This Says It All

Ben graduated from vision therapy yesterday.  After 16 sessions, we can't believe the changes in him.  I'll post more about the therapy later, how we figured out he needed it, what sort of activities he did.

But tonight, I just want to share Ben's thoughts on how vision therapy helped him.  His therapist asked him to just write a few words about how this process has helped him.  Ben NEVER writes this much detail or with such attention to handwriting, so I know he really meant what he said.

I couldn't describe it any better.

Validation!

About three weeks ago we met with Ben's Developmental Optometrist (OD) to discuss the results of the diagnostic testing they did on Ben.  Sure enough, Ben has serious deficiencies in Visual Memory, Tracking, Binocularity (the ability of the eyes to work together), and Suppression (turning one eye off in favor of the other eye).  Because of Ben's age, Dr. H said that Ben's eyes and visual system are still developing (versus a 7 or 8 year old whose system would already be sort of "set"), and Dr. H recommended we start with an at-home vision therapy program to get the ball rolling.

So for three months we have our workbook and as a whole family, five nights a week for at least 30 minutes, we do our "activities".  Luckily most of these activities are fun for kids.  We figured it couldn't hurt Lia to do them as well, since she is also at the age where her eyes are developing.  Here is the program we are using, although I would not recommend embarking on this journey without the help of an OD.   

The activities include things like:  bean bag toss, walking on a line (good practice for when he's drinking age), gross motor skills, balance, drawing figure 8's, stringing beads, creating things with modeling clay, popping bubbles, and more.  We've been doing them for about three weeks now.

Yesterday I met with Ben's 1st grade teacher, Mr. H, after celebrating Valentine's Day with a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds (hopped up on artificial colors and flavors - gotta love this holiday).  I asked Mr. H if he had noticed any improvement in Ben's reading over the past few weeks.  Remember - Ben's reading was below 1st grade level last time Mr. H and I met in our parent teacher conference. Mr. H said "Absolutely!".

The kids have been doing these "fluency tests" where they get a paragraph, get timed on how many words of the paragraph they can read in one minute (cold read), then they practice that same paragraph all week, and get tested again at the end of the week (hot read).  Mr. H said that before glasses (meaning before we started vision therapy) Ben was getting a 16 on his cold read.  First graders should be at a 40.  These days, Ben is getting a 61 on his cold read!!!!  Did you hear that?!?  A 61!!!  Mr. H decided to test Ben on the end of year fluency test and he scored a 38.  I am so freaking excited about this. 

We've also noticed in the past two weeks that Ben is reading everything.  He reads to his sister at the breakfast table, he reads signs as we drive by, he races through his homework reading, and he even reads now in the bathroom (such a guy thing!).  I am so excited to see what the next few months bring for Ben as we continue to do the therapy.  We haven't yet begun to do the Visual Memory activities, and this is an area in which Ben needs a lot of help. 

Yesterday I bumped into the mom of a girl Ben had in his Kindergarten class.  She asked me how Ben was doing this year - she's always loved him even when he was in trouble all the time in Kinder - and she said "Every time I see him these days he looks really happy!".  I told her about our diet, and about starting vision therapy and she said she was so happy to have bumped into me.  Her 16 year old daughter has the same problems and she wanted to know much more about what we were doing.  Nothing makes me feel better than being able to share our experiences with other moms.  It makes me SO FRUSTRATED to think how many kids are out there with these problems, that are so easily correctable, but teachers and pediatricians - even regular optometrists - don't know about or discuss these vision disorders with parents. 

My informal mission these days is to share this information with as many parents as possible, so their kids can have the success that Ben has had.  Just wait, before long I will be on the lecture circuit.

Here are a couple of pictures from "free play" after last night's vision therapy session:

I See Double

About a month ago I had the dreaded parent teacher conference with Ben's teacher, Mr. H.  I feel very lucky that we got Mr. H this year.  He has been so incredibly supportive of Ben and our non-medicated remedies for his ADD. 

