Letters reversed. Horrible handwriting. Words reversed. A frustrated boy who wants so desperately to read and write like mom and dad. (So much so that he pretends just for fun.) But when it comes down to reading to me he gets so mad. Then he mentions the words keep moving on the page. They were floating. My brain jumped back years earlier to a seminar I sat in by Dianne Craft. And I remembered her talking about floating words. I quickly googled this and started searching and reading trying to find out if there's something I can do to help him. I spoke to his teacher and she mentioned that I should get him evaluated for visual processing disorder. I originally thought dyslexia. The specialist at the boys school referred us to a developmental optomologiest. After calling around and doing a little research on my own I soon realized that treatment for this kind of eye problem ranges in the thousands, like $5000.Now I'm gonna jump on my soap box for a minute....I promise to come off in about 2.
What is a mom supposed to do that so desperately wants to help her son? Wants to help him so that he has the best learning environment. And if you know your son or daughter is having a problem and there is a solution wouldn't you want to do whatever you can to help them? But why oh why does it have to be SO EXPENSIVE!!! Really? I know it doesn't cost the doctor or therapist a lot of out of pocket expenses to offer this kind of therapy. And insurance doesn't cover it either. Which is another soap box I could skip over to. The testing alone costs $650 and that doesn't include anything but the diagnosis. Lucky for us our vision insurance covers the first appointment (1 of 4 appts to diagnose him.) The doctor right away knew there was a problem. After several tests he said Boston has Convergence Insufficiency. Which means his eyes don't track together and have a hard time focusing. This is why the words float, and most likely he sees double a lot of times, which is why he does so many reversals. From here they want $650 to do the final 3 appts to figure out what therapy will work best for him.
Right now we are on hold. I'm trying to figure out if there is anything else we can do to help him before spending thousands. I'm working on getting him some colored overlays to put over what he's reading. This helps a lot of kids. We are starting to incorporate Brain Integration Therapy back into our daily life.
I'll keep you posted as to what helps over here and hopefully we can help other families facing similar problems.
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