer would not have dealt with his ocular motor problems. Even with that, Vision therapy alone will not teach anyone to read, it is just one piece of the puzzle. I had to supply other pieces as well.

Once we overcome other deficit areas I think he could actually be an incredible author. He is an artist without the ability to express his art because of some wacky wiring. That is changing for him.

This kid has already passed me by on many levels. He is just so together emotionally, mentally and more so physcially. I was at a party last night and a group of women could not stop talking about my awesome kid. They wanted to know what he was like when he was little and what I did to get him to be so kind, motivated, funny, open, and responsible.

I just held open the door. He walked through it all by himself.

That was one of the most beautiful posts I’ve read, Linda.

When I think about how hard my son works to aquire skills that most kids his age take for granted, and how hard he works to maintain his self esteem at the same time it takes my breath away. He is so brave.

Hi Karen! Thanks for the information - how do you tell if the doctor is a developmental eye doctor? I explained the situation to the pediatric eye doctor and he said he would know what to look for. If you don’t mind me asking what part of New york are you from? I live in a suburb of Rochester. I am oringinally from Syracuse but moved here after college about 20 years ago. Hope everyone else is doing well this weekend!
Fondly, KIM :P

again,as Linda pointed out, it is vital along with all the other remedial programs one might try,priority needs to be placed on making sure the child’s sense of self is preserved first. Without that, nothing else matters anyway.

Kim-
CHeck out this web site for more info on vision therapy and finding a provider: http://www.covd.org/

I’m in NYC and initially took my son to the head of pediatric opthamology at a major NY hospital. He pronounced his vision 20/20, and suggested I get a tutor. He did look at convergence , as a possible vision problem… but his exam didn’t scratch the surface of all the possible vision problems a child like mine might have.

The DO, on the other hand, did an eyeball check up , as well as perceptual processing and visual/motor integration evaluations. I made an anology to my husband that comparing an opthamologist and a dev. optometrist is like comparing a neurologist and occupational therapist. They are examining the same part of the body, but from a different perspective.

PS I know your part of NY well - I went to school in ithaca, and my best friend grew up in pittsfield. I miss upstate NY, despite the chilly weather! : )

Hi everyone - I just realized that there were more posts than just Karen’s! Wow! So much great information here - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I felt SO isolated last week when this information about my son was “told” to me , not to mention not realizing it myself put a damper on my confidence as a parent! Now I actually think I am more comfortable and have such a strong desire to help Reilly be himself. Linda - as someone mentioned your post is just wonderful this is how I see my son - even before I realized what was going on - now I just hope that I can help him continue to see how wonderful he is as time goes on and school becomes a factor in his life. There is so much I need to learn - I have been making notes and when I have some free time next week I am going to go thru them and decide how I want to go about helping him. So, for now you might say I am brainstorming with everyone’s help. Is everyone an “old pro” at this now? You all seem like you have your “act” together so well - I really hope I can do this to - I really do not want to let him down or slip thru the cracks because of my ignorance. Anyways, Victoriah - I would love for you to send me those tutoring outlines - I am not working this summer so I will have plenty of time to slip it in here and there. I just feel I need to continue as life is so that he doesn’t become nervous or worried that something is wrong - which I do NOT feel is the case - I just happened to learn even more about my darling little boy - that’s all!!! Socks, what exactlly is Visual Therapy? I have never heard of it before and where would I go to see if this is an option sometime in the future? Marie - is Rush Hour and Set found in regular toy stores or do you have to buy them in certain stores? He really is starting to get into board and card games recently without any prompting from me. We went to an amusement park today and all the kids were running around crazy away from their parents and Reilly just behaved so beautiful stayed with me the whole time without a single tantrum or argument - He kept saying “I am a good listener, Mommy!” It was a school function so he knew quite a few children and still stayed with me and had his fun. Well, enough babble for now - again have a good weekend and I hope to hear from everyone soon! Fondly, KIM 8)

Linda, does your son wear glasses due to the DO’s information or did he find other ideas/ways to help him? I just don’t understand WHY I do not know all of this information that you ladies know - I feel like it is something I really should know since I am a teacher and have taught children with LD - not to mention any of this information could benifit any child depending on the circumstance - I really need to start reading less fiction and more research! LOL - but it is probably ia something I should do! Again and for the final time tonight (I think~!) KIM

Kim, You might find Rush Hour at a Toy R Us. However, a better bet would be an independent toy store, where you could also find Set. You can find both online. Set even has a website, where you can play the game (the more complicated version—don’t let it put you off, there’s a lower level which is the one you learn the game at.)