Hi y’all. I thought you might be interested in hearing news my mom told me the other night. She is 59, just went for an eye exam and found out that all these years she has had in addition to being nearsighted, a problem with focusing both eyes on print. She only reads with one eye at a time. Her doc told her that her brain has compensated for it all these years and that although she could do vision therapy, at this point it would probably just confuse her brain. Amazingly, she is just as voracious a reader as I am. It apparently didn’t slow her down in the reading/spelling dept.
Now this makes me wonder if my older son might have this problem, he was dxed nearsighted in 2nd grade and has had tremendous difficulty up to that time learning to read. He still does things like skip small words, put words in that aren’t there or substitutes words. He is almost 13 now. However, his testing hasn’t come up this kind of problem, he even has been identified as having his strength as visual as he has apd and add/in. Do you think a call to the eye doc would be in order? He has had an eye exam back in Aug.
Re: visual ld discovered at age 59
Amazing.. Of course I got to put my two cents in.
As everyone on this board knows,and probably the free world,I AM dyslexic.
I was so severe,I suppose the word is,the teacher actually refered me for testing in Kindergarten. My dyslexia showed up in physical skills as well as reading and writing difficulties.I could NOT throw a ball forward,or walk a balance beam forward,or skate forward. I could however do it backwards,this is how I wrote,everything reversed.
Not long after I was diagnosed in school,my brothers and I went roller skating.
My Mother dropped us off at the roller rink,(you could do this at the time!)
There I was in the middle of the rink,trying to skate forward. Could NOT do it,wound up just finally going backwards. A man came into the middle of the rink where I was skating,I was in the middle so I wouldn’t run into everyone else skating forward! He stooped down and started looking at my eyes. My oldest brother was alarmed and came over to us. The man told my brother,I am a eye doctor,please give this card to your Mother.
This was in Ft Lauderdale,the Man was DR. Golden,one of the very first developmental optometrist to use vision therapy. I went to DR Golden’s office for at least a year,maybe more. Did it help me to learn to read? Maybe.
I learned to decode in 3rd grade,but didn’t learn to comprehend until 8th grade.
Still reversed letters,still jumped rope better backwards then forwards.Still can’t tell you my left from my right unless I look at my hands.
I firmly believe the things that helped me the most in remediating my difficulties,or adapting to the rest of the world,was things I figured out on my own. Not saying in any way to not investigate the possibility of vision therapy or any other therapy,did it with my own kids.
What I am saying,I figured out that my handwriting improved when I turn my paper at a sharp 90 degree angle,so I literally write side ways,up and down,rather then left to right. Same with reading. If I lay down and read,I am holding the book at a 90 degree angle. No one taught me this,no teacher said try this. As a matter of fact it drove the teacher’s crazy,still annoys some people:-) When I chart in a patients chart,as big as it is,I must turn it sideways to write,makes me need a lot more space on the nursing station desk.Just as your Mom covers one eye.
The BEST possible source to help your child develop strategies to inable him to learn to read just might be his grandma:-) Talk to each other,discuss the strange things your son does,you know the things he might already be doing that noone else has really picked up on,like my ability to do everything backwards,and not forwards,see what similarilities there are,your mom just might be able to shed light,and tell you what she did to compensate. Does she have auditory involvement? My youngest is diagnosed auditory processing deficit and due to this has scored high or high normal in visual processing. I do not know what my scores were,don’t know if this is how I scored,but I do know,he learned to adapt to his auditory lags by using visual cues. He still writes like I did,he still had trouble learning to read. Once he did learn to read,as I did,he reads above grade level. Once I learned to read I LOVE to read. I am highly sensitive to increase noise levels,makes me nuts,and I can’t concentrate. How lucky you are to find the family member that might be able to help your son:-) Empathy is the BEST teacher. My opinion for the day.
get a developmental vision evaluation. This includes about 20 tests of visual function not performed in a regular eye exam.
An excellent website with information is http://www.childrensvision.com. You can find developmental optometrists in your geographic area at http://www.covd.org.
My daughter had all of the problems your son has and had been seeing an opthalmologist regularly for eyeglasses. However, when I took her to a developmental optometrist at age 8-1/2, I discovered she had severe developmental vision delays in addition to her severe astigmatism. The optometrist was able to demonstrate some of the problems to me (including focusing speed in the 1st percentile, equivalent to that of a 3yo). We did 8 months of vision therapy to bring sensory/motor function up to age-appropriate levels, and then followed up with cognitive training (PACE, Processing and Cognitive Enhancement, http://www.learninginfo.com) to develop visual processing skills — thinks like directionality, visual sequencing, visual short-term memory, pattern recognition, etc. Halfway through cognitive training is when her reading began to sound normal. We then followed up PACE with a Phono-Graphix intensive (http://www.readamerica.net) to provide her with advanced decoding and word analysis skills. She now reads fluently at a 7th grade level (at age 11-1/2). At age 8-1/2, in 2nd grade, when we started all this, she was reading at a preschool level.
Mary