ALLI'S VISION - A ONE YEAR LATER UPDATE

Does anyone remember what Alli's writing and spelling looked like one year ago?  Below is a reminder...and just for scale, each letter below is about 1.5 inches high...(above, the spaces are about 1/4 of an inch!!)

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ALLI'S VISION THERAPY STORY

ALLI'S VISION THERAPY STORY

I have seen such great support since I shared Alli's story. Thank you 

to everyone! Now, I have a favor to ask for those of you who want 

to help me. I have created a new blog that has all of Alli's story in 

ONE LOCATION. I would LOVE it if you would SHARE this blog 

everywhere and email me any links you would like me to add under 

the RESOURCES page. Thank you so much!!

THE AMAZING NEW ALLI

When we started Alli's school this year I started just as we had ended.   I read her a story, we draw a picture, I write a sentence and she copies it.  

Well, now that Alli is the AMAZING ALLI, she told me yesterday, "Can I write a sentence myself?  I want to write it myself without any help!"  And she did.  She did ask me to help her with anything she spelled wrong afterward...that is my writing at the bottom.

Then, later that day we did her math lesson and she had to complete a worksheet with 30 addition problems on it.  She finished and said, "That was FUN!"

I hope one day I can stop crying for happiness over these simply things, but right now it is like I am living in some magical world.  

I am so grateful to all that shared Alli's story.  The Article HERE has over 192 likes...the most "likes" of any article on their site in the last year.  My blogs have had over 800 hits in the last 3 days. 

 I have now joined Facebook.  I have a new purpose in life now; to spread the word about the miracle of VISION THERAPY.  

CAN WE GO ON AN ADVENTURE, PLEASE?

Alli says to me, "I cant even remember the last time we went on a hike, can we go PLEASE!!"  How awesome is that?  So Sunday afternoon, Shane is watching football with my dad and the girls and I (and Hazel) head off to the river.  I brought a BOOK to read.   The girls played at the river for 3 hours and I read a BOOK!   It still feels like a dream that we are done with Vision Therapy and we have our old carefree lives back. 

Part of me thinks it would have been better to have gone slower and not been so CRAZY these last 5 months - doing VT at 3 times the rate we needed to.  At the same time, I am so happy we are done and that Alli and I are able to actually ENJOY our reading and writing lessons now.   But,  I am having to deal with a lot of repressed emotions about what my inner life has been like for the last 2 years.

Last Thursday I went to my favorite yoga class for the first time since finding out Alli's RESULTS.  The first 5 - 10 minutes is always a calm, centering time.  Close your eyes, look inward, and create a mantra to focus on during the hour.  Within 60 seconds I was crying.  I could not stop.  

My mind during these first 10 minutes of yoga, for the last 2 years, was ALWAYS focused on WHAT I needed to be doing to help Alli more, HOW was I going to get her to read, WHY was everything so hard for her.  

Then after we began Vision Therapy I often spent these first 10 minutes wondering.....Would it be worth all the MONEY? Would it be worth all this TIME?  WHAT IF IT DIDNT CHANGE ANYTHING??? 

Thursday, however, I did not have to worry anymore.  I could not hold back my tears and I had to get up and leave the room.  After a good strong cry in the bathroom, I returned to class and was fine until the last 10 minutes....again, a time where my mind wanders.  I started thinking back to earlier in the day when Alli was working on a spelling activity and she wrote all 18 words correctly. Once again, my tears could not be held back.

I guess I have not dealt with how emotional this has been for me.  I need more adventures like today.  Nature works wonders!!

Starting 1st and 3rd Grade - A NEW BEGINNING

Today is our OFFICIAL first day of school.  I have been so excited to see how the year goes now that many burdens have been lifted for Alli and I.  

