Hello Aeh, Portia, Polar Bear and everyone
Hope everyone is having a great weekend so far.
I spoke with my daughter and she came by to observe DS. She immediately noted some "obvious" things about DS with regard to fidgeting, etc. (I won't elaborate now but shared all with OT)
I have some incredibly helpful new information from our recent OT appointment for DS. OT was wonderful and gave us several things to work on. While there, she offered to do a visual test to help us while we are waiting for the neuro-psych appointment.
Please see the report notes from his
TVPS - R (TEST OF VISUAL SKILLS, NON MOTOR) below.For the sake of brevity, I tried to make this short - kindly ask for more detail if necessary.
Based on your collective comments and some research, I've come to some early conclusions:
[For the record, DS' vision diagnosis is
Amblyopia with Refractive Anisometropia (of unknown origin at this time) and we severely underestimated the GRAVITY of his VISION problems and their effects on his learning]
Because, when I asked his opthalmologist how his prescription and vision would affect reading, I was told, just give him big fonts/print to read - to lessen the strain on his visual system (simple solution, sounded great!, at the time)
We are incredibly chagrined and WISH the opthalmologist mentioned vision therapy when I brought up DS' difficulty with schoolwork - we could be so much farther along now. To be fair, DS was diagnosed as a 3 year old, and certain things were not obvious to us then, as they are now.
Unfortunately for us, it's already cost DS 3 YEARS!!! of INADEQUATE? treatment. (We currently patch 2-3 hours/per day and have fairly frequent prescription changes) but NO EYE EXERCISES/TRAINING.
DH and I are feeling very guilty and bummed about this. I am very upset that I did not research this sooner! Just did not correlate his learning difficulties with vision. I don't know why, but it never occurred to us that his "Dyslexic & Dysgraphic" presentations are aggravated by vision and is something we can affect, and do something about at home (duh!).
In other words, we believed that dyslexia was not something we could do anything about or change, just accept and work-around. (Which is true to an extent, of course).
Our OT suggested the website "eyecanlearn.com" which has given us many ideas and starting points to use for our home exercises. I have also scoured the net for various writings about the topic of vision therapy. Youtube has saccades videos, etc. that we have started using as well. We will be sure to discuss this with Opthalmologist at next appointment.
Meanwhile, below are the test results:
Vis Discrimination: raw score 15, Percentile: 98%, Perceptual Age: >12-11
Vis Memory: raw score: 13, Percentile: 93%, Perceptual Age: > 8-11
Vis Spat-Relationships: raw score: 16, Percentile: 98%, Perceptual Age: >12
Vis Form Constancy: raw score: 10, Percentile 63%, Perceptual Age: 7-5Vis Sequential Memory: raw score: 13, Percentile: 97%, Perceptual Age 11-4
Vis Figure Ground: raw score: 12, Percentile: 87%, Perceptual Age 9-7Vis Closure: raw score 5, Percentile: 10% !!! Perceptual Age 4-10Comments:
Visual skills, occular motility, occular coordination and convergence:
convergence to tip, accomodative delay noted with divergence pattern. Pursuit shows occasional breaks with left to right pattern rather than right to left. Patient indicated difficulty with keeping eyes on target.
Other accomodations we have implemented per OT:
1) Soft grip for pencil (it took about 15 different samples) to find one that was exactly right. Has not complained of pain since! His stamina has greatly improved as well, no writing avoidance now.
2) Wide ruled pad with raised lines - Have greatly relaxed our written spelling standards at home, and focusing on content vs accuracy (much happier boy and has given him confidence to write more) Oral spelling continues to be no problem.
3) Special scissors with loop (awesome!!!) - he had difficulty with OPENING rather than the cutting - still difficult for him to navigate 1 sheet of paper and cutting within 1/2 inch of zigzag line on paper but now it doesn't HURT.
4) Thera-putty (he loves this!!!) which he uses as a fidget and strengthening exercise for fine motor.
5) Bought a long skirt with buttons , zippers, laces for practice (still can't do all this well, but now we know what to work on)
5) Bought a slanted/adjustable desk and adjustable chair (old flat desk, basic office chair before)
also - huge change for him is tying Thera Band between his desk legs so he can "step" on the band and use it as his foot fidget.
Now we know these things, DS no longer is upset and frustrated with himself and has not once complained of "it hurts", "my hand is tired" etc.
Although it's only been a few days, the above adjustments have changed our boy's attitude and have made him and us, so relieved and happy.
OMG!!!
This has been very illuminating and makes sooo much sense, in light of the difficulties we see in DS at home. It's likely to be expounded upon with neuropsych testing and we are looking forward to new information in the coming months.
I would greatly appreciate any comments about this and particulary if this test can be correlated to the Wisc, SB-5 sub-tests.
Thank You in advance!
Lucky
