Re: Vision therapy

[Guest guest]

> Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 17:59:41 EST

> From: MMacGregor@...

> Subject: Re: Glasses / eye exam / Vision Therapy

>

> My DD may need some Vision Therapy. She can't seem to focus on one

> thing and instead uses her peripheral vision so she has problems

> identifying

> shapes, for example. Before we knew about the autism, she knew the

> alphabet and could name colors, but never knew shapes. Earlier in

> the

> week we noticed that she doesn't cross her eyes when something gets

> very close.

>

> Are these the kinds of things VT can help with and, if so, are there

> any

> recommendations for someone around San /San Francisco who could

> help?

>

> Thanks

>

> Margaret

Yes, those are the type of things VT helps. Start by calling

optometrists in your area to see who is qualified to do VT. Some of the

universities do it. According to your child's needs the sessions may

vary in number and frequency. The weekly sessions generally run 1 hour

long at a college, 1/2 hour at a dr office, and then you do a variety of

daily exercises. We used a guideline that if he did each exercise with a

good attitude, he got a smiley face on the chart and a certain number of

smiley faces meant a trip to some place special he loved like OMSI

(science museum), beach, etc. We'd ask him where he really wanted to go

next and set the number of smiley faces needed according to the outing.

By the last month we were saying the smiley face could be earned if he

did the exercises " without a bad attitude, " as we knew they were really

boring and some were hard. I tried them and found my eyes HURT for some

of the exercises. So I felt that if he would do them and not be

obnoxious about it, he could still earn an outing. He had trouble being

obedient at the dr office as he loved the trampoline and didn't want to

stop when it was time to stop so I rewarded obedience there with a trip

to the library on our way home (he's a book worm) and/or a trip to a

wading pool we discovered the last month that wasn't far from the dr

office.

My son used peripheral vision too -- for instance we'd be doing sight

words and he'd be looking everywhere except at the flash card yet he

could tell me what it said! Thankfully that has pretty well ceased.

I've seen him do that one time since VT was over and I immediately

suggested calling the Dr to see if more VT was needed and he never did it

again! :-)

Carol in Oregon