Jill is starting 1st grade, and she loved doing LOTS of school today. She already knows the numbers to 10 and most of her letters (since she has sat next us for the last 2 years as I was TRYING to teach Alli.) So today she learned about the days of the week, using a calendar and her first alphabet story - about KQPW - King, Queen, Prince and the Wise Woman.  These girls LOVE being told stories!!

 Below is a story Jill wrote on her own.  We sounded it out together, and she spelled it all on her own (except ph for /f/ and she didnt know what V was).  I never knew that learning should be fun and relatively easy.  Jill's 1st grade year will be MUCH different for us.

(Alli was being the teacher and she wrote STORE (Story) and Setins(Sentence)  - she seems to be lacking that blended /n/ sound in words (like thak for thank).

Alli is going to learn about the Old Testament for 3rd grade so today's story was about God and the angel Lucifer. 

 You cannot really see in the picture above, but we wrote 3 sentences with 15 words.   To contrast this I took a picture of our LAST story from 2nd grade about Elizabeth.

Some comments:  

6 MONTHS AGO (on the left) - It took her 10 minutes to write both sentences.   The sentences take up the entire page.  She could not read this sentence herself.

TODAY (on the right) - All three sentences took her 3 minutes to copy down, her writing is TINY and she read me the sentence without help. 

This is going to be a GREAT school year.

RESULTS 6 MONTHS LATER AND A NEW LIFE

Here is a summary of the changes in the last six months with a list of the results from her dyslexia screening on Friday:

SUMMARY

What is life like now that we do not do Vision Therapy for 90 minutes a day?  I cannot even describe the happiness.  I am trying to type this post without crying but I just cant.  Alli and I both have a new life.  Actually, Jillbug too. 

For me, I had worked so hard day and night organizing the activities, keeping everything straight, motivating Alli to keep working hard.....I never had a moment without some sort of weight on my shoulders.  

If we wanted to spend the day somewhere we had to get everything done BEFORE we could go.  If I needed a break and wanted to spend the day out doing things for myself, we had to get everything done BEFORE I could go, so I actually never took a day to myself.  All day, every day there was always something that needed done.  Even our summer trips, Lake Siskiyou for 4 days Lakes Basin for 10 days and Torrance for 5 days, our Vision Therapy was always in the back of my mind and needing to be done.  

 It was worth it, BELIEVE ME, it was worth it.  But now that it is over, I actually can feel the burden I was under.  Friday, our last day, was the best day of my entire life as a mother.  It is like a second chance at life for her as a new person who can see the world in a way she NEVER would have, had it not been for all her hard work.  I feel so proud to have played such a big roll in changing the direction of her life forever.

Most exciting to me is that now, the girls for the first time EVER, were able to do an activity besides music.   Now that learning to read is not such an huge part of my life as their mom and teacher (Jill can already read those first 5 stories of that first book Alli read)
I let them pick one activity to do besides music. Guess what, they BOTH wanted gymnastics and they BOTH wanted to take the class together - these girls are inseparable!!  Friday was their first class. They LOVED it and want to go everyday.  So starts the new chapter in our lives.....

Then and Now

THAT WAS THEN

Alli wrote this story back in April before she started Vision Therapy.  At the bottom I translate it and note some of the common problems Alli had before VT.

This is what she wrote with translation in the parenthesis:
NOTICE - missing sounds, incorrect use of vowels, upside down/backwards letters, use of capital and lower case
WOS  (ONCE)  THAR (THERE)  WEZ  (WAS)  A   RABO  (RAINBOW)  
 IT    DID    NOT    NO    (KNOW)     HAM    (HOW)    MINE   (MANY)
COL RZ    (COLORS)   UR  (ARE)    IN     HIZ       (HIS)  RADO   (RAINBOW)



After a few weeks of therapy she wrote the story below.  For some of her auditory issues we had been working out of a book titled, "Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties".  An activity would be as follows:  Alli, say "SPIDER"  - now say it again but dont say /p/.  In the story below you can see she has started to HEAR sounds so she spelled QUIETLY   ---    C  Y   I   LE  (phonetically correct if C is just /k/ and  Y is said "Y")   She still has backward letters and capital and lowercase mixed in, but small improvements were made.

