fascinating article about integrating vision,aud,motor....

nt

There is still controversy about vision therapy but if it works for your child, so be it; however, many, many of the posts on this board lead me to wonder obout OUTPUT…executive dysfunction is characterized as part of an an output disorder like ADHD(read in LD on Depth on ADHD and Russell Barkley’s work). In our culture and in public schools it’s the output(verbal and written and social-organization, flexibility and getting along with others), that matters….these are the areas that take a long long time and lots of maturation, to accomplish. I am of the philosophy that thinks my child has to fit in to society, not the reverse and we have pushed him hard to work on organization, getting along in a big group, and not having exceptions make for him because of LD, and he’s been very successful in middle school. We don’t see him as any more special than our younger son who is very bright and has no hearing in one ear(infant chicken pox), and has no school probs at all.

We can’t tell yet if VT is helping with reading/fluency etc, but the one thing I have noticed in the past 2 weeks is a marked decrease in motion sickness!!

You are so right about the output part. Its what we are all judged on, not the quality of the processing that takes place internally. At least not when a child is school age. Hopefully my son’s internal “gifts” will be be more apparent if we can improve his output.

One of the interesting things about the new special school my son will attend next year is that they do not believe in accomodations. Their goal is to get a child functioning at a level that will allow them to enter the mainstream again. Obviously attending a school with only 10 kids in a class, and with specially trained teachers , is an accomodation in and of itself - but its an interesting philosophy. For example, they emphasize handwriting (cursive in particular) and not just keyboarding.

Interesting (to me) about the chicken pox effect on your other child. I believe my son’s issues are related to having the chicken pox when he was 2 weeks old, and all the medical interventions that were necessary at that time.

My daughter received visual processing help through her SI OT. We do however, use the accommodations in the school system. Most of her accommodations are the use of AT; however, we do get extended time for state testing. Organizaton continues to be a BIG weakness and the area I’m having the school really work on this year.

Just curious why you don’t agree with the use of accommodations. Accommodations were a Godsend while she was being remediated. The extended time is so important b/c as she once said, “Mom, just b/c you don’t know the answer FIRST doesn’t mean you don’t know the answer.”

Its not that I don’t agree with accomodations - I just spent the last school year banging my head on the wall for small accomodations like preferential seating. The school he’s going to go to (because of the excellence of the remediation) doesn’t … in the sense that they try to teach compensatory strategies and skills so that their kids can be mainstreamed. Realistically, I bet many of those kids still need things like extended time etc. I’m absolutely positive my son will need extended time in particular b/c of his slow processing speed.

I just find it interesting that had we kept DS at his old school we’d be pushing for AT for writing so he could keep up. At his new school they will concentrate on handwriting as well as keyboarding - in other words they don’t give up on the handwriting for these kids. They work with them on it instead.

This is all theory for me at this point anyway. We’ll see how it really goes next year!

For my son in public middle school I have found that the teachers offer informal accomodations to all kids(extra time on tests, although our state mandated tests aren’t timed), insist on word-processed reports, offer notes typed up,don’t require cursive, do lots of review, and these are so far are enough…we want him to succeed and feel with his strengths-organization, perserverence, sense of humor and social skills, he will. If we hadn’t insisted on him taking notes by hand, reading his own material, drawing his own maps, etc. he wouldn’t have learned. Yes it takes him 2-3X longer than his brother. In his school, there is a huge range of kids and he is comfortably in the top third in achievement. He is a slow processor, but not at all disorganized(just the opposite-compulsive), and needs to learn to work with this problem. He has matured slowly but surely, like many LD kids do. This I think is a difference between him and some friends with NLD or ADHD which have seemed worse in middle school. We do not expect much from the school, and with Massachusetts’ budget problems it’s a good thing we don’t.

Karen,

Very interesting article. A little heavy for my Sunday morning reading with my cup of coffee. I will have to get back to finish it.

I do think that integration is very important along with building the visual skills and the cognitive skills. I am glad we found a doctor that deals with all these issues.

KarenN,
I found this article very interesting. I would love to do the exercise described as Mental Gymnastics, but I can’t figure it out. What are the different taps in A thru D. Its described as TAP 1 and 1. Then Tap 2 and 2. Then Tap 1 and 2, and 2 and 1. When he says “Try both the right and left hands as the “1” beat - then use whichever way seems easiest as the mark for this step. ” Does this mean clap your hand against your thigh. Is this tapping done with the hand and not the foot? I am totally confused. I gave this to my daughters OT, and she is trying to figure this out too. Feel free to help. If anyone wants to email me personally on this, I will post my email address. Thanks Penny