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I think she's talking about Learning Ally

polarbear

Sorry! I hadn't seen your post linking learning ally before I posted that. So, you know the story of my kiddo - reading on grade level (slightly above) and *as far as we know* no dyslexia but has the eye convergence issues ... would learning ally be good for him at this point or no, do you think? (oh and btw, polarbear, I got the accommodations from the school if you happen to check my IEP thread update :)) We have the dragon speak software but still haven't taken it out of thebox yet. I still type his stories for him (I enjoy hearing them - they give me insoght to him )

marytheres - congrats on your IEP!!! I haven't seen the post yet - I'll take a look for it

I haven't subscribed to learning ally yet, so I can't give you an opinion on it (yet lol!). We were told it was important for our dd to listen to audiobooks as much as possible so that she was taking in books at her comprehension ability level, which is much higher than her ability to read visually - so my gut feeling is that anything you can give your ds to "read" by listening would be helpful because it's exposing him to words and concepts that he's intellectually ready for but hasn't caught up to yet in reading.

How is VT going? With our VT dd, she had a huge leap in reading ability kind-of early on, I think around 3 months in. I hope your ds' VT helps!

Best wishes,

polarbear

FWIW, this is the one really big upside I've found in having a child with dysgraphia - having to help scribe and help him with getting his thoughts down on paper has given me such a good insight into his inner world - my dds work much more independently and I get to read what they write, but I don't get to listen and talk to them about it as it's happening, and that's really been a bonus to working with ds

polarbear

Polarbear - just seeing this! VT is going well but I still see his eyes straining ... I guess it is never "cured" huh? I definitely see a big improvement in the reading but again if he has had alot of close work and his eyes are strained he has trouble. But I do see huge improevement as does he. I just hate that he has this (and the hypotonia - I hate that he has any of it.) And I know there are worse things bt I'm kind-of in a mood. I just wish there were a "fix" - every time I upset and start thinking of maybe doing the surgery, I literally run into someone with a child (amazing how at one time I knew nothing about this disability and and now I 'run into' people with it or something similar) who has had the surgery and surgery was aetistically a success, or declared a success when they had it, but a year or two later they are having problems and struggling a great deal with reading. On the one hand it hits me I am doign the right thing but on the other hand I feel like it would be nice if he could just a procedure or surgery that would cure it ... really cure it, ya know.

Anyway, other than being expensive and time consuming VT is going well - he's doing awesome and he loves the therapy. I am thinking of getting the computer program for home to supplement. The VTs aren;t pushing it but I hasked them abotu it and had them demonstrate it me and asked their opinion. I want do all I can to help for DS so.. ut it is expensive and money os a bit tight so I have held off. Your DD didn't do VT homework with a computer program did she? I seem to remember your saying she had VT homework but it wasn't computer, right?

Sorry about the typos - I am too tired and annoyed to fix them, though.

Just chiming in, our DD did not do any computer work for her VT. Our therapist didn't use it. We did a lot of homework that involved very low tech stuff -- printed paper sheets, string, etc. It is a little over two years since DD finished and her eyes seem to be working well. I think that your kid has significantly different eye issues so YMMV.

Thanks for chiming in...Yes, we have these for homework right now, which with all of the stuff we have regular school homework, therapy appointments, soccer, etc... I find I have a harder time fitting it in I feel like we should be doing more. With the low tech stuff I have to do it with him... with the computer VT homework I *think* he can do it a little more independantly (while I cook dinner he can do it and I supervise, kind of thing).

marytheres, my dd eventually had a set of computer exercises to do as part of her VT homework, but it was very late in her VT program, after around 9 months of therapy. Up until that time all of her homework was exercises like knute listed. They weren't intended to be time-intensive (20 minutes per day was recommended), but like you mentioned, it really was tough to fit in with everything else that our kids do - and it took supervision from me to keep her on track, plus some of the exercises had to have a second person participating. To be honest, I hated that part of VT!!! But we pressed on and kept up with the exercises because VT is expensive and because we'd been told by both her therapists and another parent who's child graduated from VT that the exercises were really important.

polarbear

ps - our VT office also used exercises from a computer progam as part of the in-office therapy sessions - it wasn't long, maybe 5-10 minutes at the most.

On the computer issue, we have used computers for other things with mixed success. If the computer instruction is something that my kids find engaging, then my kids have found computer work worthwhile. On the other hand, if it is something that my kids don't want to do then it is often easy to "cheat" on the computer and the whole thing is a waste of time. I don't know anything about the computer VT exercises. I do know that DD hated the regular exercises because they were hard work. I'd be concerned that she would figure out a way to "game the system" on the computer and not get much out of them. I could see her spending a half hour "doing" the exercises on the computer but not putting in the effort and/or being diligent about her technique. Do you think that your kid will be self-motivated on the VT computer exercises? Does the computer give feedback to you as the parent so that you can tell if the kid is faking it?