It says:  "Ring ring, I woke up.  I went to see Hazel.  Quietly I woke up Hazel."

The picture below Alli drew in June.  It shows improvements such as being able to spell sight words like "you" and spell correct phonetically like "hav".  She still misses the /n/ sound in thank, but now she is mostly using lower case.

 "You have the most patience, thank you."

Alli drew this after an ESPECIALLY difficult day.  She drew me at the table working with her and then in the bottom corner consoling Jill (who is crying).  As I have said before, this has been hard, if not harder, on Jill.  I am so glad Alli considered me "patient".  I did not always keep my cool!!

THIS IS NOW.....

SEE YOU IN THE MORNING

There are so many improvements it is unreal.  She can spell words like good and morning.  To see her spell MORNING and not miss any of the sounds is just incredible.  I guess I need to show her how to spell MOMMY!!

Alli and I have 3 more days of VT every day.  (Then we taper to 3 days a week and only 20 - 30 minutes, not 90 minutes like we have been doing daily).  We are so excited. 

This coming Friday, Alli's final appointment, Dr. Griffith is going to administer a different dyslexia test to see how things have changed for Alli in that regard.  Then Alli will be seen again in one month and then three months and then just annually. 

The improvements Alli has made with her eyes should not regress.  Now that she knows how to use her eyes it should stay that way forever, but the check ups are just to be sure nothing has been lost.

Alli was retested in reading and math at school last Friday and  scored higher on her READING than she did on math.  I dont have her placement yet, but nothing came up as a red flag, AND more importantly, she could READ the test herself AND for an hour and a half she worked without getting tired.  She is a new person and on a different path for LIFE!!!  ALLI YOU ROCK!!!!

THREE MORE DAYS!!!!


Updated 10/22 - I wanted to include a picture of what Alli is doing 2 months post Vision Therapy.  Here is a link to the post Alli's Journal

Updated 8/9/2014: I notice that I have not linked the one year update so I wanted to include that:
ONE YEAR LATER

The LIGHT at the end....

When Alli was coloring this she said, "You know, everything I see is clear now, I can even color better!"

What an amazing kid, she worked so hard all summer long, she never complained about having to get out of the pool to do her therapy, she never complained when Jill got to go on special trips with Shane but she couldn't go because we had therapy left to do. 

 Alli and I have worked so hard and so consistently that her therapy is coming to an end, ALREADY!!  When we started on this journey I was hoping that we could finish it in 6 months.  Her last appointment is scheduled for August 30th and that will be 20 weeks, 4.5 months (120+ hours).

Current story she can read to me

She will start third grade completely caught up (actually, she is beyond where she needs to be!).  I think our school days are going to be way different than before.  Prior to Vision Therapy Alli would start yawning and have red, teary eyes after 15 minutes.  Now, we consistently work for 45 minutes at a time and she is never tired at the end.  What a life changing MIRACLE this has been for her.

She chooses on her own time to write these little stories.  Although her spelling is still mostly phonetic, she is LIGHT YEARS past where she was!

Thank you so much to everyone for all the amazing support you have shown to Alli, Jill, Shane and I.  This has been a difficult journey, but made so much easier by having so many out there to support us.  It has meant so much to me especially, I can be so hard on myself, so THANK YOU!!!

Shane goes back to work on Monday.  (BOOHOO!!!)  Our routine days will start up again.  Maybe I will actually get our Spring Break trip to Colorado posted on the blog!!  Only 4.5 months late.....I wonder why?

Alli's current coloring project.  She says, "I could not have colored this before my eyes were fixed. I can see all the little lines now."

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.

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.

