Hi,
I find myself wanting to advise about half the parents who post here to take their kids to a developmental optometrist for a vision check, so I might as well start a new thread and make the point here.
First, if you go to a developmental optometrist, find one who believes in the effectiveness of vision therapy. If he doesn’t you’re wasting your money. Second, call them first and ask for the names of some satistied parents of kids who’ve undergone vision therapy. A reputable vision therapy department will be able to provide dozens of names of people to contact, most of whom will tell you that significant changes occured following vision therapy. (One mother told me that her child’s walking gait even changed significantly for the better….which I believe.)
As for why I’m recommending this, let me tell you where I started a few years back. I was trained in a phonetic reading method and became convinced that kids who can’t read lacked phonemic skills and code knowledge. This is, in fact, true, but I’ve found that it is only part of the story. Granted, I work with kids who, once they get the code and the phonemic skills in place, take off with reading. But I also have worked with kids who, even after getting a good grasp of the code, and having developed near-perfect phonemic skills, still don’t want to read.
Not only don’t they want to read, they continue to make little “careless” errors (when for then, and for the, etc., etc.) and they often have a hard time drawing inferences about patterns that recur time and again in English (the kid who looks at “quack” and says “quake,” for example. In my opinion, these kids usually have near-point binocular vision problems that are making reading much more difficult for them than we suspect. They also don’t know that they are “seeing” any differently than anyone else, by the way, so don’t expect them to complain about it.
There are four political groups involved, all successfully keeping this under wraps for various reasons. 1) The phonological crowd, such as Torgeson, Moats, Adams and Wolf, who all refuse to even consider the possibility that vision could be an issue (it’s been disproven, is their claim.) 2) The ophthalmology crowd, who have issued a policy statement that vision therapy is ineffective. 3) the schools, who ignore the issue because, under current law, they may have to pay for vision therapy if they even suggest that it might be an issue preventing reading and 4) the developmental optometrists themselves, who fail to realize that the phonological people have a point, and so fail to solve the reading problems of many of their vision therapy clients.
This will get too long if I don’t just sum up: There’s a double-deficit hypothesis in reading all right, but it hasn’t been framed yet. For most poor readers, vision deficits are getting in the way of their learning the sound-to-symbol relationships necessary to develop good phonological skills, and later, the lack of phonological skills is preventing even those who undergo vision therapy from learning to read easily.
For the past year I have worked with kids who are getting both the phonological training and the vision training. In most cases, that is exactly what they needed to finally enter the reading world. By the way, the vision deficit definitely runs in families.
It’s going to be a while before this takes hold, but it will, because it’s true…..Rod
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod,
I totally agree with you. I have been doing vision exercises with my dd since October. I have definitely seen a difference in her reading. Almost daily we do sciatic eye exercises. When we are consistent with these her reading takes off. Like many kids my child wants to use her neck muscles instead of her eyes. I have noticed that when she moves her neck while reading, then she loses her place. Her speech and learning therapist and I constantly tell her that her eyes need to do the work, not the neck!
I took my dd to see an optometrist. She also felt that eye exercises only worked while the person was doing them, but once they stopped the exercises then the person falls back to their old ways. All I can say is that I hope she is wrong!!
Sincerely,
Jan P.
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Jan,
If that’s what your optometrist said, you should consider finding an optometrist who works with a vision therapy department, either his/her own, or one he/she refers to routinely. Yours obviously does not subscribe to the same concepts as the developmental optometrists …..Rod
Re: Vision Therapy
Two interesting points:
re odd walking gaits: I’ve previously mentioned my very poor vision, including losing 90% of the use of my left eye due to deliberately untreated amblyopia, tracking problems, and hereditary farsightedness. My daughter has a strange vision problem including a weird kind of retinal damage and a tracking problem. My mother is the one we inherited the farsightedness from. Interestingly, all of us have a similar “odd” walking gait and so does my aunt. It’s very hard to describe; it’s kind of bouncy (cheerful, I always thought), the elbows seem to be all over the place although we don’t hit anything, and it looks awkward even though it isn’t — we are all active and take part in sports such as downhill skiing. In my own case the apparent awkwardness prevented me from getting advanced certificates in both swimming and skiing because I looked wrong, although I do difficult things (expert-only trails) in both sports just fine. My ex-husband could recognize my daughter in a distance in a crowd of thousands by the way she moved.
