Tomorrow will be a busy day around here. I teach in the morning, and when I get home we'll leave immediately for an hour+ long drive to a vision therapy clinic to get a vision evaluation. Why drive so far to get his eyes checked, you ask? It's the only clinic our OT trusts to do the kind of evaluation he needs. Too many local optometrists send kids back to her saying "He's fine; vision is 20/20." And we know his vision is fine -- our question is how well his brain and eyes work together to access and interpret information.
At JoNo's initial OT evaluation, she was having a hard time getting his eyes to track across midline without turning his head to follow the object or sustain a converged gaze without breaking very quickly. If there are problems with his visual perception, it could affect his ability to learn to read (scanning a page from left to right), his depth perception (which could explain why he's so deliberate about taking stairs), and even his ability to run and walk without getting motion sick. Visual tracking is like the motion minimizer on a video camera -- it's what keeps your view of the world from bouncing around like crazy even though your eyes aren't remaining in one position completely. It could be that his entire world is always bouncing like an unsteady video camera.
We should know a bit more tomorrow, and it could mean they'll want to start vision therapy on top of his OT. We'll request a program that would allow us to do most of the work at home and at our OT sessions so we can make those long drives only once every several weeks (6 to 8) rather than every single week.
OT itself has been fun lately -- JoNo got to ride a horse on Monday! The OT has horses and a neat set-up for her therapy kids -- instead of a saddle (which diminishes the amount of the horse's movement that is felt, which doesn't do as much for vestibular processing and muscle development) the kids ride with just a thick blanket over the horse's back and these handles that strap on around the horse's belly. (And a helmet, of course.) We went down the road a block to this great woodsy trail with loads of movement -- and when Josiah got a bit skittish halfway through (he was probably nearing sensory overload from the amount of movement), I got to climb up there with him :) What fun for mom and kid together!
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2 comments:
When they did well-child checks for him as a baby, was he able to track objects? Seems like I remember them testing my boys on that.
So, how did the evaluation go?
I don't remember specifically -- I remember them asking us if we had any concerns about his hearing or vision and at the time we didn't. He can obviously see and hear just fine -- but can his brain use that information to help him with motor planning. I would imagine that they did some basic screening. Our OT told us there is a movement amont optometrists to get infants eyes checked before their first birthday to detect these kinds of problems (which are often beyond the scope of a basic well-child screening). There's a program called INFANSEE that will pay for your baby's first visit to a participating optometrist before s/he turns 1.
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