Visual Analysis Dysfunction

In general schools are not very good at all at intervening in this kind of thing. Basically what most teachers do is more of the same — if staring at the letter or the flash card didn’t teach reading, then we spend a lot more time staring at it.
Your child needs to be directly taught directionality in letter recognition, in reading, and in writing. Elderly traditional teachers may remember how to do this, but your run-of-the mill younger teacher was never taught this herself.
You can do a lot yourself, you can buy programs, and you can look into vision therapy — it is controversial and you hear mixed stories, but get a good provider and parents say it can help.
Ask me for specifics if you want to know some of the things you can do yourself.

Gosh I sure wish they’d get it together on terminology as you hear a newa name for the same darn thing.

BTW, Victoria are you one of those “elderly teachers”. I don’t think I’m ever going to be an “elderly teacher”.

—des

Well, des, even I don’t believe my age.
And I can never figure out if I’m radically modern or an old-fashioned stick-in-the mud — I hear both when I stress phonics, problem-solving, . .

If he doesn’t remember the flashcard, have him look at it a little longer.

Victoria, you just described my son’s life. Any advice is more than welcome.

mava: I have been posting here for a while, and after re-typing the same long advice five or six times I got smart and started saving my old posts to recycle. You can have the collected works/book in progress by email, no strings attached. Just send a request to [email protected]

Visual analysis dysfunction doesn’t tell you much.

I would start by getting a developmental vision evaluation, which tests various aspects of visual efficiency skills (convergence, accommodation, saccades, tracking, etc.). These tests are not included in regular eye exams, and it’s rare to find an opthalmologist trained in this area. You can find board-certified developmental optometrists in your area at http://www.covd.org . A website with good information for parents is http://www.childrensvision.com

If there is a problem with one or more of the visual efficiency skills, then vision therapy is likely to help. If the eval finds no visual efficiency problems (or after visual efficiency problems are addressed), then a cognitive skills training program can be very effective at improving visual processing skills (things such as attention to visual detail, visual sequencing, short-term visual memory, directionality, etc.). A good home program is BrainSkills (http://www.brainskills.com ).

Schools are not equipped to evaluate visual dysfunction problems. They also do not have the resources to provide cognitive skills training (which typically requires one-on-one time with an adult for the exercises). All they can do is provide accommodations. If you want to actually remediate the deficit, you will have to do it yourself.

Nancy

Please do as Nancy says. The schools are mostly completely ignorant on the subject of visual disorders. My son had one. He could not remember his letters and numbers in K. He struggled in Math reading and writing. Vision therapy changed things for him in a very big way. He is now an average math student straight Bs in a regular class without any extra help. He is considered above average in writing and reading.

He now actually has a visual processing strength. One new change as of the end of this year is he can now spell because he can hold the picture of the words in his head. He would never have been able to do that if we hadn’t addressed his visual deficits through vision therapy.

He is still a little bit of a slow processor but it doesn’t really affect him on a day to day basis in any significant way. I am going to continue to work on his processing speed with some help from our developmental optometrist.

Vision therapy is not a quick fix, you really have to stick to it.

Thanks so much for your replies! I used the website and found a local eye doctor, who can test my son for visual analysis dysfunction. The eye exam is a week from Tuesday. I will let you know what the doctor finds.