Responding (mostly) to Platypus:

I don't know if it's more frequent. She's pretty sensitive and emotional, and strongly affected by lack of good sleep or delays between meals. When I took her to the optometrist last week, she was a little bit sleep-deprived, and I thought this was a good thing for purposes of good testing. She also had just gotten braces on, and was in some pain, so not in ideal form for that reason as well. But I only have one other kid of my own to compare with, and she had/has her own issues.

Let's just put it this way. With a lot of intellectual challenge, and some emotional stress, in school, as part of a 7-hour school day and almost an hour on the bus, I'm not exactly surprised that a kid wants to do other things in the evening, her own intellectual and artistic projects, hanging out with family and pets, reading fiction books, daydreaming, outdoor play, instead of homework, esp if it's stressful. I think a lot of people expect way too much out of kids in this respect. With homework, it did sometimes seem to take her too long, but that's maybe because it just feels like too much, and then she's the kind of kid to get very emotional about that, and worried she won't finish, and that just makes it all worse.

But it's really hard to judge. Just because *I* could write down some answers to open-ended questions quickly, doesn't mean a 3rd or 4th grade should be able to do so.

And, as I've said, it was much better this past year. Maybe her far-sightedness has been getting better, and that was part of the improvement - who knows?

The psychologist's report says that she will do worse when graphomotor + visual + speed requirements + fatigue are combined. I would add that she was in a new environment when being tested, relatively comfortable with the psychologist fairly quickly, but she does take a while to adjust to things and is very concerned about pleasing adults, so that kind of anxiety could also have affected things.

This has definitely been the case at a new school in 3rd grade, and with new teachers who are not warm and reassuring.

DD#2 is worried about the eyeglasses because she thinks she will be teased, and they won't look good, esp with the braces, while will make her doubly nerdy. I've told her not to worry, she doesn't HAVE to wear them at school, and if she finds that they are helping her a lot and wants to wear them more of the time, she could get contacts when she's older. (I have a -12 myopia Rx and started wearing glasses for myopia in 6th grade and contact lenses in 7th.)

I have recently heard that kids with stats like mine (very high VCI or GAI, and PSI four standard deviations below) can also read 6+ years above grade level, but still turn out later to have stealth dyslexia and/or vision problems. This is what made me go ahead and get the optometrist appointment. The PSI subtests aren't relevant for dyslexia - am I right? Dyslexia seems like less a fit to me than vision problems do. But DD#1 has a type of epilepsy that is highly correlated with lots of stuff, including dyslexia / reading problems, and the research, such as at is, often extends to siblings and suggests screening for siblings. So who knows on that either... For now, working the vision angle is enough trouble...

I'm kind of unclear on what parts of vision testing or vision therapy are controversial and what aren't. I think prisms are controversial, right? I know that everyone seems to agree that VT for convergence insufficient is a good thing (right?), based on apparently good research, but I'm not so clear on the other things. I picked this optometrist because an acquaintance MD with a daughter with convergence insufficiency was cured by VT, the MD acquaintance says.

In fact, I'm having trouble at this point understanding the differences between different vision issues. Far-sightedness is presumably an objectively measurable thing, right? Am I correct in understanding that if she is getting tired out from, or having problems from, minor far-sightedness, it must be because she is having problems with accommodation that are not typical in a child her age?

Does anyone have anything more to explain about this tight eye muscle thing? I imagine I will hear more later, but you know how medical professionals are almost always more rushed than you'd like, and if I go in understanding what she's talking about, I may be able to ask better questions sooner.

Again, thanks so much for the note about your DD. I was starting to be skeptical when I read how most optometrists use +3.0 or even +5.0 as a minimum for treatment for far-sightedness.

I'm not trying to create a problem where no problems exists, y'know? But all kids have problems, and at times, we have had fairly significant problems (just not as much recently, probably in part because I've devoted huge resources and our family makes large sacrifices, to make sure she gets the sleep she needs). There's never time during the school year to do as much as is possible in the summer, and I don't want to miss any "window". So that's why I'm pursuing this, even though the problems are less acute than a year ago, when we actually did the testing with the psychologist.