Some of you may remember that I did series of exercises from Jerome Rosner’s book, “Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties” to improve my son’s visual perception. I have noticed a few things that have improved that I thought I would share. He is also doing interactive metronome which helped with the visual perception exercises.
My son made a card for his grandma. He wrote Happy Birthday Grandma across the top of the unlined paper. Normally he would have written slanted but this time he wrote very straight. He is much more consistant at writing lists down the left side of the page. He previously would start to move toward the middle of the page as he got further down.
The other day he came home and told me a girl on the bus taught him how to draw various figures. He was drawing a variety of different faces. He was very carefully drawing the ears so that they line up on the face. This is the boy who NEVER colored unless forced and still mostly drew stick figures when he had too. He has never voluntarily drawn anything. I had an old book that teaches drawing. He is using it happily to practice this new skill.
Now, I have not seen a huge jump in handwriting. The spacing is definitely better and that has always been his biggest problem.
I don’t beleive that there is one therapy that will provide all the answers. It is a chipping away process. I have to say that this was worthwhile for my son.
If you have a child who scored low on the Bender like my son, this may be something to consider.
Re: Visual perception
I don’t know what IM stands for? Is it a type of therapy done at home or with a therapist?
Re: Visual perception
I think they worked together. I think IM made this skill easier to obtain. I will try to explain the specific skill that I think was addressed by those exercises.
My son had terrible spacing of letters and page management. The exercises involved using a geoboard (a block of wood with a bunch of pins in it) to form various shapes with rubberbands then I had to turn the board on it’s side and he had to draw the same shape on a page of dots that looked like the board. At first he was sooooo bad at this. His deficit was very clear. He didn’t know where to start, didn’t know where to end, it seemed he couldn’t conceptualize the shape in any meaningful way.
By using the rubber bands he was forced to address the shape one line at a time. I had to frequently coach him to take a step by step approach, first one line then the next. He had to pay attention to where to start the line looking at the dots and counting where each line began and where it ended.
Eventually the geoboard is taken away and he just has to draw shapes. Then the number of dots to be used as a reference is gradually decreased until he has to draw the shapes with no reference dots. It is very gradual skill building which is what I liked about it. I know this helped him build a skill that wasn’t there before. Until he came home and started all this drawing I just didn’t know how I would see it manifest.
I have that article on handwriting if anyone wants it I will email it to them. I know that my son has a few issues with regards to handwriting as well. I wonder how this new spacial skill will effect his abilty to learn cursive.
I think therapy just opens the door but good teaching helps them walk through it.
IM = interactive metronome
It is done by a therapist. Therapists who do it include speech, occupational therapist, learning specialists, and many others.
Re: Visual perception
We had the same success with occupational therapy for motor planning and sensory integration - it wasn’t IM, but seems to have addressed the same visual processing deficits.
My daughter’s handwriting was basically illegible, all over the page with poor spacing and large and small letters. Her OT used handwriting without tears as well. She now has some of the best cursive in the classroom. Board copying is harder than book, but it’s much improved as well. She has limited board copying as an accommodation and uses a computer for written assignments in the classroom.
Just saying there’s more than one way to address the same deficit.
Re: Visual perception
My son did OT for motor planning several years ago - with great results at the time. (He was 5 so handwriting wasn’t really on the agenda..) but we recently opted to do IM . It seems to get at the root motor planning deficits that are behind many of his issues and it only took about a month. This doesn’t preclude adding OT back into his schedule at some later point of course to specifically address handwriting and/or vision related problems.
Re: Visual perception
Hmm, sounds interesting.
Can you get the school to give OT now? We have both private and public school OT (less expensive) and the progress is wonderful.
Re: Visual perception
My son is currently in a regular private school so we get nothing during the day. Everything I add to his schedule has to take place after school, so we just can’t fit OT in right now.
Linda,
Do you think the visual exercises had a different effect than IM? We’ve done IM, as you know, and saw improvements in handwriting—mostly endurance. My son likes to trace and color but his drawing is immature, except for a few splinter skills like cactuses and palm trees (two of his passions). I wouldn’t care except that he gets very frustrated by it.
Handwriting is very complex. There was a good post some time ago about the maybe five different skills that are necessary/can go wrong with handwriting. My son has had four of them. IM most clearly attacks the dyspraxia/motor planning part of these skills. Our therapist told me she has had kids copy more accurately too but that didn’t happen for us.
I’m glad he is doing so well.
Beth