We’re all voracious readers by the way - each generation teaches the next before the schools can convince us we are wrong.
Interesting point about using the neck rather than the eyes — this isn’t one I have observed so much myself, but I’ll be looking out for it, thanks. Almost all of my students are in such a high level of stress that learning is impossible anyway, and I spend a lot of time getting them to relax; this will help eyestrain too.
What I notice in every student I tutor is the kid looking for the answer on my glasses instead of in the book …it’s amazing how much reading skill picks up once I convince them that the words are on the page and that staring me in the eye is *not* going to make me get nervous and tell them the right word or the math answer (watch out for this trick, folks; kids often pick it up unconsciously).
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod,
Thanks Rod for your comments. My dd had to wear glasses for a little while due to the fact that she failed the visual acuity test given to her by her speech and learning therapist. However after wearing the glasses for a few weeks, she read better without them than with them. The speech and learning therapist gave her another visual acuity test on the day that I forgot to bring her glasses to dd’s session. She passed the visual acuity test with flying colors. We were both amazed. I think my dd had a slight stigmatism, but with some of the visual exercises everything started to come into place. We did the exercise of holding a candle close and then at arm’s length. This, I think, helped her binocular vision. I’m not sure, but this exercise helped dd tremendously. Hopefully, if I need another optometrist then I will get information from my dd’s speech and learning therapist for a good developmental optometrist.
Thanks again,
Jan P.
Amen!
We, of course, are another vision therapy/Phono-Graphix success story (also cognitive training success story!).
I just want to point people to http://www.childrensvision.com, which is a good source of information and research studies about vision therapy.
Mary
Thanks for the vision website!
I just read the article: “Documentation of the Effectiveness of Vision Therapy”. This was highly encouraging to me. I have done many of the exercises for my dd in the area of convergence, accomodation, and binocularity. Every day my dd and I sit down to do her vision exercises. It is a very difficult part of my day. The exercises are very taxing on her. She has not been a happy child in doing them, but we plug along. Sometimes I wonder, “Is this worth it?” This article helped me to see that “Yes!” it is worth all the trials we are going through. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in leading me to this site. I am ever grateful.
God bless,
Jan P.
Re: walking gaits
Hi victoria,
My absolutely wild guess on the reason walking gait would be affected is that poor binocular vision coordination (or, in your case, near-monovision) would result in misleading or non-existent depth perception. If so, a person with such a condition would likely miss the slight rises and dips that we encounter when walking along all but the flattest surfaces. A dip would result in a sudden drop of the foot below the expected level, whereas a hump would cause a trip, much like we have all experienced when we mis-estimate the number of steps left on a stairs (either going up or coming down….think about the experience.)
Anyway, I suspect the gait is acquired as a defensive mechanism to avoid the continual surprises. It would involve not fully committing weight to the succeeding foot until contact had been fully established….sort of a “feel it out first” habit. Once binocular vision is established, the defensive gait can be abandoned, though this too will take effort, as any habit is hard to break. The mother of the child I mentioned said that he occasionally lapses back into the “old walk” until she mentions it to him, after which he readjusts.
Since most people walk relatively comfortably and with reasonable certainty as to where the “floor” is, any unusual behavior might stand out in a crowd, I would think…..Rod
Re: walking gaits
This whole idea about walking gaits and a possible link to vision is quite interesting to me. When my son was a baby/toddler he was diagnosed with sensory integration disorder. As a young child he was constantly falling and would knock into things. I even avoided enrolling him in preschool until he was 4 because other children would sometimes push him down or hurt him.
Looking back and thinking about this, I have to wonder if perhaps there’s a possible visual connection with this. Also, vision, being a “sense” that could have (and still be) affected.
Fortunately my son’s gross motor skills have improved considerably over the last few years. I’ve had him involved with sports and I think this has helped a lot. But he still has a slight “bouncy” toe walking gait. I’ll be very curious to see how our appointment with the vision therapist goes this week.
interesting theory
Hmmm — I was in an advanced skiing class, and discussing with the instructor how I did things; he said “Oh, really! You do *reaction sking* all the time!” I asked what that was, and he said that when visibility is low, or as an exercise partially covering the eyes, skiers/racers train to work only or mostly by the feel through the feet, to react to the hill, rather than planning ahead visually. I told him I could do little else, and we went ahead reaction skiing — down the one my daughter named: “Mom, want to join me on the double-black-diamond suicide death drop?” Like I said, we only *look* awkward.
