Reading with vision challenges....

[PGTlatte]

Has anyone here had a struggle with homeschooling that had to do with vision problems ?

Last June, I took our DS1 for his state-required "kindergarten" eye exam. I was not expecting there to be any problems because he had always read the eye chart well at his checkups. It turned out he was worse than 20/400 in his right eye. The doctor had never had him cover one eye while reading the chart.

Since then he has gotten glasses, and we have been patching his good eye 4 hours a day to make the lazy one work.

I do most of his school work without the patch, because I don't want to overwork him. When he is patching I just encourage doing stuff for fun. I know it is very hard for him when his good eye is patched. But I had thought that when the patch wasn't on, he didn't have any problems, because that is what the original optometrist said.

His academic progress has been really grueling, just painfully slow. I am trying to keep him on grade level (first grade) with reading, writing, and math. He is best at math and seems to enjoy it. Reading and writing are just so slow, so hard...it has been like climbing a mountain with our fingernails. The effort leaves both of us exhausted.

I admit I have had thoughts that he is just not trying, or that he is not willing to learn from me. I have thought of trying Sylvan or another type of tutoring center. Anything to get him reading. He is learning spelling words well, but does not seem to be making progress at reading sentences.

Late last year we decided that once the new insurance year started (we didn't have vision coverage for our kids last year) we would start his eye care fresh with a pediatric optometrist instead of taking him back to mine after the recommended six month wait (he just had a checkup in October but we didn't want to wait). This morning he had an appointment with a pediatric optometrist at a practice that incorporates vision therapy. The pedi opt uncovered so much more than the regular optometrist....that his eyes only work together somewhat, not "well" as we had been told before; and that the center of the field of vision in his right eye is much fuzzier than the edges, and probably always will be, and he may struggle with losing his place in a sentence unless he has enlarged print.

I was given a checklist of symptoms that go along with issues that vision therapy may help. I sat down with the checklist and he has about 1/3 of the symptoms ! I feel bad now for getting so frustrated with his lack of progress in reading and writing, realizing now that his reluctance to read at all and avoiding it and tiring of it quickly are happening because his eyes are not cooperating with him. We are starting vision therapy ASAP whether our insurance waiver comes through or not. I am really hopeful that it will help him, and that reading will become easier for him. I love to read and can only imagine how frustrating it would be if my eyes wouldn't behave.

For now I will stick with him reading only very large print for short periods of time. I will reduce the amount I am asking him to read and use our scanner/printer to increase the print size of his work. Today I blew his math problems up to a huge size and only gave him two and he was much happier. I will have to set my worries about grade level reading aside while we work on his vision. I will go for quality, not quantity, and concentrate on making it as easy for him as possible, and setting him up to feel successful.

If anyone has passed over a similar hurdle with something that was an obstacle to your child's academic progress, I would love to hear some stories of overcoming...

Thanks !

[LauraLoo]

Yes! My ds did vision therapy for roughly 8 months -- and what a HUGE difference it made with his reading, among other things. His vision issues went undiagnosed (tracking, fixation, convergency -- but he did have perfect 20/20 vision!) until approximately this time last year. It is amazing how quickly vision therapy can turn things around. Our insurance also didn't cover a dime for VT, and even though it was expensive, VT was WELL worth it.

[SagMom]

Originally Posted by llp34

Has anyone here had a struggle with homeschooling that had to do with vision problems ?

Two of my kids have had vision issues. Between them, we've dealt with patching, surgery, vision therapy, and eye glasses. Ime, KNOWING what you're dealing with is a huge piece of it. Now that you have a doctor who understands what your dc is going through, you'll find a world of information, therapy and accomodations and I'm betting things will get easier for all of you.

Have you seen this site: http://www.visiontherapy.org/

These ideas are all good:

For now I will stick with him reading only very large print for short periods of time. I will reduce the amount I am asking him to read and use our scanner/printer to increase the print size of his work. Today I blew his math problems up to a huge size and only gave him two and he was much happier.

You might also find that a ruler or simply a blank piece of paper that he can use to mark his place while reading will help. (So that he's only seeing one line at a time.) Your vision therapist will likely have other ideas to offer that will make things easier for your dc.

I will have to set my worries about grade level reading aside while we work on his vision.

REALLY, REALLY important, imo. Vision therapy can be very hard work at times. Forget reading level -- it would be like worrying about how high your child can jump while his leg is in a cast--let his vision get corrected and his eyes learn to work together and THEN reading will come. I'd read TO him as much as possible, so he sees the joy in the written word.