Vision Therapy Week 1

So our first week of therapy is completed and we both have seen the improvements.  Dr. Griffith also noticed her improvements since the last time Alli did the activities in the office.   Dr Griffith says that we are lucky to be homeschooling and be able to focus so completely on these exercises.  Alli likes our math games and Life of Fred books so we still use those and she loves the reading book we use "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" so we are continuing those, but everything else is on hold for now.  Vision Therapy is hard work for her and I both, I am grateful we have the flexibility to do what is best for Alli.


Doing these activities is very draining for her and makes her sleepy, head hurt, eyes hurt, dizzy, etc....but she has told me she wants to see like everybody else so she works EXTREMELY hard and is very proud of herself.  

She told me, "I always wondered what this looks like to other people" pointing at a paragraph in a book I was reading her.


The activity that made Alli shake and cry was VASTLY improved in one week.  Alli has LOTS of trouble using her right eye alone on all of the activities, but that activity in particular was very troubling for her.  The first time she was able to read out 17 pairs of letters.  By the end of the week she could read 26 pairs, nearly double!!

Another activity that works on her tracking ability, she could barely get to the 2nd column letters on the first day, but by the end she was getting almost through the 3rd column.  

 By the end of the week Alli was pretty tired of the same activities so it is nice to change things up a bit.  The picture above is a Bilateral Motor Coordination activity that is helped to make children aware of direction which is a cause of letter and number reversals.  

Thank you everyone for the emails and comments and encouragement.  This  WILL not be easy, but  I feel like a new chapter has started in Alli's life that will send her in the OPPOSITE direction of where she was heading.  

"Learning disabled, special education, resource, slow, lazy, unmotivated....." all the labels she would have gotten had she been in school.  I wonder how many other children are mislabeled?

I have done extensive research in the last 2 weeks and there are two sides to the story, as always!  So various professions - for example pediatricians and opthamologists will say this is a "made up problem" or a "learning disability that is not correctable" and vision therapy wont help.  I have decided to believe in this therapy - I think the results will speak for themselves. 

I spoke to one mother (Shane's cousin's wife) who said, "Do you want me to tell you how wonderfully life changing it will be or how INCREDIBLY hard it is going to be, cuz both are true!"  She also said - It is the one thing in life that is TOO good to be true, but it actually is true.

In a few months I will probably have a much stronger opinion in one direction or another - I sure hope it is that vision therapy is changing our lives for the better)


Anyone who thinks maybe YOUR child (or YOU - Shane is getting tested in May) might have some vision problems, I list a few resources I have found to be IMMENSELY helpful and encouraging:
Websites to research:

SUCCESS STORIES:  HERE, and HERE and HERE (facebook page - VISION THERAPY CHANGED MY LIFE) and HERE (update 9/12/2013 now Alli is on here!!!  YAY)!!

Regarding dyslexia and vision connection - this site has an entire story but this is a good start.

More of dyslexia and vision

Symptoms of a vision problem

VERY THOROUGH QUESTIONNAIRE INCLUDING EVALUATION FOR PHYSICAL, READING, COORDINATION, SPORTS, ATTENTION, BEHAVIOR  (Alli scored 184 - an evaluation is recommended at 31...)

A video to watch


Thank you to everyone for your support!  We appreciate it a lot!!

Vision Therapy Day 1

 Alli and I have done about 20 minutes of her therapy today and most of it went ok, but she does NOT like the eye patch. One eye (I am pretty sure her left) does much more work, so for all her activities she has to wear a patch and do the activity with just one eye at a time to strengthen them separately before trying to get them to work together.

 One of the exercises is to use 2 different powered lenses and then read a page full of pairs of letter (the picture above and the lenses are below) 

So she reads 2 letters with one lens (power +2)  in front of that eye then i switch to the other lens (power -4) and she reads the next pair of letters, over and over for 2.5 minutes.  So she is continually having to refocus her eyes.  With her left eye this was challenging but she could do 22 pairs of letters in 2.5 minutes. Then I switched to her right eye (patching the left eye) and  she said, "But how am I supposed to do this when there are two lines of everything"  I asked her to explain and she said, "all the letters have two of them, like this kn says kn right next to it, like there are 2."  This just breaks my heart, no wonder she has not learned to read yet.