This reinforces my gut feeling to advise people to get that kid out into an individual sport where you can develop skills and coordination and good health without being picked on.
The other funny thing about this is that I have excellent detail vision, as long as things will sit still, and sometimes paint watercolour miniatures. The astigmatism makes large canvases problematic unless I want to do a Dali or El Greco effect, but small is good.
Try that kid on calligraphy or model-building or something similar, great for fine motor skills and self-esteem too.
Re: Vision Therapy
OK, you are getting my attention. Yes, indeed, many researchers are trying to attribute everything to phonological deficits. So, I guess they think these kids who are very slow, who mix up simple words, who missequence sounds in words merely are having the difficulty at the level of a mapping the sound on to symbol. So, the symbol goes in ok, but once it hits the sound translator, it gets messed up.
I once read an article that did a really good job explaining the visual processing deficit. It made perfect sense and I lost it. It was about 2 years back.
Double-deficit. I wonder how may there are. WE also need to do a better job idendifying the strengths and weaknesses in each child.
I have never had a student go through vision therapy, I would love to test your hypothesis.
Re: walking gaits
Could this include running and walking everywhere “on tiptoe”? Somethig my 3 yr old does and I did as a child? I have an astigmatism and got glasses about age 7. Thanks for starting this thread. It saves so much grief when you know what pitfalls to avoid. I’m going to check out the vision website and begin trying to sort out a vision therapist!!! Am I going to far in thinking that you are suggesting that the famous dyslexic bdp confusion, letter-no reversal , may be due the vision component of a double defecit problem?
Re: Vision Therapy
Anitya,
You could test this hypothesis by getting a visual exercises book and incorportating some of exercises with your curriculum.
The following book is intended for use in the classroom and is relatively inexpensive:
http://www.jfspublishing.com/eyestrack2.html
I’m considering this one for myself:
http://www.howtolearn.com/vision.html
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Laura,
I’ve got some reservations about your suggestion. First, the vision problems don’t all fall into one neat category that can be addressed by one set of exercises. It’s probably even possible to be doing exactly the wrong set of exercises for a particular problem.
To give you an example (and maybe to shed a little more light on this subject) I recently encountered someone who can “always immediately see” the three-dimensional image in those neat “Magic Eye” drawings. The reason for this was that his eyes had a high tendency to focus too close (to turn in.) I, on the other hand, was not even aware that you could see something in those drawings if you focused too close….they were designed to be seen by relaxing the point of focus to a point back beyond the drawing. It turns out that if you focus in front of the drawing you see an inverted image (inverted in terms of depth) from the one intended.
This person was, in fact, focusing at a near point that made seeing the inverted image easy for him. Now, getting him to see the intended image by relaxing his eyes to focus beyond the book is going to be quite a challenge, I suspect. The relationship to reading is that to maintain the focus required to read requires him to hold what is, for him, an unnatural focal point beyond what he finds “normal.” What if the exercises you’re suggesting work to make the natural focal point even closer? See what I mean? And, if they don’t have any effect on his focal range whatsoever, they won’t do much good, I suspect.
Vision therapy, done by professionals under the guidance of a trained behavioral optometrist, is hard because every patient presents different challenges and requires different forms of therapy. One of the reasons, I feel, that vision therapy’s obvious benefits (obvious to me, anyway) are taking so long to surface into the real world is that people keep thinking they’ve addressed the vision issue, when they really haven’t.
Having said all that, Laura, I will get one of the books and see what the therapists have to say about it….sounds like an interesting project….Rod
Re: walking gaits
> Could this include running and walking everywhere “on tiptoe”? Something my 3 yr old does and I did as a child?
I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible given that you did it, and that you obviously had a vision problem.
> Am I going too far in thinking that you are suggesting that the famous dyslexic bdp confusion may be due the vision component of a double-deficit problem?
No, you’re not at all. However, it does take a lot of time for some kids to learn to distinguish these letters, even if they don’t have visual problems, simply because these letters are so similar. The child with a vision problem is also less likely to figure out, on his own, that “ack” “etch” and “ar” always have the same pronunciations when they encounter them in words and will intermittently say “quake” for “quack” or “skeech” for “sketch” or “care” for “car” for instance. It seems like they just don’t learn to see the forest for the trees, probably because they’re always too busy trying to avoid slamming into one of the trees to notice the contours of the forest.
