writint, spelling,visual memory,etc problems, please help!

Hi, Kel,

This is a complex question and I can’t answer it all, but I can ask a friend familiar with visual issues to answer that part of your question. As far as “failing dramatically” is concerned, that is not the issue. The issue is, what is the required discrepancy in your state for special ed. placement? If the discrepancy needed is 15 points, then standard scores in an area of achievement would have to be 104 or lower. If 22 points, then 97 or lower.

Did they check the reading thoroughly? Did they give the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing)? I think you’d get more feedback if you’d post the actual scores (standard scores) including the IQ subtest sores. What test identified the auditory memory weakness?

There is a CD-rom called Brain Builder which supposedly works on auditory and visual sequential memory. I bought it for my child as it is fairly inexpensive. I can’t tell you whether there is carry-over to other things, though. Here’s that web-site:

http://www.advancedbrain.com/bb_intro.html

What remediation did the doctor recommend?

Janis

Average IQ is 90-110, high average is 110-120, 120-130 is superior, and above 130 is gifted…however this won’t diagnose his school problems. he needs achievement testing and eval. of attention and behavior. Has he repeated a grade, 8 seems old for 2nd grade? What diagnosis did you get from the psychologist? Hang in there, what you do at home is important too.

I believe she said he repeated K. I think they did an educational because she said the evaluator said spelling and writing are on grade level but below his potential. She does need to post the scores, though.

Janis

as soon as possible. Regular vision exams do not check for developmental vision skills. There is a lot of information at http://www.childrensvision.com, and you can find board-certified developmental optometrists at http://www.covd.org.

Vision therapy usually corrects the sensory-level deficit very well. However, vision therapy needs to be followed up with cognitive training to achieve full remediation. Audiblox and PACE are both excellent cognitive skills training programs.

I have seen children like your son before. Unfortunately, psychologists and educators are not trained to recognize the symptoms of developmental vision problems.

Nancy

Hello everyone!
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. I didn’t post his test scores earlier because I felt like I’d al ready gone on and on. Anyway, I also forgot to say that he has fine motor weaknesses as well. Ok here are the test performed and results the best I can make out:

Intellectual Functioning Wisc-III Full Scale IQ score of 119
(90th percentile) Performance IQ of 119 and Verbal IQ of 115

Verbal Abilities-Verbal Comprehension score of 123 (91st percentile)
Single word receptive vocabulary (PPVT- Peabody Picture Vocabulary test) 86th percentile.
Single word expressive vocabulary was superior (Woodcock Johnson Picture Vocabulary WJ-III 91st) percentile)
WJ III- Understanding Directions 78th percentile.
Comprehension 95th percentile
Verbal Reasoning to note similarities between words 63th percentile

Visuoperception and Visuoconstruction–
Perceptual organization Index score of 122 (93 percentile) Indicatine superior ability to think in visual images and manipulate images with speed and fluency.
Visual Sequencing -Picture Arrangement 95th percentile.
Object Assembly—95th percentile
Block Design 84th percentile
Picture Completion 63th percentile(indicates his attention to visual detail is adequately developed).

Visual motor integration was low average (VMI 21st percentile)
Visual motor organization skills when copying a more complex geometric shape were average ( Rey-O, 42nd percentile),

Test of Visual Perceptual Skills (TVPS)
Visual Discrimination —42nd percentile
Ability to find form in hidden field 63rd percentile
There were a couple of other categories here but Doc basically felt (except for visual motor integration) that his visual perceptual skills are generally average and he should have no difficulties processing basic visual information.

Processing Speed—
Processing Speed Index score of 101 (66th) percentile
average
Visual Scanning speed 75th percentile
Visual Motor speed Coding 50th percentile

Memory and Learning—generally average\
Information about world 63rd percentile
Digit Span 50th percentile
Arithmatic 50th percentile
Story Recall WJ-III 99.7th percentile
Calif. Veral Learning test for Children-CVLT-C 86th %
Initial attention span for auditory-verbal information 91%

His visual memory skillw were variable ranging from low average to average.
TVPS Sequential Memory 23rd percentile
TVPS Visual Memoryl 25th percentile
REy-0 28th percentile

Ponological Processing- C-TOPP
ss Percentile
Elision 13 84th
Blending Words !4 91th
Memory for digits 8 25th
Rapid Digit Naming 12 75th
Nonword Repetition 11 63rd
Rapid Letter Naming 12 75th

I can also give you the Academic Achievement scores and the summary of what the Psychologist said if that would help.

As I understand it, he doesn’t seem to have and auditory processing problem.