Wait, before I go any further, I need to clarify something.  Ben has not been officially diagnosed with ADD.  This is the subject of some debate in our household, on whether or not to actually go for it.  On one hand, it would be nice to have a diagnosis (dx) in case Ben needed special accomodations at school.  On the other hand, we are worried that an ADD dx carries a stigma that we don't want to saddle our son with.  Luckily for us, Mr. H naturally accomodates Ben so we haven't had to make a decision one way or the other.  But, I'm pretty sure if you asked Mr. H or Mrs. P (Ben's kinder teacher last year), they'd confirm my self assessed dx.  At one point both teachers told me Ben only retains about 20% of what they say in class because he simply can't hold still.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . .

Back to the parent teacher conference.  Ben was actually doing better than I had expected.  However Mr. H was completely perplexed by Ben's results on various tests for reading.  They do a test called "Non-sensical words" which is exactly that - words that can be sounded out but are not real words.  They do this to be sure the child hasn't just memorized the look of the word and is actually reading it.  Mr. H showed me Ben's results of the same test, taken a few weeks apart.  Words he got correct the first time were wrong the second time, he was swapping letters, he was confusing b's and d's.  Mr. H told me he didn't know what to make of it and he actually couldn't use the results.  I vowed to work harder with Ben on reading and went my merry way. 

Not long ago, I was reading online and discovered something called Convergence Insufficiency (CI).  This is a disorder where a child has fine vision, but the eyes don't work together.  I ran through the checklist of symptoms and was shocked that Ben displayed most of them.  (Losing track of where he was reading, mixing b's and d's, swapping first and last letters of a word like "was" vs "saw", seeing a couple of letters in a word and guessing at the rest, getting tired while reading, not understanding or remembering what he just read, struggling with homework and spelling, poor handwriting, covering one eye while working, and many more.)  I was also shocked to learn that up to 15% of our population has CI and that children with ADD are THREE TIMES more likely to have CI than other children.  In fact, I learned that ADD and CI are often misdiagnosed, one for the other.  However, the most shocking thing to me was that CI is not tested for by optometrists or schools when giving eye exams and most teachers know nothing about it.  How is that even possible?!?

Along with CI comes other disorders like Tracking and Focus issues.  This is an awesome website that shows what children with these disorders see:  http://www.childrensvision.com/reading.htm.  From this and other websites, (specifically this one:  http://www.covd.org/) I was able to find a developmental optometrist that specializes in these disorders.  I called around to a few in our area and found one whose philosophy seemed in line with what I had learned on the internet, and we had our first appointment last week. 

Dr. H spent an hour with Ben, checking his basic vision (which is 20/15) and drilling in to what his issue was.  One quick test he gave was to have Ben follow a pen (about a foot away) with only his eyes.  Not only did Ben's eyes move in a jerky fashion, but he couldn't do it without also moving his head.  The doctor scheduled another exam - this next one will be much more in depth for the disorders rather than basic vision - for free.  But meanwhile, he prescribed glasses for Ben for any up close work such as reading, writing or computer work.  Yes, for video games too. 

What I especially found interesting was Dr. H's views on why this is happening.  He said that at this age, children are not visually developed enough to be doing the amount of reading and writing that schools impose these days.  In addition to that, Ben is developmentally delayed in his vision (Dr. H said Ben's vision is developed at about a 4 year old level right now), although he could completely grow out of that. 

The beauty of CI and other tracking disorders is that they can be fixed with vision therapy.  There are many, many testimonials online about children that go from struggling to do homework to reading 200-page novels for fun.  Dr. H doesn't think Ben needs vision therapy at this point since his eyes are still developing, but we're going to do the diagnostic exam just to pinpoint how severe Ben's CI issues are.  He said many kids Ben's age are helped simply by glasses to make the up close work a little easier until his eyes catch up. 

We picked up Ben's glasses today and he was VERY excited.  Mostly about the cool case they come in and the little cloth they give you to clean them.  Okay, whatever works!  I had Ben read me a story from his homework tonight while wearing the glasses and he did not skip one word, one line or mix up one letter.  I have no idea if this is from the glasses or if he was just more focused tonight while reading, but I'm sure time will tell.  I'm only left wondering:  with a six year old boy with ADD, just how many pairs of replacement glasses will I have to figure into my budget each year?!? 

Here's my handsome little man in his new spectacles.