As for the “double-deficit” comment I made….that was a little dig at the phonological processing crowd who are finally admitting that something besides the language center of the brain might be in play in the reading issue, but are still adamantly denying the possibility that visual processing might be a problem. The other side of the double-deficit hypothesis is a deficient ability to rapidly name objects or symbols, such as letters, words or colors. This has been found to correlate with some reading problems.
And thanks for the kind words…..Rod
Gee, Rod, . . .
you mean that you can actually see pictures in the Magic Eye books? I thought they were all a scam (are to me anyway).
Yep...snicker...*s*
Hi victoria,
Yes, I figured that might be one of your few “weak spots”…
Actually, I found out this week that it’s possible to see at least three different 3-D scenes, the normal one that they intended, the inverted one I mentioned you get if you focus in front, and a third really, really neat one that you get if you can relax your focus to twice the normal depth of the intended image.
I suspect that if one can see all three there’s not much of a problem with one’s convergence abilities, but now in your case, victoria…….well, don’t overspend….Rod
Re: walking gaits
Laura,
My son walks on his toes too and it is a sign of a sensory integration problem. His therapist thinks it is visual-vestibular. We’re working on this now—so can’t tell you whether it is successful.
Will tell you though that my son with a history of sensory integration problems did not have his vision completely “fixed” through vision therapy. I think it depends on the philosophy they use. If the vision issues are inteconnected to vestibular issues—head, body differentiation for example, then “flat” exercises will not cure them. You really need body integrative work. I also know that the OT who evaluated my son for sensory integration issues told me that SI therapy would speed along his vision therapy.
Beth
Right....vision therapies do differ
Hi Beth,
I’m glad you raised this point, as it needs making. One of the reasons vision therapy is more than a bit controversial is that both the treatments and the fees are all over the lot.
This is why I continually stress that a parent should seek out other satisfied parents before choosing a therapist. Even then, as you indicated, there may be more going on than can be addressed by vision therapy alone. However, a good vision therapist will tend to at least be aware of these issues and, if not able to provide the additional therapy, should know another professional (perhaps an occupational therapist) who can assist.
Thanks for raising this issue…..Rod
Re: Right....vision therapies do differ
I also think that this same vision therapist was able to adequately able to resolve other children’s problems. My kid, of course, happened to be more complicated and beyond his expertise. This is not to say he did not help my child–my son can handle worksheets, for example, that he could not before. But he moves his head when he tracks and the optometrist’s approach was inadequate to address his continuing tracking issues. It remains to be seen, as I said, if the current approach will work. If it does, I will shout from the roof tops.
The other issue complicating my son’s case is that he has auditory processing processsing problems, in addition to visual processing ones. He may have been fine with the therapy he had without this additional complication. The OD I took him for a second opinion told me his tracking was fine without cognitive demands. Well, reading has tons of cognitive demands for him!!!
The original poster raised red flags with me when she spoke of sensory integration problems and toe walking. It sounds too much like my son.
Beth
To Beth
WOW! That may be our answer. He did have a therapist who worked with him for SID when he was a toddler and with his continuing tactile defensiveness….perhaps SID is the real culpret of all these problems. Because his gross motor skills “caught up” I had put SID behind us, but this may still be a problem. Beth, thanks for pointing this out!!! I need to do more research on SID. In July my son has an appointment with a neurologist and maybe he can help us determine this (maybe not?).
Re: To Beth
Laura,
I, of course, don’t know your child but sensory integration problems have been a real problem for my son—way beyond the point which I think things are OK. My son didn’t receive therapy for SI problems as a preschooler so you probably are ahead of the game. Take a look at the book The Out of Sync Child—can’t remember the author and gave my copy to a friend whose child clearly displayed SID. There is a section in there on the vestibular and auditory and vestibular and visual systems that had my child’s name written all over it. You may find your child there too.