His issues seem to be problems with:
Short term auditory memory
Visual Motor Integration
Visual Memory

whoops hit the return button by accident
His issues seem to be:

Short term auditory memory skills
Visual motor integration skills
Visual memory weakness
Fine motor dysfunction.

Thanks so much everyone for helping me to sort this out and get my little guy some help. Kell

I really thought about that, but as I understand it, this is a controversial form of therapy. My pediatrician, and the opthamologist (not that I buy everything they say!) both said that there was no documentation in the literature to support the effectiveness of this kind of therapy. The problem is, is that we have limited funds and I need to zero in on his critical weaknessess and find a therapy that really will work. I’ve asked around and can’t seem to find anyone who can guarantee me some results. Have you had luck with this? The one optometrist I spoke with offered me a program of therapy that would cost thousands, but couldn’t promise results. Hhhmmm?

Hi Kel,

Up until you said that your son quickly picked up reading during the summer, I would have suspected a need for a developmental vision exam. Incidentally, is there any history in your family of you, your husband, or your siblings or parents who had trouble with early reading instruction? The types of problems addressed by vision therapy often tend to have genetic roots.

I suspect that he was late in having his binocular vision skills develop (not that late, but some kids lag normally) and once both eyes were functioning together print started to make sense to him. This would also explain his poor handwriting.

If I’m right, he would have been tough to work with on reading and writing (handwriting, that is) until the vision resolved. He might also have been a bit clumsy then, versus now. Is he easier to work with now, in terms of showing him how to print, etc.? If that’s the case, maybe he just needs good guidance and lots of practice. Ditto for working on his memory. Auditory memory develops partly as a result of doing a lot of decoding and blending…holding three, four, five or even six items in memory at once and blending them. Kids learning to read get a lot of exercise of their auditory memory, and visual memory. But, he was delayed, then learned fast, probably due to his intellect. So, he may have missed the practice.

As for the optometrist you mentioned, he should be doing some testing before he even knows what might be needed in terms of vision therapy, and some problems would not take thousands of dollars to fix, so he should not be able to quote a price before testing….if you go that route find another O.D. The ophthalmologists are completely “head in the sand” on this issue, by the way….not all of them, but many of them. Vision therapy is exactly what is required for many poor readers. I just suspect that your son’s vision issues have resolved, if he ever had them in the first place.

Just so you know, I’m neither an O.D, nor a trained educator. But I do successfully teach kids to read and have found vision therapy to be an essential tool in many cases. Your son does not sound typical of the kids who’ve needed vision therapy….not now, anyway.

However, there is an O.D. named Doug who may also find this thread. He will be the one to listen to on the vision therapy aspect, if he shows up here…..Rod

PS: I would not want him labeled by the school either.

Hi Rod,
Thanks so much for your input. I may just try and see if that doesn’t help him. That was one of the things that the psychologist who did the testing suggested we might try—although he acknowledged that it was controversial, he has seen patients that improve. I’m really at a loss when it comes to knowing which would be the best soulution for him. The Dr. indicated that my son was relatively weak at remembering visual sequences a task that is associated with spelling. Would vision therapy help this? Although, he is reading well for a 2nd grader, I know that many dyslexics get stuck at the 2nd or 3rd grade level and I’m concerned that there are underlying issues here. I’ve noticed that he is starting to have trouble decoding big words and I don’t know if it’s just because he hasn’t been taught this skill yet. AAAHHHHH all these numbers and this lingo is driving me nuts. God, I have a college degree what do parents who haven’t had the luxury of college do to help their kids! Rant over…. Thanks again..Kel

Certainly I hear good things from Rod and others about vision therapy, and I agree that you should look into it.
Other parents here with kids who are somewhat similar to yours have reported great advances after *long and serious* work with Audiblox and Interactive Metronome — talk to these parents and see what you can find out.

Meanwhile, what you are presenting is a very bright kid who is having trouble learning to read with the hodgepodge and confusion at his school, having trouble with multisyllable words, and having a lot of trouble with handwriting.

I work with a lot of kids like this and I use some vision training and coordination training techniques within the approach I take to teaching reading and writing. I start where the child is, teach the sound-symbol relationships directly, model multisyllable decoding and teach it by doing it. I start where the child is, teach holding a pen lightly and without pain, teach smooth motions and directionality, and teach smooth and efficient letter formation. Direct teaching one-to-one based on feedback of the child’s real achievement can work wonders.

To avoid reposting the same things too often, I’ve copied a lot of how-to-tutor outlines down and offer to send them to you if you are interested — just email me with a request.

What did the reading eval. show? What about OT/handwriting help at school?(in our system 8yo 3rd graders learn cursive, which you could teach at home using Handwriting without Tears).

