Hi there! We have taken a different route to get there but some of your son's diagnoses match with mine. He similarly has a large gap in processing on IQ. He has now seen 2 developmental optometrists and the second one recommended a place that does the same therapy as you have described. I appreciated having both opinions and my confidence has grown through watching both of them examine him.
The Sensory therapy is called "Sensory Learning Program" and is a proprietary program that no other center can offer within a 200 mile radius which is likely why you have been referred to a place so far away. The website for the program is:
http://sensorylearning.com/ You can find a bit more about it there.
Our doc explained to me that vision therapy will go much faster and smoother if we get the sensory learning treatment and whatever OT we need first. The second developmental optometrist we saw literally showed me my son's rather startling deficits in action and did demonstrations for me to experience the impact of them as well. It was truly enlightening to understand how much compensation my son is having to do while still working multiple grade levels ahead.
Lastly she handed me a book: Fixing My Gaze--A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan Barry. I had been struggling to understand all the connections (as it sounds you are too) and I found the book vivid and insightful in pulling it all together. Dr. Barry is a Neurobiologist married to an astronaut and has a wonderful perspective to explain some of the science behind the experiences.
We are expecting a call to set up our evaluation for OT and the Sensory Learning Program later this week. Our center here boasts a 92% success rate (parent rating of improvement). After this evaluation (we've already had one for vision/visual motor/visual perception) and the prescribed therapy, we are returning to the developmental optometrist to re-evaluate his vision issues and begin vision therapy.
I can't speak from the experience of having completed these things yet but we are excited about what we have researched so far. I think you are so lucky to have a teacher knowledgeable about these issues! I've found more answers here and in digging further on my own but many, many things are making sense as I understand the amazing nature of the brain and some of the particular impacts our son has. Everything your son's teacher has said to you listed above fits with what I have been learning except the part about "hitting puberty and loosing what he wasn't using".
Neuroplasticity is really the good news that earlier research did not give us the full picture of how the brain can still change in later years. The author of the book I mentioned above actually regained her stereoptic vision at almost 50 years of age through vision therapy, something she believed was impossible from her previous scientific training.
Hope this helps a bit in your comfort level. It has been a lot of new information for us but completely meshes with other learning I had previously undertaken about the more recent developments in neuropsychiatry. The brain is truly an amazing organ that we are only recently beginning to understand in any depth.