Beth
Re: Vision Therapy
Dear Rod,
You are very passionate about vision therapy being “true”. What scientific evidence supports your belief? Can you point me to any substantive scientific research that reading ability improves after vision therapy? I have been investigating vision therapy and I have only found studies that show it is not effective. Are you familiar with the large scale study showing that equal numbers of children with and without vision deficits were found to have reading disabilites? I have no reason to doubt your sincerity of belief in vision therapy, but people sincerely believed in a flat earth at one time, so I need scientific evidence to persuade me. Can you help me in my further investigation of VT by providing any scientific evidence that reading ability improves after vision therapy and that it’s attributable to vision therapy. In other words, that other remediation efforts were not simultaneously being given. thanks.
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Kathy,
I have a BA in Physics from a major US university and an MBA from the same university. I retired from business several years ago, far below normal retirement age. Three years ago I was trained in Phono-Graphix, a reading method that seems to rival The Spalding Method and Orton-Gillingham in effectiveness, according to people who have used each method.
For the past four years, most of my personal reading and my personal experience has revolved around the reading issue and remediating poor readers. Over that time I have worked intensively with about fifty youngsters (and a few adults.) I use a combination of Spalding and Phono-Graphix, with some modifications of my own.
Because people are paying me for my services, I tend to be a resource of last resort, especially since the schools’ main job is to teach reading, so parents obviously exhaust every possibility there before turning to their checkbook for a solution. Therefore, the kids I see tend to be in the lowest 5 percent of readers of their age, and often in the lowest 1 percent.
Until I found the vision therapy resource, I was successfully teaching these kids the phonological skills and the necessary code knowledge, but I was not, in several cases, creating a successful reader. A child will simply not read if the visual system is causing significant stress when dealing with near-point work. I now have found competent vision therapists to address the vision issues that are present in a large percentage of the very-lowest readers (not all of them, of course) and I now feel reasonably confident that I can turn most of these kids into successful readers. By successful, I mean that they learn to read for pleasure….Rod
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Cathy,
Sorry, I gave you an insufficient answer on the thread above, then found your posting down here.
First, let me say that I am a skeptic. I don’t easily buy into the latest fad, rage, etc. I need to be shown.
Having said that, I’ve had too much personal experience working with kids before, during and following vision therapy to any longer be skeptical about vision therapy’s effectiveness, at least in certain cases. But I’ve made that case above.
The study I believe you’re referring to is by H. Aasved (1989) in “A Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia,” edited by Gjessing & Karlsen and published by Springer-Verlag. I have not read it, but trust Diane McGuinness’s assessment of research in her book “Why Our Children Can’t Read” and she basically says the same thing that you do about its conclusions. It does not support the hypothesis that vision problems lie at the root of reading problems, as you said. I currently have a request pending at the local library to locate a copy for me, as the book is quite expensive. I want to read it to see how to reconcile it with my own experience.
Also, however, Diane McGuinness in the same book, page 145, cites a study by Stein and Fowler(1993), “Unstable Binocular Control in Dyslexic Children” in the Journal of Research in Reading” which she summarizes as follows: “Older children with severe reading problems were compared to younger good readers, matched for reading ability. The older poor readers had poorer binocular control, and visual training alone improved reading test scores for these children.” This one is not available on the web, I believe, but there are other research articles by Stein which you might find intriguing. Use Google to find them. Just enter the above article title to get started.
What I am leaning toward is a hypothesis that binocular vision problems are prevalent in the lowest one or two percent of readers, and to an extent in some good readers. The vision therapists with whom I’m acquainted have actually encountered the occasional hard-working, A-student who has to spend long hours reading what others seem to read with ease. While many of these kids no doubt have phonological processing problems, a certain number of them have struggled with an undetected vision problem for years. They recently received a long letter from the mother of a successful (reading) college student whose reading ability changed dramatically following a very short administration of vision therapy. It would be hard to believe that something else happened to effect the change at that age over the same short time span. Granted, this is anecdotal, but it’s also reality for some of us.
In fact, if you read Diane McGuinness’s comments closely you will see that she prefaces her vision therapy comments with the statement “Reading therapists report that a small minority of poor readers have serious trouble scanning print…..” I suspect that the reading therapists she refers to are her son and daughter-in-law, Geoffrey and Carmen McGuinness, who developed Phono-Graphix. I know that those two are alert for potential vision issues and readily refer to vision therapists who they have found to be effective.