Hi Kel,

Your son is similar to my third grader. You are definitely on the right track. You have to deal with the underlying deficits. There is no getting around that. They will just keep popping up as he tackles each new grade and each new set of skills.
I have done a few things that have helped. He is in vision therapy now with an amazing optometrist. It is expensive but worth every penny. We pay around 350$ per month for weekly therapy. I figure that his college fund is pretty useless unless we deal with these issues now.

When my son started and had zero tracking ability. It was pretty much unmeasurable. Amazing considering that he could read at a third grade level but he could not sustain the effort for more than 5 minutes and even that was exhausting for him. After 12 weeks he was retested as having the tracking abilitiy of “over a 5 year old.” He loves to read now and reads books above his grade level.

This particular doctor addresses many areas such as ocular motor, visual processing and sensory integration. He just recently re evaluated my son and recommended new things targeting areas that he has trouble with in the real world such as written expression.
I believe there is a wide variance in optometrists. Some are great and some are mediocre. Some have a very narrow focus and don’t address all the issues. It is very complex and you need someone who really knows what they are doing.

You could buy audiblox ($60 for the blocks and book) and do it yourself at home. It deals with some of these issues. I wouldn’t do the custom program because if what I read recently is true they have been known to give flaky advice. The program itself is excellent and I see similarities to some aspects of what we do in vision therapy.

Good luck whatever you decide.

You can use the assessment instruments in the book “Reading Reflex” to get a handle on where his decoding skills and code knowledge are. Most libraries would have this book, and it is widely available in bookstores for under $20. The assessments are very easy to administer, but you really need to read the first three chapters of the book first.

The “controversy” over vision therapy is rooted in the problem that optometrists are the ones who have developed this specialty and have done much of the research, not opthalmologists. Opthalmologists have been reluctant to accept the research results of optometrists. However, in some areas the research studies (conducted independently by both optometrists and opthalmologists) have been so totally conclusive, opthalmologists have finally acknowledged the benefits of vision therapy and established a new specialty of opthalmology called “orthoptics”. This is a subset of the vision therapy provided by developmental optometrists. Unfortunately, most opthalmologists don’t know enough to refer you to an orthoptician — should you be lucky enough to have an orthoptician in your area.

Vision therapy done in-office is the most expensive way to do it, but not the only way. Many developmental optometrists will design a home-based vision therapy program for you, if you ask. In a home-based program you would be taught how to do the exercises at home, and go to the office only to have progress assessed and new exercises prescribed. You can use the listings at http://www.covd.org to find an optometrist who will do this for you. Another alternative is computerized home vision therapy. Check out http://www.homevisiontherapy.com for this option. On a really stringent budget, some people use the book at http://www.eyesontrack.com for home exercises.

I strongly recommend getting an evaluation first, though. There are two parts to a developmental vision eval: the regular check of acuity, etc., and the developmental vision tests. If your son is covered by medical insurance, the acuity portion of the evaluation would be covered as usual, and you would only have to pay for the developmental tests. If you prefer an opthalmologist, most optometrists will accept the results of a recent opthalmology exam and not re-do that portion of the evaluation. Costs for the developmental tests vary, but usually run about $100 (unless you live on either coast) with an additional $50 for a written report of the test results.

Whether you do the developmental vision evaluation or not, I would recommend that you start Audiblox with your son (http://www.audiblox2000.com). This program does a lot to strengthen sequencing skills, attention skills, etc.

Nancy

I am not good with scores, but if would be nice if there was some area to qualify him for special education. Then see if occupational therapy services are available to help with the fine motor. While it is always appropriate for parents to do what they can, your district also needs to do their share. What programs do they have to offer you? Often, unfortunately, if you don’t ask, they don’t offer. I am in southern CA and can give you some references if that would be helpful.

Dear Linda,

The reason why the mother whom you are referring to was told to stop the program was because I was afraid she might harm the child. (I have never recommended this before, so this will give you an idea of the situation.)
Prior to our intervention, this mother did discipline her child, without her husband’s consent or knowledge, when she got really angry and frustrated at her son — that is child abuse, not discipline. Because he had severe behavior problems, the risk that she would discipline him out of anger and frustration when doing the program was too big.

Greetings,
Benetta

Did you really recommend spanking? I apologize if you didn’t and that person was lying.

I don’t think there is ever a reason to recommend spanking.

I am doing a report on identifying LD’s in children. Would these how-to—do outlins help me. If so please e-mail me with them.
“To avoid reposting the same things too often, I’ve copied a lot of how-to-tutor outlines down and offer to send them to you if you are interested — just email me with a request.”

I’ve answered this by email, but just to clarify: no, I’m not a testing person. I’m the nitty-gritty person who comes in after a problem is identified and tries to do so,mething to change it.