Every child is different, of course, but fwiw, both of my kids with vision issues read well and my child with the most extensive eye problems is the most voracious reader I know.

[mykdsmomy]

My son is visually impaired so I can empathize with you somewhat. He doesn't do vision therapy but he has a Vision Impairment teacher that works with him 2x a week.
Do you have an actual dx for your son? Have you seen an opthamologist?

The things we do for our son are magnifiers/brailler (but it doesn't sound like your son is that impaired?), a CCTV (which has been really helpful). We also do his math problems on a large whiteboard instead of paper.

I agree with the above poster about not worrying so much about his reading right now. Read to him a lot, get him some books on CD for him to listen to. He will get there...but right now he's learning to deal with his vision loss while trying to keep up with his academics. It can be overwhelming for both of you.

(((hugs)))

[solinox]

I've got several blind and impaired children myself. One thing I would say is NOT to allow his grade level to slip because of this. Most of his schoolwork should be read aloud by you at this age anyway. Continue to expose him to the written word through games and large print toys. Read aloud to him from literature; my kids at this age love Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis, and my 7-year-old is in love with Shakespeare now after reading a few "for kids" versions of his plays. You won't be eligible for Library of Congress audiobooks if his vision is 100% in the better eye, but you'd be surprised how much is available online, if you don't want to read it all yourself.

It is difficult to read if the eyes are not working together. Caitlin's eyes have never worked together, and she is only corrected to about 20/50-20/70 (if she gets any worse, she'll be my third legally blind child). Learning to read was a big struggle for her. I think what happened is that she learned to focus on only one eye at a time. I don't think she has a dominant eye, but she doesn't have stereo vision because she only uses one at a time. She did do better with larger print for a while, but now she reads anything. She also tends to like to look under/over her glasses. Anyway, once she "unlocked" the written word, she caught up quickly.

Tamara only recently lost vision in one eye. She's down to 20/100 corrected in her right eye. She has complained of headaches and nausea when trying to read, because of the disparate images in each eye. We've been encouraging her to focus on her left eye only, and ignore the right, and she's been getting a little better, although she still can't read in the car.

(Note that with our children's condition, their eyes will never work together because they don't produce the same image anymore, which is why we encourage what might be a "lazy eye" approach in other kids. For them it's a necessity.)

To give you some encouragement, even my sighted kids have fought me on reading and writing, and I despair of my boys EVER having nice handwriting. Both the triplets and Liam had me in tears at least once a week because I thought I was failing at teaching reading. So it's partly the age/stage, too, not just the vision. You just have to keep pushing until it clicks, then they'll take over and start reading on their own.

His vision problems shouldn't slow down his math skills at all. Math at this age is mostly done with manipulatives anyway. Get unit blocks, pattern blocks, and an abacus, and just start teaching him his basic number facts and shapes. Get a large calendar and use it to teach dates and days of the week. He doesn't have to see anything to learn this stuff!

You can do it, don't give up! And, definitely push for a diagnosis, so you know where you stand. I always hated not knowing; knowing is better, even though the final diagnosis was a shock.

[PGTlatte]

Thank you all. His diagnosis is "refractive amblyopia". He appears to be getting about 20/50 with the lazy eye while the good one is patched now, so this is a huge improvement from where he started..at first the glasses didn't seem to be helping him at all, and now he has actually received a lower lens prescription for the lazy eye. So it seems that the patching is really helping. The new information we got on Monday is that they don't work together (we had been previously told they did) and that the middle of the vision field in the lazy eye is much more blurry than the outside edges, and may always be.

I have made some changes to how we are doing school. I am re-typing his math problems in Word and using a very large font and only giving him two problems a day (he enjoys written computation and does well with it so I want to keep giving it to him). We have done some English worksheets that do not have really large or dark font, and so I am doing most of the reading from those and having him give me answers verbally. The reading comprehension sheets he is working from do have pretty large and dark print and he seems to do fine with those - they are short and he can make it through those without tiring - then I am reading the questions and he is answering verbally. The books I am reading to him and he follows along and look at the pictures. The font in most of the books is large enough that he can at least follow along, and this is not as tiring as doing the reading himself. His interest holds longer this way too.

I've scheduled his first vision therapy appointment. I'm looking forward to helping him and hopefully things getting easier for him.