But enough….I’ll grant you that the research isn’t solid, but it certainly exists, and some of the issues, such as binocular fusion problems, are not being adequately refuted by the dissenting researchers. I view this as an unsettled debate in the research, but the more kids I see, the more convinced I become of the eventual outcome of that debate….Rod
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod:
I have an article from Teacher magazine dated 1992 that divides VT issues into 2 categories- visual efficiency problems and visual processing problems.Teaming disorders, as it also lists as binocular vision, are classified as a visual efficiency disorder. The symptoms are quite specific- watery eyes, closing one eye or covering one eye, complains of blurred vision, rubs eyes, loses place, intermittent double vision. I see Diane also lists very specific symptoms for binocular vision issues. I am confused by your post because you say that kids who don’t seem to enjoy reading but can decode need VT. Are you sending kids to VT based on not enjoying reading or are you seeing the symptoms listed above for binocular vision problems?
I also remember in my PG training that C and G Mc. talked about vision problems but only binocular visions issues. We were told the symptoms listed above. They did not say and it seems to me that Diane does not say, that kids who seem to have problems with fluency or enjoying reading might need VT.
Should I send kids to VT for visual processing problems also? Do you support VT for both classes of problems?
Kathy
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Kathy,
You wrote of binocular vision problems: “The symptoms are quite specific- watery eyes, closing one eye or covering one eye, complains of blurred vision, rubs eyes, loses place, intermittent double vision.”
Most of the kids I refer have a binocular vision deficit, often resulting in some suppression of vision on an intermittent basis. I have read Rosner’s work on visual processing and his approach to remediating a visual processing deficit, but I have never referred for a pre-determined visual processing deficit, and the vision therapists I refer to do not specifically work on a visual processing deficit. Their work involves visual efficiency skills primarily.
Where I disagree, I guess, is with the specificity of the symptoms you list, or at least the ease of being able to detect them. I have had two kids work with me who have turned out to have had what would best be called “intermittent double vision” in your list of symptoms. Believe me, it was nearly impossible to diagnose on that basis. Neither child could tell me that he was suffering visually, and one actually denied it. I believe the problem is that the “double vision” actually manifests itself as alternate suppression, so that the child picks up an occasional word or letters with the other eye.
You and I sound like we were similarly trained. I started with the same list of symptoms, and I believe it’s inadequate. If you are competent with the reading therapy and do the retesting of skills and code knowledge, you will know if the phonological skills are in place. You will also observe whether decoding multisyllable words is improving significantly with a client. When such a client remains careless (misreading little words,) deteriorates as he reads longer and longer, exhibits signs of stress that indicate he would stop reading if you weren’t asking him to continue, and if he just plain doesn’t appear to want to read on his own, then this child very likely has a problem with binocular vision skills IF he has apparently learned what you are trying to teach him, and particularly if he learned it quite easily, and especially if he tested at 100% on the phonological skills and had decent code knowledge when you first saw him.
This is going to get long….sorry. Here’s my take on this from what I’ve seen so far. I think the way reading is taught in many schools probably discourages the proper development of the left-to-right vision skills required to read. “Look at the beginning of the word, look at the picture, think of something that starts with the word, skip the word and read to the end of the sentence, look back at the word and see what makes sense, etc., etc., etc. Think of the kids you get who are very difficult cases…watch their eyes….see them dart to the picture at the first sign of a challenging word?
Anyway, the visual habits developed with all this jumping around are the exact opposite of those required for good reading…sound by sound, chunk by chunk, word by word…through the sentence. It is well recognized that binocular vision control is a developmental skill, and it is also likely that reading places the most extreme demand on that skill. A lot of kindergartners haven’t developed it, and current reading instruction may frustrate its development.
If I am right on the above, then we may be making a huge mistake by pushing reading instruction into kindergarten. By some estimates, half of those kids will not have fully developed binocular vision skills in kindergarten. These kids will be very frustrating to the teacher, because they will never pick up that “ack” is “ack” and not “ache” (that is, they won’t easily detect patterns and won’t easily learn to read, where others will breeze through it.)
Several things will then happen (and are happening.) Teachers will realize these kids aren’t stupid, and will quickly find that they can easily learn “sight words” and can easily learn to “read” (actually memorize) predictable texts, so these two practices will be encouraged. Some kids will rebel either outwardly or by withdrawing, and will be medicated by early first grade. And ironically, the time spent teaching reading (incorrectly) will take time away from the gross motor/visual motor activities (drawing, tracing, playing with clay, etc.) that are very likely needed to encourage full development of binocular vision skills in kindergarten.
