Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) wants V to get his eyes checked

[Ktllc]

V wears glasses when we do school work (the little we do). He was last tested in August and is very mildly nearsighted.
The Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) is working on phonemic awareness with him and of course uses the alphabet. V always think that q, p, d,b, g look the same. He has to REALLY focus to see the difference. And I'm not talking about naming them. Just seeing that they are different.
I can't imagine his eyesight getting that bad so fast.
He also has issues with foreground and bakground in a picture. Things just kind of blend and if the picture is crowded, V sees some really weird things. For example, we were playing a card game (or trying to LOL) and there was a duck holding a big fish in its arms. V thought it was a mermaid! He could not see that the duck and the fish were 2 seperate entities.
He also gets completely overwhelmed if visual presentations are too colorful and saturated with details. Which is usually the case for preschoolers. I keep my homemade visual aids black and white with the least details as possible.
I made an appointment for next week, but I can see it coming: "nothing wrong with his eye sight, go home"...
Just like "nothing wrong with his hearing" when we first went to our hometown audiologist.
Anyone has experience with visual issues like those?
You know what is ironic? V is a visual learner! HaHaHa... not even funny.

 

[InsaneCdn]

OK, JMO here, but...
Vision is gonna be like hearing.
And... audiologist - the standard ones - will say "his hearing is just fine"... when in fact, the problem isn't the HEARING, it's the "listening" part that happens inside the brain.

I'm guessing that V's vision per se may not be the problem... but he may have problems distinguishing shapes etc. - processing that info in the brain?

OR... it could be about contrast, for example. Some people can't read black-on-white very well... adding a contract color over top, sometimes makes a difference (what color, depends on the person)

 

[keista]

I made an appointment for next week, but I can see it coming: "nothing wrong with his eye sight, go home"...
Just like "nothing wrong with his hearing" when we first went to our hometown audiologist.

LOL yeah, kinda. I'm thinking there is nothing wrong with his eyesight and Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) needs to rule that out first. Once eyes are deemed GOOD then it becomes an Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) or Occupational Therapist (OT) issue. I'm guessing he can't find Waldo

My son does have some issues with this. It's just like background noise. If there's too much cluttering his visual field he has a hard time focusing on the important stuff. Even if it seems separate to us - for example a blackboard split into 3 sections. The middle one has the information he needs to read or copy down, but there's other irrelevant stuff on the other boards. Takes a lot of energy (and maturity) to focus on just the relevant stuff. I say maturity because he's getting better at it as he gets older, but it's the same with auditory.

Does V play with puzzles? Picture - not word. This is a big indicator.

 

[helpangel]

My 15yo acted the same way when she was little; the only way she would get the fish & duck being separate would be if could open ducks arms and remove the fish then she would get it. I vaguely remember they had me making alphabet letters out of edible playdoe and letting them dry so she could pick up handle, smell, taste yes LOL even taste the letters. The way the dbqgp thing was explained to me by an Occupational Therapist (OT) at an IEP meeting is quite often a young mind looks at those letters and just sees a circle with a tail. A puppy has a tail and no matter which way it turns its still a puppy. Anyway it doesn't qualify as dyslexia in my state till about 3rd or 4th grade.

 

[BusynMember]

With the inability to decode different letters (they all look the same) have you thought of dyslexia? An eye doctor will not catch this...that is more a neuropsychologist issue. Maybe he is also color blind? I'd see a neuropsychologist. in my opinion you'll get more in a ten hour evaluation than with a bunch of different specialists. His eyesight is probably fine, just like his hearing is fine. It is the "differently wired" stuff in his brain that is going undiagnosed which is why it is so confusing. Going to all the speicalists PLUS a neurologist and endocronogist did nothing for my son, but the neuropsychologist seemed to nail everything. I know some have had other experiences, but I'd do the neuropsychologist first and anything else later. If you go to too many professionals, in my opinion you get too confused and get too much conflicting feedback. JMO

 

[slsh]

If you can, I'd try to get in to see an ophthalmologist at a Children's Hospital (or a university teaching hospital if you don't have a CH nearby). This sounds like it might be a bit more complex than a matter of near-sightedness, though certainly that could be a piece of the puzzle. Just in my experience, the guys at Children's Hospitals are usually a bit more up on more complex visual issues (oldest has optic nerve atrophy as well as cortical visual impairment, on top of deficits from crossed eyes corrected to wall eyes - been there done that, got the t-shirt , though to this day we *still* don't have a really good idea of what he sees, just that he does see something, but his vision is definitely impaired).

Another thought - has he been tested for color blindness?