So I told her to just do her best and within one minute she is very slowly doing the pairs and she is shaking, her eye is turning red and tears are coming out of it.  But she didnt stop, she just kept reading the pairs of letters.  She was able to do 15 of them, and when the timer went off she pulled the patch off and burst into tears.  

I just held her and cried with her.  This is going to be so hard.  Keep us in your thoughts.

Vision Therapy

As most of you know, Alli has not had her "Ah-Ha" moment with reading.  While she LOVES being read to (for hours at a time!!!) she does not show a matched interest in learning to read.  A year ago we got her glasses for up close and it seemed to help, but still, my "mommy-gut-feeling" that something else was amiss, just would not go away.  

What I see as her teacher is a very bright girl who is floundering between what she KNOWS in her head and what she is able to DO on paper.  For example, she can tell me, verbally,  that 6 times 2 is 12, but that same problem on a piece of paper....

6 X 2 = 

and she will stare blankly at it unless I read it to her.  So, even though all the eye doctors said she can see fine now, I took her to a doctor who specializes in vision processing problems.  Guess what she found:

OCULAR MOTILITY (Eye Movement Skills): Below normal  

Poor eye movements may account for loss of place when reading. Eye movement skills are also necessary for copying from the board or book, and for searching for specific information on a page. Inefficient eye movements can make homework and other tasks take longer than they should.

• The ability to track a moving target was moderately inaccurate and inefficient for her age and accompanied by frequent loss of fixation.  

ACCOMMODATIVE SKILLS (Focusing): Results below normal

Allison’s ability to focus clearly on near objects was below normal. Accommodative facility, the ability to make rapid and accurate changes in focus for different distances, was also below normal in the right eye and in the left eye. When tested with both eyes open, Allison could not use both eyes together, she suppressed an eye. Accuracy of focusing was decreased: When looking at a close object, Allison's focus lagged behind the object of interest.  when forced to increase her focus as evaluated in “accommodative skills” she is unable to use her eyes well together.

VISION DEVELOPMENT AND PERCEPTION: Mixed

Performance was mixed. Responses for questions in two categories (related to telling left and right on someone facing you) expected for 7 year-olds were incorrect. However, Allison correctly answered questions in a category for 11 year-olds.

• Overall, Allison has strong visual perceptual skills (63^rd percentile overall). She demonstrated particular strengths in visual discrimination (84th percentile), visual memory (63rd percentile), spatial relationships (91st percentile), sequential memory (95th percentile), figure ground (63rd percentile)

She was below average, but within one standard deviation in visual closure (37th percentile). 

• Visual closure - fill in missing pieces of images with the mind’s eye.

 Form constancy was a relative weakness (2^nd percentile)

•  form constancy – recognize a figure when it changes size or is in a different position

This is just a summary of the most stand out items.  

HERE is a link to her entire testing report.

What it means for us is that Alli starts vision therapy on Thursday.  Once a week for probably 12 weeks solid, until we leave for summer vacation.  We have to do exercises at home daily.  It is possible that she is going to start having headaches and visual discomfort as she learns to use her eyes in a new way.  

As I type this Shane is outside playing a ball game with the girls. Apparently,  Alli has never been able to catch a ball because she cant keep it in focus as it moves towards her.   The visual skills Alli will develop during vision therapy, the ability to track a moving object with her eyes, focusing, and visual motor integration skills will also help her learn to catch a ball and feel more confident playing sports with her peers.   I am so excited to see how Alli's therapy changes her life.  My main concern was that she could not read, but now I am seeing that improving her visual skills can change her whole life.  When can we start!!! 