I also believe that the phonological skills are learned by most kids when they are reading. Most teachers never teach segmenting, but most kids learn that “oa” is the /oe/ sound in a word. How? By learning to segment when exposed to words that they can see. If their vision is not developed, they don’t “see” the words, or at least they don’t see them comfortably enough to be able to devote processing power to their components and to start wondering about sounds in words and symbols in words and matching the two together. This is why whole language appears to work for so many young children. The visually challenged are getting something they can handle. Meanwhile, the kids who have well-developed vision skills start figuring out the entire code, the patterns, etc., on their own. (Some don’t of course….these are the “easy” reading therapy clients.)
This is why most kids with visual problems fail the phonological tests….they didn’t have the vision in place to enable them to sort out the phonetics of the language. This is also why, if you teach them the phonemic skills they lack, they still don’t read well (or want to avoid reading)….the visual problem still exists.
Another group also exists…the decent student who is a poor reader, but has no visual issue…now. My guess is that these kids were late on the visual development curve, but eventually got things in place. However, by that time they had missed the opportunity to develop the auditory skills, so they end up polishing an inefficient reading system of their own devising as they mature.
These kids get just plain frustrated when they finally realize how simple it all is….they are the “It’s just a code!” kids. For years they’ve been part-word reading, or checking beginnings and endings and searching their memories for various mnemonic devices that cue them on many words in their reading vocabulary.
These kids often have terrible comprehension, and do a lot of re-reading to get the sense of the story once they have finally sorted out everything. They apparently read, sometimes quite well, but they too rarely read for pleasure…it’s just too much work, even if it’s not visually stressful any longer.
Sorry this is so long, but you sounded genuinely nterested, so you got the full explanation Kathy…….Rod
P.S. Hope you found this…it’s getting to be a long ways down the board
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod:
I have several questions .
1. If binocluar vision is developmental does a child need VT to develop it? Will it not develop on its own in a school setting?
2. Can a teacher in a classroom do anything to help binocular vision issues?
3. Why do you not support visual processing VT?
4. You say “This is why most kids with visual problems fail the phonological tests….they didn’t have the vision in place to enable them to sort out the phonetics of the language” Aren’t phonological processing skills an auditory skill that many teachers might introduce in class with no text at all? I have seen kdg activities in which kids look for objects that start with the sound of “b” or “c” sound. I would think playing with sound could be developed without text and I am not sure how your vision theory would fit into this idea. What are your thougths on this?
5. Would you prefer no reading instruction in kdg?
6. I have worked with many poor blenders whose lack of skill seems separate from vision issues. It seems to me from what I have experienced is that phonological problems can exist with or without vision problems. Just my thoughts. You seem to be saying that the vision problem is at the heart of the phonological problem. Did I intrepret your words correctly?
7. How about kids who seem to struggle learning code, the continue to read letter by letter even after PG instrucion? Is this a vision problem or something else?
Kathy
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Kathy,
Interesting set of questions….Here’s my take on them. However, remember, I don’t do vision therapy. I just refer parents to an O.D. with a vision therapy dept, and have developed some strong “hunches” as to what “might” be going on in this regard. I’m not saying that you should take what I’m saying with the proverbial grain of salt, but you should be aware that some of what I’m saying is pretty speculative. Anyway regarding:
#1. Yes, binocular vision will develop on its own…in most cases (or at least this is my understanding of what they are saying.) However, remember that vision problems run in families, so some kids are at a genetic disadvantage in this regard, and their binocular vision may never develop to the point where they can read easily (without outside help, anyway.) Also, as I said before, I do think that some particularly poor reading methods could frustrate the development of binocular vision because of the erratic eye movements that are encouraged. This last statement is highly speculative…but it would explain why Spalding teachers seem to encounter very few “dyslexics.” (maybe)
#2. Maybe…I don’t really know, though good sound-by-sound and chunk-by-chunk reading instruction will at least get the eyes moving in the right direction. Someday we may even find that patching one eye encourages the development of binocular vision, which has got to sound a little weird to you….but there’s a lot of research to be done before a teacher could feel comfortable doing something like that.
#3 I didn’t say I don’t support visual processing VT. The vision therapists I know simply don’t get into that area, so I know very little about it, other than that that is when the expense of VT really starts to escalate (I think.)
