Vision Therapy Week 2 - READING Update

Our second week was a week full of ups and downs.  Alli has improved by leaps and bounds again, which is very wonderful to see.  She continues to work hard and keep her complaining to a minimum.  She cannot stand wearing the eye patch so after EVERY activity she rips it off and then it takes a while to get her to put it back on.  

One of the hardest parts of this (for me) has been the intense focused energy given to Alli.  Vision therapy is so different from our "school."  Anything that we do for school, we do together.  Jill listens to Alli's stories and draws a picture and is involved in all things.  For VT, Alli and I have to be alone so she can concentrate, so now we have this hour a day where Jill must leave us alone.  The funny thing is, JILL hasnt had a problem with this yet, it is only MY issue, so i think I need to let it go!!  She is content to sit on the couch and look at books, color, play with her animals, etc....so I am going to work this coming week on not worrying about a problem that doesn't exist!!

Knowing about the extent of Alli's vision problems has changed how I do her reading lessons with her.  She really loves the book we use, but now that she is nearly 1/2 through the letters are getting smaller, the sentences have more words per line and the words are closer together.  All of these things make reading incredibly difficult for her since she cannot track, focus, or use her eyes well together.

What I did was take the story in the book

And write it out much larger onto paper so she could see it better

I had her read me the one I wrote before we even got to the story just to see if she could do it.  She read it with almost no hesitation and only sounding out a few words.  Lots of the words she now just KNOWS which is so exciting.  

A few days later we got to this lesson in the book so i had her read it from the BOOK version and she struggled, skipped words, added sounds into words that are not there, etc....all the things she was doing before when I thought "WHY is reading such a struggle for her" but now I know SHE CANT SEE CORRECTLY!!!


Now, this morning, the most EXCITING thing happened!  Below is a picture of one of the activities she does for VT.  After she finished filling it in I asked her to read it.  I knew she could read IS, THE, and probably sound out BOB and PET.    Well, imagine my surprise when she said, "What is the name (i had to write the line for long a sound) of  (i helped her with sponge) Bob's pet?"

We have never gone over WHAT (and she even said it correctly, not with a short a sound) and in the past when we used sight word worksheets she could never remember OF or IS.  She is doing so incredible.  I am starting to see that there is light at the end of this "struggling to read" tunnel.

Update 4/29 to add that today when she read her story I watched HER instead of the words and she completely closes her right eye.  I asked her if she could just leave both eyes open and she said, "that eye is so tired!"  It is so crazy to me that I never looked at HER when she read, I always just looked at the sentences.  This is such a learning experience.