Vision Therapy - 12 weeks in....

Believe it or not, Alli LOVES this picture.

I wanted her to smile and she said ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!  This is how she feels about these lenses.  

So many exciting things have happened it is hard to keep track.  I wish I had stayed more up to date on everything because I am planning to fight our insurance and I want as much ammunition as possible.  

So, if Alli had broken her arm and needed physical therapy to repair her arm muscle, our insurance would pay 100%, but for some reason her eye muscles are not covered.  I found that Aetna insurance does cover Vision Therapy, so now I am putting together a file of evidence as to why Blue Cross needs to support Vision Therapy also.  Wish me luck, I will need it!!

Onto the improvements..... below are two pictures from the test for form constancy that Alli was given back in March (off the internet so not the best clarity).  

You have to find the shape at the top in one of the images on the bottom.  It can be bigger or smaller or rotated, but must maintain the same shape.  Alli tested < 1% in March.......

She was retested last week and scored  > 99%.  

Later that night I was telling my dad this and Alli asked what 99% meant and I said that if 100 kids were given this test, you scored higher than 99 of them.  She said, "What about the other 1?"  I said THAT IS YOU!!!!  

 Dr. Griffith agreed with what I have been saying for two years -  Alli has had the ABILITY to do all of this: read, write, spell, jigsaw puzzles, catching a ball, etc....but her poor visual skills were getting in the way.   I always thought Alli's eye muscles were weak, but Dr Griffith stated it this way:

"Our eye muscles are actually very strong, but the ability to use them well, in an efficient, precisely accurate, and coordinated manner can be poor.  This has a lot to do with neurological pathways."

When I asked Dr. Griffith about if fixing the vision skills can fix Alli's reading problems she explains it this way:

  "My approach is that there are many factors...vision is a very important one, and if there are any visual skill deficiencies, it is good to improve these and remove vision as a confounding factor and hurdle to learning to read.  I do acknowledge that there are other factors that determine how a child can read...auditory, language, neurological, dyslexia (in a brain organization sense). "

Now I understand more clearly why the therapy that Alli and I have been doing has involved such a diverse range of activities.  We did some bilateral movement activities (the circles on the board with both hands), lots of fine motor activities, some activities involving left and right movement, and some auditory activities out of "HELPING CHILDREN OVERCOME LEARNING DIFFICULTIES".  All of these things have played a part in helping Alli learn to read.

Friday she had her 12th appointment and Dr. Griffith redid an activity from the first week using this chart:

Alli had to wear the patch and read the first and last letters in each row.   

Week 1 she took 72 seconds and had 3 errors.  This week it took her 22 seconds!!!

Then she switched her patch to the other eye and read the second letters in on each side - so F H B R.

Week 1 this took her 132 seconds and had so many errors it wasnt tracked.  This week it took her 30 seconds with 1 error

Finally, using both eyes she had to read the third in from each side so - N C A L.

Week 1 she could not even do this activity it was so difficult for  her.  This week she did it in 38 seconds with 1 error.

Amazing!  We could not be happier.  Alli has started a book called "How my eyes have improved"  She is so excited.  We are going to have a huge party when she is all done!!!  It is so exciting to think about how far she has come.

Vision Therapy 2 Month Update

There have been so many wonderful things happening regarding Alli's vision therapy, but I just havent been able to keep the updates current.  There are a few exciting things I wanted to share.

First, when Alli was first tested, she was classified as having all 3 forms or dyslexia.  There was only 1 word she recognized, and she was unable to spell words phonetically.  Our school also wanted to test her for dyslexia, but this testing did not occur until 5 weeks into the vision therapy.   This second testing put her at just BARELY below average in two categories and average in the third.  

When I asked if that meant she was dyslexic, the woman doing the screening said she wouldn't classify her as so. I feel pretty strongly that if this screening had been done prior to starting vision therapy, she would have been much farther below average, I regret not scheduling this screening prior to starting VT so we had a more accurate record of the improvements VT have made in Alli's life, but I know in my heart that VT is changing Alli's life

Second, Alli was retested by her VT doctor and has made amazing improvements in tracking and some of her focusing skills.  

In tracking she went from 24% percentile to 75% percentile.  

In some of the focusing activities (ability to change focus quickly) she doubled what she was able to do before.

She has stopped suppressing an eye while reading, so two of the activities she couldn't even be testing on initially she was able to do this time around.

Unfortunately, she showed no improvement in being able to sustain focus.  I was initially very disappointed about this, but after more thought I realized, we were not doing much of anything where she had to sustain focus.  We were doing A LOT of tracking and changing focus, but virtually no sustaining focus, so her results are pretty accurate considering how our efforts have been spent.

Now, starting this week she has 20 minutes of sustained focusing activities, which she does NOT like and makes her head hurt (we do 5 minutes 4 times a day) but she does it without complaint because she can tell she is getting better and is so excited!

We are also going back to her reading book and I am not printing out her stories in large font anymore.  Yesterday was the first day of doing this and she read the story below.  Some exciting changes in this: 

She didn't lose her place

She didnt skip many small words (still skipped 2 or 3 a or the's)

She is simply reading most of the words now instead of sounding everything out

And most exciting of all, we started story writing yesterday and below is her story.  She looked up "said" and "going" in the story above but did everything else 100% on her own.  Her spelling is improving by leaps and bounds.  Prior to this most words had no vowels and lots of missing sounds, but for her to spell BRUSH and UWAY is just amazing.  

All of this improvement is after 8 weeks of VT.  When Alli starts 3rd grade I have 100% faith she is going to be reading at grade level.