Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional vission issues or something else?

DS5.1 has always had problems with following directions when pointed to something, or even when you describe where the item is. Say you want him to give you a water bottle that he has on the floor among his lego blocks, games, books (he keeps a lot of stuff spread on the floor, just like I tend to spread it everywhere). You point to it, he's standing right next to it, you say it's next to "xyz" on your "left /right side" or "behind you" "in front of you" and while he knows the meaning and looks in that general direction, he still does NOT see the object? He just had a school required vision exam for Kindergarten entry and everything was fine but that was just a very basic check up.
On the other hand, give him a book / print out page / video game on a tablet and he notices every little detail instantly! He sees connections in his games I don't see after looking at it many times! It's like he scans it instantly and it just stands out for him from that point on.
I just don't understand how he can be so "blind" to everything around him and so tuned into something in his face?
I am trying to find a developmental optometrist that would take our insurance but makes me wonder if anyone else has kids with similar issues? And I know he really DOES see well overall say when we are outside, the board at school, riding in the car. It's something about the distance of maybe 2-10 feet around him that throws him off?

I should add, he is formally diagnosed with PDD-NOS and has a lot of sensory issues and I know that following hand gestures / directions is something that kids on the spectrum struggle with but I don't think that's it either. We are seeing very few of his old PDD-NOS related behaviors but this has been an issue since he was a toddler. DS3.6 who has a lot more autistic traits follows my gestures and directions way better than his older brother. I just don't get it?

Mk13, I think there are probably quite a few possible reasons that this happens - I have two kids who were just like this at his age - two kids with two very different challenges! My dd with the vision issues, for sure! But also my ds with dyspraxia - same thing - and he's never had vision issues at all.

Do you think there's a chance you could find a regular eye dr who will do some of the same types of evals that DOs do? FWIW, after our dd had her first DO eval, we were talking about it at school and I found out our school's librarian had convergence insufficiency and was doing many of the same type of exercises my dd did in VT - but she had her diagnosis and treatment through her regular eye dr.

polarbear

DS5 handles any eye doctor visits really poorly. He's super light sensitive so once it got to the doctor just shining a big of light into his eyes, his SPD kicked in and we were done. So I'm not sure how much we can even get checked out. He had a big of a lazy eye when he was a toddler so had his eyes dilated when he was about 3 years old and it was a total nightmare. He would not sit still for a second to do anything. He is the same child we are concerned about having dyslexia so I wonder if that too can be related in any way. His teacher is keeping an eye on that and said she will let us know by Thanksgiving (parent conferences) if she thinks we need to check more into dyslexia or other issues.
Or maybe he just can't see any single objects in that mid range distance because he's too focused on seeing EVERYTHING at once? It just gets really frustrating at times. It's like he's making fun of me not seeing what is right under his nose, but I know he's not doing it on purpose

hmm, I just read some basic info about dyspraxia (it's been a while since the last time I ready anything about it) and it fits him 99%! The only thing that is not correct for him is that he's very verbal and overall very good with the use of the language, great vocab, etc. But was quite speech delayed initially. But everything else is spot on for him. What specialist would we need to see for dyspraxia?

Are you sure that he is not seeing them vs. being very into whatever else he's doing and not caring to stop that in order to look for whatever you want him to get? We notice that at times with our DS.

What was the treatment for his lazy eye? Lazy eye can be a symptom of severe farsightedness. We went through three eye doctors before we learned DS is severely farsighted. The last one is very knowledgeable about kid's eye issues.

BTW, we were amazed to learn how bad the farsightedness was, given that he read constanstly pretty early, was great at complex puzzles, etc.

DS has always had problems finding things. His is definitely related to vision (astigmatism related amblyopia); we were referred to an opthamologist from the pediatrician and that came under medical insurance.

Pure speculation, but the limited range where the issue happens made me think of "convergence insufficiency."

p.s. Just saw your additional post, lazy eye is the common name for amblyopia. DS skips words when reading, has trouble forming letters in the right sequence. Along with fine motor control, these are all getting better a year after he finished patching.

He's trying really hard to look for whatever it is he's supposed to bring / find. It might be something very obvious and he's right next to it and still doesn't notice it.

convergence insufficiency ... sounds like a possibility too!

his lazy eye self-corrected itself within a few months. He was still struggling with some residual tortocollis issues back then and weak muscle strength on the affected side but as we worked on that in his PT and OT, the eye issues corrected themselves too. But he definitely still has muscle weakness, big time clumsiness, problems with spacial awareness, and all the other things on the dyspraxia list, so that would be my best bet right now. It would even explain the few autistic-like traits he has but they come and go.

Mk13, one of the hallmarks of dyspraxia is that it impacts each individually in a very individual-specific sort of way. Most dyspraxic people do *not* have all the symptoms. My dyspraxic ds had great vocab and use of the spoken language - once he actually started talking, but he was speech delayed and never did any of the babbling etc that most young infants/toddlers do.

DS was diagnosed through his neuropsych eval (his actual diagnosis is "Developmental Coordination Disorder" but DCD and Dyspraxia are essentially the same thing. The other specialists we've seen have been OT for his fine motor challenges (associated with his dyspraxia) and an SLP for an expressive language disorder (which may or may not be technically related, but it feels like they are part of the same overall set of issues, just from my perspective as his parent ).

The other thing our neuropsych showed us was a chart which shows what a large amount of overlap in shared symptoms between Developmental Coordination Disorder, ADHD, and ASD.

polarbear