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In fact, polarbear, I will stay very, very, still while you whomp me upside the head. Hard.

I must have read here 1000 times, start with the eyes, always start with the eyes.

I truly thought we were covered. She had absolutely none of the symptoms associated with visual processing issues. We have a great optometrist (or so I thought) who seemed to go way above and beyond.  DD8 has had glasses since she was four for the very reason that one of her eyes was starting not to track. I thought this was *exactly* what the optometrist was monitoring every time we went.

But no, it was the audiologist who noticed. She works in a group practice, and before even beginning our long-awaited assessment for auditory processing disorder, she did a quickie basic vision screening, something she had had her colleague, the vision expert, teach her how to do.

And there it was, screamingly obvious.  Wave a pen in front of DD’s eyes, and they are not following it together well at all.  Going back and forth, one eye visibly paused, and then did a jump to catch up. Move the pen in and out from her face, and the eyes are not really moving at all to attempt to track the pen as it approaches her nose. Vision guy kindly popped by and did a slightly more sophisticated version of the same screen, and there’s just no doubt about it. So, our next appointment is….

Wow. I feel like such an idiot. How many times did you guys warn me?

Anyways, the good news: despite a plethora of symptoms of CAPD, DD did fine there. No auditory processing issues, but strong confirmation of the tentative ADHD-I diagnosis that came along with her dyslexia diagnosis.

So, no questions today, just a cautionary tale. Really, start with the eyes.

DS7 can't follow a pen either, however when I watch his eyes reading they track just fine. We had taken him to a neuro-opthamologist and she as alarmed by how poorly he did tracking on command, but watched him read and then said "Obviously his eyes are fine." It's something about doing it "on command" that DS can't handle. I think it has to do with his developmental coordination disorder and planning movements, but spontaneously in the real world he is Ok. I'm not saying that I think DS's eyes are for sure "ok" (and I have no idea about your DD) but wanted to give my experience.

Interesting, blackcat - thanks for the thought! Brains are so truly odd...

I will definitely try watching her read. She has a lot of trouble keeping her place/ jumping lines and paragraphs, but she reads so slowly and has to stop a lot to work on words, so that alone could make good flow difficult, I imagine.

There's some interesting early hints in the research that perhaps dyslexia has a visual tracking basis, and simple interventions like reducing the number of words per line can improve tracking/ reading quite a bit for some. It will be interesting to see if this research gets picked up/ goes anywhere, or turns out to be another red herring.

I don't have any advice but I just had to saw WOW and hooray that you've found another piece to the puzzle that is a 2e kiddo.

I also think I need to get DS tested - like you I have watched various optometrists wave pens in front of him for years (he's had glasses since age 4 as well). I assumed we were covered, guess I should do some digging on this front as well. Thank you.

Turned out Ds had 20/100 vision even though testing always said 20/20. Turned out he would repeat what the kid in front of him said. Finally in first grade I said screw it and took him to pediatric ophthalmology and sure enough stigmatism and blind...legally...

Oh gosh, I wouldn't ever do that! Not only am I a huge pacifist... that would be just ridiculous... if you're bored you might search on some of my past threads where I freely admit I had *NO* clue my dd had severe issues with double vision until we'd taken her all the way through a neuropsych exam and landed at the developmental optometrists' office for an eval! It's so easy to miss vision issues... And yes, her eyes did not track *at all*... which was clear as a bell.. once I knew what to look for! The good news is, vision therapy worked wonders for our dd.


How did they determine and measure the "just fine"? I'm just curious - our developmental optometrist has kids read through lenses that are attached to a computer program which tracks eye movement while reading. I would never have "seen" the issue just by watching my dd read, but I could definitely see her eyes diverge when following a pencil held in front of them and moved in circles etc.

polarbear

Not sure--I guess she thought that they were not obviously diverging and his reading was fluent. If it wasn't fluent then she probably would have investigated more. It was obvious though that there was a big difference between tracking "on command" and what happens naturally to follow print while reading. I have watched him read as well (by sitting across a table from him and watching his eyes) and they move very fast and seem to track well together. I would be interested in having the computer program watch his eye movements and see what it picks up.

Saccades are very, very fast, and quite difficult to pick up accurately on unaided visual inspection. So yes, the specific technology could give you information that would not otherwise be obvious.

I have a lot of sympathy and empathy here. My ds9 was born with visual deficits and seen 6 eye doctors (three optometrists and three ophthalmologists) between two different states since he was 13 months old. They've agreed that my son had (or would likely have) visual deficits, but they've differed on the course of action and treatment. None of them mentioned a possible diagnosis of cortical visual blindness or other factors though my son's vision from his left eye was very restricted (including tracking and convergence issues).

Ds9 was in vision therapy between 4-6 yrs old. It made a HUGE difference. Of course, last Mar, eye doctor #6 (a pediatric ophthalmologist) at one of the top (or the) children's hospital in the US told me that perhaps it was due to maturity and not vision therapy. I nearly cried and wanted to scream at him. It would be impossible for my son's vision to have improved the extent it did WITHOUT any vision therapy.

Anyone could possibly benefit from vision therapy, but some kids really need it. Their visual system doesn't integrate properly and needs some help. Most of our visual skills are learned and this means how the visual system gels with early motor skills and other developments is key. Visual acuity (20/20) is a small fraction of our visual skills, but it's the one most people are familiar with.