More Answers About easy child

Bunny

Active Member
About two weeks ago difficult child came to me and asked, "Has easy child told you about his eyes?" I said no, and asked what he was talking about. He said that when they play video games easy child has been telling difficult child that he can't read the words on the screen because he can't see them clearly. I question easy child and he admits to having trouble seeing things clearly.

On Monday I took him to get his eyes examined and, if needed, get a pair of glasses.


The doctor is checking him and she is holding a pen in front of him, telling him to follow the pen with his eyes and not to move his head. He does it, and she then asks him to do it again. She then turns to me and asked, "Does he have trouble in school?" Ummmm....yes, and how did she know that? I started to tell her about struggles he's been having and the hours of testing that he underwent last year. She said to me, "I can tell you that his eyes are not focusing properly. They jump around and don't stay focused on what he's looking at."


Then she did a demonstration. She took us out into the hall and taped to the wall was a sheet of paper that had rows of letters. She asked easy child to read the first and last letters of each line. He couldn't do it. He kept skipping lines because his eyes can't follow from one line to the next.


This would explain why reading is so hard for him, and if reading is hard then everything else is going to be a struggle because you need to be able to read for everything.


So, now easy child has a shiny new pair of reading glasses and he has an appointment with another doctor in the practice who has more experience with this so that he can look him over and give him exercises to do to help train the eyes to work the way they are supposed to.

Just one more piece to the puzzle, I suppose.
 

Bunny

Active Member
I asked that same question and the doctor who saw him on Friday said that glasses were part of the solution, but that he needs to see the other doctor in the practice. Apparently this doctor has more experience with this type of thing, and will look him over and give him exercises for the eyes to make them stronger. I have a list of questions to bring with me when I take him, so I'll know more next week.
 

soapbox

Member
Just one more piece to the puzzle, I suppose.
One more piece of the puzzle, but not "just" another piece.
This one will be a KEY piece.

Hidden disabilities get overlooked. Vision problems like this, or APDs, are both good examples. Interventions and accommodations make a HUGE difference... but you need the diagnosis to get the help, including in school.
 

Hopeless

....Hopeful Now
Not the same thing, but similar. I have had glasses since junior high mainly to help my eyes stayed focused. My eyes have to refocus every time I blink. Yep every single time. I would get terrible headaches when reading due to this issue.

Glad you found this out and that they can help him out.
 

Bunny

Active Member
easy child complains about headaches alot and when I mentioned that to the eye doctor she said that it could be related to his vision problems.

I will get in writing from the doctor what the diagnosis is for his eyes, but I'm not sure what, if any, accommodations the school will give him. He's grades are high (which is basically why they refused him assistance in the last school year), but he worked really hard for those high grades. Maybe now it won't be so hard for him.
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
I understand that this is NOT good news per se but I think it's wonderful that the problem has been identified in third or fourth grade. There's lots of time to catch up. Hugs DDD
 

svengandhi

Well-Known Member
My easy child hated to read and would have violent headaches leading to tantrums in school when he was younger. He wore glasses since K but had trouble reading. In 4th grade, I took him to a developmental optometrist. She said his glasses were wrong because he was near sighted in one eye and far sighted in the other and his glasses were an average! He now wears progressive bifocals. He also had 9 months of vision therapy. Within a month of starting vision therapy and getting the right glasses, his headaches were gone and he loved to read. In 7th grade, he was diagnosed with mild dyslexia. The accommodations he gets are preferential seating, extra time on exams (which he hates to use but does since we explained that it's to help him show how smart he is), copies of class notes and the right to use a voice dictation program on long assignments. He is also spelling exempt but is doing well in foreign language, Latin.

My son is doing well in school. He is entering HS and is in honors Bio but not math because VT can't accomplish everything, LOL! He's an A+ student in history because he can now see to read.

I was extremely nearsighted as a child but didn't realize that the rest of the world didn't see the same things. easy child was probably in the same boat. When my son got his bifocals, he said he didn't realize that things weren't blurry for everyone else.

The best part of your story is that difficult child cared enough about easy child to approach you about easy child's vision. I think this bodes really well for difficult child's future.

Go for the vision therapy. It's not a cure but it can help compensate for visual difficulties.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Possible accommodations: Use of a reading ruler, to highlight the current line of text. Preferential seating for better lighting and/or for better focus on the board. Copies of what is on the board (either teacher pre-outline, or written by some scribe).
 

Bunny

Active Member
I understand that this is NOT good news per se but I think it's wonderful that the problem has been identified in third or fourth grade. There's lots of time to catch up. Hugs DDD

Actually, DDD, I think this is good news because it fills in a piece of easy child's puzzle that we have been struggling to understand, and can now move on to helping him with. Is it good news that his eyes don't focus properly? No. I would never say that, but as you said that problem has been found as he is entering 4th grade and we can now work with it before he hits middle school in 6th.

I thanked difficult child for telling me that easy child was having a problem. Had he not said anything I never would have known that there was a visual issue. Regardless of how often he rants about how much he hates his brother, I think that they both really do care about each other.
 

svengandhi

Well-Known Member
If you pursue vision therapy, there are usually home exercises to do. Maybe difficult child would be willing to help easy child with them. This would allow him to act as a big brother and might help his maturing process. When babyboy did them, someone had to hold a piece of paper or an object a certain distance from him, move it, keep track, etc. It's not rocket science, but it's vitally necessary for the VT to succeed. Perhaps, easy child would agree to play a game of difficult child's choice for the same amount of time that difficult child spends helping him with his therapy. Although we went to VT only twice a week, the home exs were done 6 times.

We never used the line highlighting ruler because my dyslexic boys felt it made them stand out in a negative way, but I did teach them to use their fingers to keep track of the words. Some people think the color change paper works but we never noticed a difference with easy child, who is severely dyslexic, so we didn't continue with it.
 
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