My soon to be 4 year old son was just diagnosed with a visual perceptual delay. His visual perceptual skills are like that of a 2yr old. We have an OT therapist and a set plan to get him ‘up to speed’, but all of this is new to me. I guess I’m just scared of the future with school & reading…One day at a time…
Still, any advice about expectations on my part would be appreciated!
Re: Visual Perceptual Diagnosis
Actually…good news that I just received from a behavioral optometrist. Studies are now showing that Visual Processing Disorders can be treated up until the patient is 25 years old.
Re: Visual Perceptual Diagnosis
[quote=srodgersk]My soon to be 4 year old son was just diagnosed with a visual perceptual delay. His visual perceptual skills are like that of a 2yr old. We have an OT therapist and a set plan to get him ‘up to speed’, but all of this is new to me.
Still, any advice about expectations on my part would be appreciated![/quote]
As amorette stated in the post above mine, these problems can be addressed. Do you have a history of reading problems on one side of your family or the other? If so, I would recommend that you take your son to a developmental optometrist for his next vision evaluation, because vision problems that cause learning problems tend to run heavily in families.
Tell the optometrist that there’s a visual perceptual delay and whether there’s a history of reading issues in your family, as he is likely to be a bit more aggressive in doing his initial evaluation knowing that you have those concerns.
I think you’re going at it correctly by getting an OT involved early and working on developmental skills, but a developmental optometrist is [i]the[/i] expert who can tell you whether the OT work has remediated all the required vision skills by the time your son is ready to start reading.
If your son gets to age 6 or so and the developmental optometrist is still finding vision skills issues, you will probably hear him recommend vision therapy (or possibly glasses) to correct his problems.
Incidentally, [i]developmental optometrist[/i] and [i]behavioral optometrist[/i] are one and the same. The field has been gradually adopting the former name over the latter, which has been in use for a long time, because it is more descriptive of the sort of developmental problems they address.
You can find the ones nearest you using the Locate a Doctor search box at the [url=http://covd.org]COVD website[/url].
I should add that I’m not a developmental optometrist. I teach reading to kids, many of whom have undergone vision therapy. In my opinion, vision therapy usually makes my job much, much easier, as the kids are finally able to learn when they are no longer experiencing all sorts of visual confusion.
Good luck; hope this helps,
Rod Everson
[url=http://ontrackreading.com]OnTrack Reading[/url]
You are very lucky to have caught it early. Hopefully with early intervention and therapy he is less likely to have severe issues.