#4. Yes, auditory skills can be taught in isolation. However, they are easier to teach in the context of real words, as you must realize from your training. If you re-read what I wrote, I was speculating that some kids probably don’t develop auditory skills because they couldn’t make visual sense of print in the first place. And, a lot of schools don’t teach segmenting, or if they do, they do a poor job of it. I think that this is why most of the kids (not all by any means) with a vision problem also test poorly on the auditory skills.
#5. No, reading instruction in Kindergarten would be fine, particularly programs with a good component of phonemic skills, but I do feel that a way should be found to sort out the kids with poorly developed vision so that they could get a program that would first encourage their visual development before subjecting them to too much print….they will be very prone to sight word memorization otherwise.
#6. You’re right, of course. A lot of poor blending has absolutely nothing to do with a vision problem. What I was saying is that an older child who gets all his reading instruction while he has a relatively severe visual problem will have a hard time making the sound-symbol connection, and that the phonemic skills will be less likely to develop. This is more relevant to segmenting than it is too blending, but even blending is very difficult for some of the visually-challenged kids who have never been able to get sufficient practice of some of the more complex blends in words like “instinct” or “strained” simply because they never acquired the skill to tackle those words in their daily reading. I have 4th graders hardly able to read Arnold Lobel’s books like Frog and Toad, or Owl at Home, for instance.
#7. I suspect most of these kids have a visual problem. They are so confused visually that they expend all their energy just looking at, and saying the sounds, and have insufficient processing power left to start to make inferences such as “ack” is always “ak” or such as, all these words that end in “at” have the same ending sounds…i.e. they rhyme. They can’t see the forest (patterns) because they’re too hung up on the individual trees (letters and their individual sounds.) Even after a course of good reading therapy, these kids will be slow to make inferences, such as “para” is usually “pair-u” not “par-u” at the beginning of multi-syllable words. This is pretty speculative, but I suspect it’s true, unless the child is cognitively impaired. I see some real intelligent kids have trouble making these inferences and extending them to unfamiliar words. Often these kids have vision problems.
By the way, how are you using all this? Are you a teacher, a tutor, a parent?…just curious…..Rod
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod:
thank you for your posts. I am a regular classroom teacher trying to figure out how to help kids learn to read. I am not sure how to use the vision information in a school setting. I agree about kdg kids needing lots of exposure to visual tasks that were traditionally done in kdg. I don’ think they have left completely but time makes it hard to do it all. Many kids in kdg though have no trouble learning to read and actually can be excellent readers with balanced literacy instructional practices. We have a boy in the kdg class at my school who reads fluently. I have tested him and his phonological skills are in place and very good.
I agree that kdg kids whose visual and auditory skills are not developed should be given a different curriculum to help them get these skills in place. I don’t see this ever happening but it could save lots of trouble down the road.
Kathy
Re: Vision Therapy
Hi Kathy,
You’re on the right track, I feel. And you’re right, it will be a while before this all makes its way into the regular school system, but I honestly believe it will happen eventually, simply because it helps kids, and in my mind, the kids come first……Rod
PS…I’ve enjoyed this exchange….good luck
Re: Vision Therapy
Rod: I am new to this site, and I see your name many times on the topic of “vision therapy.” I just had my son taken down to an optometrist who specialized in that type of therapy. After the 2 hour testing, I was told vioion therapy would be beneficial to him. Then I was told how much it costs. I am wondering if you can refer any books and or lessons to be downloaded from the internet or other useful places for help. I don’t think we can afford the actual vision therapy schooling. Please help I am desperate for my son’s sake
I am in desparate need of answers as I have been struggling with my 12 year old now for years. He has ADD and depression issues and is having great difficulties in school.
Thank you
Jill
Hi Rod,
Thanks for this information! I made an appointment for my son to see someone next week. He did have his vision checked by another optometrist a couple of months ago and this one told me that my son appeared to have problems with tracking and referred him for a developmental vision exam. I hesitated in making this appointment because of the differing viewpoints I had read while researching vision therapy.
But I’m at a point where I’ve run out of options, so we’ll give this a try.
How interesting that vision deficits run in families. No one in our family (that I can trace) has a reading difficulty or vision deficit. If anything, we’re “addictive” readers who constantly searh out and read books. (However, there quite a few engineers on my husband’s side of the family and I can see my son following in this pattern).
But gosh! If vision therapy could help my son’s walking gait that would be really great!!!