Alli writes her FIRST story

 Alli has been working REALLY hard on learning to read.  NOTHING about reading is easy for her.  It was a year ago this month that we found out she was extremely far sighted and couldnt see letters smaller than two inches tall.  She has improved by leaps and bounds, but still is not reading much. 

Side note:  She is being tested this Thursday for a Visual Information Processing problem.....At her eye exam last Friday the 
dr. noticed that she had trouble "tracking" which means that her eyes cannot stay focused when they have to TRACK something like a ball or a sentence....which could be why she cant catch a ball and cant yet read. 

Anyway, I have told her numerous times that since she knows her letter sounds, she can also try to write stories or notes if she wants, but she never does.  One time she came and asked me how to spell babies.  She said, "I spelled it wrong, I wrote BABS"  I said "THAT IS GREAT!!!  That is exactly how it sounds!!"  But, that was the one and only time she has ever tried.

So imagine my surprise this last Thursday, the girls were at the gym's kid center while Shane and I went to yoga, and when we picked them up Alli told us she wrote us a story.  Below is her book (I translate below...)

"The mountain side very far away.  It got closer and closer and closer.

"Soon they are at the top of the top of the mountain.  It looked beautiful."

 I am a proud mama!!  I am so excited that she finally tried to write something and did such a great job!  Now, lets hope we find out some more information on Thursday.

HAPPY HAPPY DAY!!!!

The day has arrived that I NEVER thought would come.  Alli is starting to read!!! 

Now, when i say NEVER that sounds like an exaggeration, but believe me when I say that I really did have doubts about this event ever happening.  Our progression to this day has been somewhat long and painful.  I realized early on that Alli did NOT care about learning. Even as young as 2, I could sit and read books to her for hours, but if i ever said, "Alli, can you point to the cat?"  she would turn off completely and tell me to just read to her. If I ever had the audacity to ask her if she knew a letter or sound she would get really angry.    

This was one of the main reasons I chose a Waldorf school for her when she started kindergarten and the MAIN reason I decided to homeschool her after that.  Fast forward to April of first grade and Alli and I are doing math....we have a 100's chart in front of us and 

I say "85" 

 she says "8 - 5"  

I say, "yep, can you point to it?"

She stares BLANKLY at the chart

Then.....

Jill points to the number

Three days later, Alli and I are at the eye doctor.  The assistant hands Alli a piece of paper with different sized paragraphs and asks Alli to point to the place on this sheet where she can see words.  Alli says, "I cant see any words."  The letters at the bottom of the chart were  HUGE!!!  I was heartbroken for my little girl.  All this time we had spent sitting on the couch reading, no wonder she didn't care about the tiny details, she couldn't see them.

This year, for 2nd grade, she has worn glasses for all school related activities plus I have her wear them for anytime I read to her.  Although we worked on letter sounds and some sight words, she just was not GETTING it. 

(It is important to remember that the method I am using is a year behind California, so Alli is basically working on first grade topics) 

 I would say, "What word starts like LAMB" and she would say SHEEP.  Or..."Let's sound this out....SSSSSSAAAAAAATTTTTT and she would look at me like i was an alien, and Jill would say SAT!!!  I dont regret homeschooling at all, but this is SO much pressure on me, or actually, i am probably putting too much pressure on myself.  

Now, we are in week 16 of school.  I decided to bring this book home from our homeschool center just to SEE if Alli would try to read.  She does not like any Level 1 readers I try and get her to read....but this book was a huge hit for her.  She already knew about 50 words and was so excited because we sat down and she read the first 5 stories in the book by herself!!  

The minute Shane got home she wanted to read to him, then she called my parents and went over there and read to them, then she Skype'd Shane's parents so they could see....

We went on a trip to Clio this weekend and I brought the book just in case she wanted to read some more.  Well, this morning Shane and I wake up and hear Alli say to Jill, "Do you want me to read you a story?"

Shane and I snuggled in bed listening to Alli reading a book to Jill.  

Amazing!!