 

[Ktllc]

Dyslexia has been mentioned by Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), but like most of you said: we won't know until he is in 2nd or 3rd grade.
I was trying to find some humor in this absurdity, saying to husband that aybe we should teach him the alphabet in braille. And then I realized, V would probably not even be able to feel it ! Since he is mostly undersensitive/underresponsive with is proprioception. Really gotta to laugh because I don't feel like crying today.
Using contrast is actually a terrific idea, such as using dough to make letter. I knew about the latter (Waldorf theory), but just have not tried it yet.
V will play with picure puzzles if I do it with him. He is not able to do a new one on his won. Once we've done the puzzle several times and showed him what to look for (blue border, straight outer piece, yellow with yellow, etc), then he can do it mostly on his own. But He would never pick a puzzle on his own. V can see details but misses the big picture.
As far as a neuropsychologist, I had the hardest time to find and schedule a private psycho-educational evaluation covered by the insurance. At this point I will wait for any other evaluation. Looking back, it probably was not the best evaluation but still better then none. We just can't afford to pay out of pocket all the time. When he is older, if we need another round of evaluation, then I'll look into a neuropsychologist.

 

[helpangel]

I forget who the author is but I'm sure can find it on title it's called the out of sync child plays its by the same person who wrote the out of sync child it has tons of things you can do at home usually very affordable.

Another thing they had us doing along with clay letters was index cards with split peas in the shapes of letters glued to them and finger paint or sand/sugar/salt finger draw letters. For my 15yo that did turn out to have dyslexia she needed to feel the letters in many different mediums to grasp them.

 

[susiestar]

Actually the book is The Out of Sync Child Has Fun by Kranowitz and it ROCKS! in my opinion every house, even those with-o Occupational Therapist (OT) issues need this bc it is so fun. But I'm weird.

Has anyone suggested vision therapy? You would need a Children's hospital to get a good diagnosis, probably from an opthalmologist, but from there vision therapy might be a big help. They do all sorts of things to help with these problems, esp the foreground/background and letter confusion problems. they also work wiht colored lenses bc some dyslexics read just fine with specially colored lenses. I know how strange that sounds, trust me. But I have SEEN this work and it is amazing. Different colors seem to help with different things for some people, others just need one certain color and they read and learn just fine. One of the sp ed students that the teacher we liked so much had needed them. His family couldn't afford them and medicaid wouldn't pay for the lenses so they were wracking their brains to figure out how to provide the needed color filters. I brought in a bunch of clear plastic colored report covers and we tried putting those over the pages of books to have him read through those and it did help substantially. Was NOT as good as the colored glasses he needed, but it did let him learn in the months it took to find funding for the glasses. it truly is one of the most amazing things I have seen.

I wouldn't go find a way to do it yourself until V is evaluated fully though. This is just what I saw when they called and asked me if I could figure out a DIY solution or help find fundin for the glasses (I did that too, but it took some time to get enough donations.)

 

[buddy]

I'm sure I have no idea where this report is anymore because it was so long ago, but at the same place where we get Q's AVE, he will do neurofeedback, and where he got his Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) evaluation, we did a Visual Processing evaluation. He was in first grade I think when we did it. Shockingly (sarcasm) he had problems integrating things but overall he did pretty well. The evaluation really did cover many things even some motor things so it was kind of interesting, basically hard to find anyone to do the visual exercises and it does overlap with Occupational Therapist (OT) thank heaven.....

 

[svengandhi]

We were told for years that my youngest, now 13, was near-sighted and he wore glasses since K. He hated to read, had awful headaches and a wickedly horrible temper.

In 4th grade, I decided to take him for vision therapy. The first thing she said was that baby boy's problem was that his glasses were wrong. He IS nearsighted, very, but only in one eye. In the other eye, he is terribly far-sighted. His prior eye doctor (one of the top ranked in our county) had been AVERAGING his scores and giving him glasses that did nothing but give him horrible headaches. He started wearing bifocals in 4th grade - I pay the extra to get him the no line style. He also had 9 months of vision therapy. After that, his reading came in to play, his headaches vanished and his temper has improved so greatly he's like a different kid.

He has always had a diagnosis of Learning Disability (LD) and vision impairment but at his most recent triennial. he was actually able to participate in the testing and the results indicate he is mildly dyslexic. He is in grade 7 now. H was diagnosed as dyslexic in law school of all places and easy child was diagnosis'ed with severe dyslexia in K. Baby boy is SO thrilled to be dyslexic - there's now a reason why his handwriting stinks and he's not a math whiz like difficult child.

Look into his eyesight, etc. and good luck.

 

[susiestar]

sven, I know some dyslexics with awesome handwriting. The handwriting problems are generally related to dysgraphia, which is a separate Learning Disability (LD) that involves a disconnect in the wiring connecting the hand to the language part of the brain. Many dysgraphics I know can do amazing drawings (not all), and that sounds strange but it is because the hand is not controlled by the language areas when you draw. There is therapy for dysgraphia, esp for the pain that can come with long written assignments or class notes. My dysgraphia is so bad that I cannot read my college notebooks. Nor can anyone else.

 

[Ktllc]

Since childhood, I've been a big migrainer sufferer. As a teen, the eye doctor suggested vision therapy. It did not do anything for my migraine, I just remembered it was extremely boring. If it is somewhat similar overhere, I don't see how an almost 5 year old could do it.
Thanks for sharing all your experiences, it sure proves that vision is another very complex area. That would be nice if everything could be fix with some colored lenses. V looks so cute with his glasses on, a splash of color and he would be the coolest little boy. lol