Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Vision issues or similar-looking problems: IDing?

Kriston,

I'm very late to the discussion, and you have had great advice from everyone. I just wanted to add that my DS(now 8) got glasses right about at his fourth birthday. I noticed that he would be playing with a friend at the park and would start following the wrong kid around. (Pretty big clue). But the kicker was when he was in a store with DH and pointed to a picture of a supermodel and thought it was his mom. LOL. The kid definitely needed glasses!!!

As soon as I noticed this, I started playing games with him. I would ask him to read our street sign when we were out for a walk. He knew the name of our street, but he had to get pretty close to it before he could spell out the letter to me. We made an appointment at the local Children's hospital which had an eye specialist on staff. The doctor could get a fairly good idea of the prescription needed just by focusing an image (of a flashlight) on the back of the retina. It took all of about 5 minutes to discover that DS needed glasses.

We also caught it just in time, according to the eye doctor. DS had one eye that was much weaker than the other. If we had waited until a school screening, DS would have had to wear a patch over the stronger eye.

I'll also share a story about when I got glasses. I was in eighth grade and started getting headaches. After complaining to my mom, she finally- after many months- took me in to get my eyes checked. I came home with a new pair of glasses and a profound wonder for the world around me. I spent days being amazed about the things that I could see. "Look", I would gush. "I can actually see individual leaves on the trees!" I had also become quite used to just staring at my feet while walking down the sidewalk... probably since everything else was a blur. Now I could see faces of people from across the street. Amazing! (You know that Big E on the first line of the eye chart... I can't even see that!)

When my son got glasses, my mom broke down in tears. It had bothered her all of these years that she had not known that I had needed glasses earlier. She had felt like a complete failure as a mom. She kept saying that she thought that if I was having trouble in school, my grades would have suffered. And since I was a straight A student who always sat in the back of the class, it never occurred to her that I might need glasses. (I tried to point out that they were my eyes and I should have realized that people weren't suppose to be big blurry blobs... but that is the way that I had always seen things!)

So don't feel like the crazy mom for worrying about your kid's eyes. There are enough things to worry about with gifted kids. Get the eyes checked and then cross off that reason for guilt. Then move on to the next one at hand.

Kriston - glad to hear you are getting it checked out - you seem to have one of the best "guts" around on this board - so I would definitely go with it.
Also, it would be so awful to have him go into any kind of school testing for gt, or anything else for that matter, without a handle on this question! Very best of luck on this one!!

A bit tangential: I probably had my ds hearing checked 3 times before he even hit school age because most people (preschool teachers, etc.) could not understand his words. Big, long sentences, but pretty mumbly; plus he was pretty loud (still is) and he is mister day-dreamer (superb focus skills) !
Anyway, no real issues with hearing, just listening, but it was good to get it checked out.

Lastly, I too remember getting (pink) glasses around 8th grade and just being astonished at all the little houses down in the valleys we passed on a road trip just a few weeks later. My whole family was tickled.

LOL! My DH got his first set of glasses after we were engaged. He said that he could make out individual leaves and the bark on trees for the first time in his life, and he thought for a moment "This isn't right! No one should see like this!" He felt like he saw TOO well! I loved that!

My problem is that I suspect for DS4, his is not a case of needing glasses. I suspect this is a more subtle vision problem.

And thanks for the support about going with my gut, chris1234. I don't know if my gut's a good one, but it's certainly a big enough one!

Do you have him read aloud? My speech therapist would read aloud and then I would re-read the same passage. My problems arose from reading far beyond what I had heard - my reading vocab was MUCH larger than my auditory or oral experience.

Austin, I just saw your question...this is pretty interesting. At the time he was not reading yet. I think the issue was that my son had a desire to build big sentences but was still working on some of the finer points of pronunciation...plus he was big for his age so I think people thought he was older and expected a child with a penchant for more complex sentences and of that size to have better pronunciation. He has by now outgrown this, but since we dont use some words in our daily speech, he does run into words which are just not spoken much (abomination is one that I recall) ...he is reading about 2.5 levels above grade, so there is a gap there, but not as huge as someone reading well at age 3 or 4.

Hi Kriston,

I would definitively check your DS with a behavioral optometrist. He does not need to read to be checked.

I copy what I posted about DD in the other forum:

About the vision problems: we went to see an optometrist in Spain and indeed, DD has some deficiencies. She has problems tracking a fixing objects, not severe but enough to give her trouble, and she has problems with accommodation on short distances, which means that after a short while the page she is looking becomes all blurry. She has given me a few exercises to do at home and she told me that in about 4 months I should see improvement. Interestingly enough, DD's accuracy is 100% in the 'bad' eye and 120% in the 'good' one!

One of the things that indeed does not compute with DD is that she is not reading yet, despite the fact that she has lots of interest to learn and asks me to 'teach' her. My 'method' is reading to her while I point at the words as I read them, but she quickly gets tired and wants to stop after a few sentences.
So, if you gut feeling tells you that your DS should be reading, then trust four gut feeling more than anything else, including yourself!

What would be advantages of a neurologist or neuropsych over a developmental opthalmologist? Would he look at CAPD and vision stuff? I'm just wondering what these guys do and what they would look for? Thanks.

Hey Squirt, I had been out of town and only just now saw this question.

I'm not sure there is a blanket advantage, I just think it comes down to what the issues are, what are we testing for.

We had little C tested by a developmental opthamologist. We are considering having her looked at by a pediatric neuropysch, just to make sure there is nothing else we have missed.

Additionally, if insurance covers the vistit to a nueropsych and a full eval, there lies the possibility that IQ testing would be done and covered. But you would have to check that out with your plan.