sensory integration and vision therapy
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:45 am
I posted about a year ago about some problems my son was having at school. I was pointed to some great information on sensory integration disorder. He exhibited some of traits of this problem, though not exactly. We worked with his OT on some things and made some progress.
There were still some things going on with his learning at school, that just didn't make sense to me. He is very intelligent, but was having some weird problems with reading, spelling, and writing. I mentioned this to the OT at one of his appointments and she looked at the way his eyes moved as they followed an object. She said she thought it might be worthwhile to have him checked by a "behavioral optometrist". He is near-sighted and had been wearing glasses for almost a year at that time, but this was an optometrist that specializes in how vision affects learning.
We went to see her and she did some extensive testing. His eyes were okay. He has a few problems with how they work together and how they track objects, but the surprises came with the results of the visual perception tests, how his brain interprets the things he is seeing. He scored very low on a lot of these tests. This doctor has a vision therapist that works for her. They have had great success with helping children. We are going to start Andrew on Vision Therapy this summer. I figured if there was something that could be done to make school a little easier for him, it would be worth it. There are only 2 people in the whole state of Montana that are doing this kind of therapy, so we have to travel 150 miles one-way for the therapy. I'm hoping that by the end of the summer we'll know whether it is helping him and if it will be worth it to continue into the school year. The optometrist estimated about 30-36 sessions to completely finish the therapy, but she feels his prognosis is good and that they can help him. They will essentially be trying to re-train the brain to process the information more effectively.
It's weird because the things she told me when we reviewed the results of his testing are the things that I have been puzzling about since he has started learning to read. I have always felt that there was some "glitch" in the way he was learning.
I thought I would share my experience in case it may help someone else who is puzzled about their children's learning. I don't know that this has anything to do with his BPI, but it seems like so many of the BPI kids have sensory problems, and this seems to be connected to that.
Connie
There were still some things going on with his learning at school, that just didn't make sense to me. He is very intelligent, but was having some weird problems with reading, spelling, and writing. I mentioned this to the OT at one of his appointments and she looked at the way his eyes moved as they followed an object. She said she thought it might be worthwhile to have him checked by a "behavioral optometrist". He is near-sighted and had been wearing glasses for almost a year at that time, but this was an optometrist that specializes in how vision affects learning.
We went to see her and she did some extensive testing. His eyes were okay. He has a few problems with how they work together and how they track objects, but the surprises came with the results of the visual perception tests, how his brain interprets the things he is seeing. He scored very low on a lot of these tests. This doctor has a vision therapist that works for her. They have had great success with helping children. We are going to start Andrew on Vision Therapy this summer. I figured if there was something that could be done to make school a little easier for him, it would be worth it. There are only 2 people in the whole state of Montana that are doing this kind of therapy, so we have to travel 150 miles one-way for the therapy. I'm hoping that by the end of the summer we'll know whether it is helping him and if it will be worth it to continue into the school year. The optometrist estimated about 30-36 sessions to completely finish the therapy, but she feels his prognosis is good and that they can help him. They will essentially be trying to re-train the brain to process the information more effectively.
It's weird because the things she told me when we reviewed the results of his testing are the things that I have been puzzling about since he has started learning to read. I have always felt that there was some "glitch" in the way he was learning.
I thought I would share my experience in case it may help someone else who is puzzled about their children's learning. I don't know that this has anything to do with his BPI, but it seems like so many of the BPI kids have sensory problems, and this seems to be connected to that.
Connie