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Grinity, I am intrigued that your son outgrew his visual processing issues. Would you say there are any concerns remaining? I ask because I have been very concerned about my DS8 in this regard. I have long been concerned that his reading ability level was significantly below his comprehension/interest level and like the pp I "solved" this by reading to him, which we both enjoy. I looked into vision therapy but our insurance doesn't cover it and it is insanely expensive and still a bit controversial.
However, in the last month or so he has started tackling much harder books on his own without my prompting. He is in OT and I asked the therapist to do what she could with the visual processing, but it never occurred to me that he might outgrow it. That is incredibly encouraging! I have been feeling really guilty about not being able to provide the vision therapy.

And BTW, I can totally relate to the "outer-directed" perfectionism as well. Sigh.

We did 'before and after' diagnostic visits with vision therapy, so I've seen huge changes. Lingering issues? Nothing so far - I'm hoping that driving won't be a challenge.

In the intervening year (4th grade) DS got on a 'wall ball' kick at school on the playground, and I think that's what casued the big change. The dept perception scores really changed dramatically from 5th percentile to 50%. And DS's reading was always 'way above grade level' once he got to 2nd grade - the Optomitrist said he was at a 12 grade level. But his reading was never anywhere near as advanced as his listening to written words level. I love audio books, and we listened as a family to long involved stories, such as Ender's Game, as well as the shorter 'pearls' such as 'Stargirl.'

OTs should be able to do some of the same things as vision therapists. For DS15, I think it was just part of his 'asynchronous development: Normal eye abilities for age (low end of normal) and way above normal reading interest and phonological ability for age.

Still - knowing what I know now, I don't think I would have let my 'snake oil' squeamishness and the cost hold me back. What I'm hearing currently is that it is very very helpful for about half the families who try it.

Going for a diagnositic work up can be very difficult if you don't intent to follow up, but it's nice to have something objective to go on. We did a few other things, like the Nintendo DS game 'Brain Age' and the information did persuade me to start allowing DS to play 'first person shooters' sooner than I otherwise would have.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

Thanks for sharing, Grinity! I am going to have to check out that Brain Age game. He has only done OT a few times at this point, so we are going to see if things improve over the next few months before taking it further. And, he has actually been showing alot of growth in reading in the last month or so, which is encouraging. My kid who would generally refuse to read a book that had more than 4-5 lines on a page up until the beginning of this school year (2nd grade) is now reading Mary Pope Osborne's version of the Odyssey to me at bedtime and just checked out The Lightning Thief from the school library! I was so surprised!

So we are now in a full on Greek mythology obsession, if you can tell. lol

Wow that's a big step forward. Nothing like a great obsession to help plow through a challenge. I love watching those leaps!

lol I bought the Odyssey books planning to read them TO him and he just picked it up starting going. I kept expecting him to get frustrated and ask me to read instead, but he is almost done with the third book and still going strong!

And this obsession is replacing his previous one about space, black holes, etc which we fed by reading "George's Secret Key" books to him. It was actually a nice segue since the planets all have Roman God names!