Re: Visual perception/Vision therapy

[Guest guest]

My son did visual therapy for about a year when he was 7 years old. It did help

him quite a bit with visual processing and handwriting. In fact he is now an

artist, (18yo) very visually oriented and much less frustrated. He was a visual

learner but unable to use that to learn because of the processing problems. It

was expensive, but he was adopted so we had Medicaid to pay for it because our

private insurance would not.

Donna

---- rostevik <rostevik@...> wrote:

> Hi,

>

> My DS (15, diagnosed last June) was tested by an occupational therapist

earlier this year, and today I got a phone call from her with the results, that

was a surprising to me.

>

> He has some motor skill problems, like a terrible handwriting, not using both

knife and fork when eating etc. What she found out was that this was caused by

problems with his visual perception and that it was not motor skills problems

per se. The visual perception disorder caused hand/eye coordination problems,

problems with shape recognition etc that again caused difficulties with

handwriting etc.

>

> She recommended visual therapy for him. I do not know much about that, so I

thought I'd ask if someone has experience with this? It is a quite expensive

treatment here, and it requires that he practices on his own. It would be good

to know if it has helped others in the same situation.

>

> Rannveig/.

>

[Guest guest]

is just finishing up with vision therapy. His behavior has improved and

his willingness to do classwork and homework has improved. He just started

baseball again for the first time in about 3 years and we went to a " baseball

clinic " last saturday. He hit nearly every ball, was able to change his

technique when given suggestions and could throw the ball toward the person he

was supposed to throw it to. " He has talent " one of the coaches said. ROFL.

He's on a team for kids with disabilities but in terms of baseball ability he

could do a regular team. It's his anxiety about losing and his social skills

that would make a regular team extremely difficult for him. The kids on this

team have a huge collection of talents and difficulties so some are okay with

baseball skills while others are better at the social stuff and have physical

limitations.

Anyway, I'm off the track. I think vision therapy has helped a LOT.

doesn't panic without his handheld games any more. He used to get upset if he

left the house without it. Now he can look out the window and enjoy that. It's

like a whole new world has opened up to him. 's reading comprehension has

improved. The reason for this is actually quite simple. wasn't TRYING to

read anything because it was very difficult and exhausting for him to read a

line of text and then find the next line. In comprehension tests he'd read the

questions and then try to find the answers in the text without reading the whole

thing. That just doesn't work. Now he reads. He reads and TELLS me what he's

read in infinite detail! He can write. He can better organize his written work

and is willing to write about assigned topics rather than just about video

games. He does incorporate some video game stuff into his writing but if his

work isn't about that he can do the work.

I felt it was a huge help to .

Miriam

> > Hi,

> >

> > My DS (15, diagnosed last June) was tested by an occupational therapist

earlier this year, and today I got a phone call from her with the results, that

was a surprising to me.

> >

> > He has some motor skill problems, like a terrible handwriting, not using

both knife and fork when eating etc. What she found out was that this was caused

by problems with his visual perception and that it was not motor skills problems

per se. The visual perception disorder caused hand/eye coordination problems,

problems with shape recognition etc that again caused difficulties with

handwriting etc.

> >

> > She recommended visual therapy for him. I do not know much about that, so I

thought I'd ask if someone has experience with this? It is a quite expensive

treatment here, and it requires that he practices on his own. It would be good

to know if it has helped others in the same situation.

> >

> > Rannveig/.

> >

>

[Guest guest]

Miriam & Donna,

Thx for the feedback. Interesting to hear your experience with this. It has

encouraged me to at least find out more about it. There is one optometrist

offering visual therapy in this area, so I'll contact them and hear if he thinks

it is something that could help my DS.

I haven't checked it out, but I do think this is something we have to pay for

ourselves as it is a service/therapy not offered by the public health care.

Rannveig/.

[Guest guest]

>

> What is visual theapy? How do you know if your child needs it? Where do go to

get it?

Jan,

I'm not familiar with how this works in the US (I'm in Norway), but in our case

it was an occupational therapist who evaluated my son based on my son's motor

skill problems. The therapy is offered by an behavioral optometrist.

Rannveig/.