Vision Therapy

[Kendra AU]

Thanks Sheryl. He knows how to read, I would say he was a struggling reader, but like you, we forked out for a rather pricy reading programme & he lept forward hugely. He's simply not at grade level & it's because of blurriness & word jumping. There's a lot of other stuff going on, but if my endeavors turn nothing else up, I will most certainly come back & look into this!

[Sally in Oz]

. Do you know if it's covered under Medicare? It doesn't matter, but I am curious. We once sought out Allergy testing for one of the boys & our Dr told us that because it was covered, but he wasn't sure if he had anyone in Tassie who could do it, that MC would pay to sent a parent & child to Melbourne. I asked him if the whole family could be tested.

I don't know for sure, but my guess is probably not. My understanding is that if you are on a health care card (or equivalent) then you can get basic eye tests and basic glasses included under Medicare. If you do not fall into that category then you either pay yourself or it is covered under private health insurance extras. Optometrists are not viewed as doctors and therefore are not automatically covered like other 'specialists'

Also, thought I would add that I used coloured lenses when I was in Primary School. I only have vague memories of it, but I think it was because I was getting so many headaches... I stopped in high school, probably because it was embarrassing, but I don't have a problem with my eyes and/or headaches at all now. Not sure if that meant I grew out of it, or perhaps I didn't need it in the first place. It was suggested to my parents by my music teacher who found them to be really useful.

[Amy Joy]

I have a friend with irlen lenses. Ironically he's from NZ. His lenses are yellow. A quick way to see if these might help at all is putting colored cellophane over the page he is reading and see if it stops the words from jumping around. you will probably need to try several different colours (yellow, red, green, blue) to see what works best for him.
HTH

[Kendra AU]

Thanks Sally. I didn't figure a specialist would be either, all though I've been told to try and go through THEAC to get help. The theory being that if a child was in PS he might have specific therapies available to him, if a home educator had those available for him I'd need to go through the Home Ed council. Our is only open on Tuesdays & Thursdays though so I've not been able to get in touch yet. Thus far all the eye visits we've had have been covered with Medicare, I keep waiting to get a call or letter from them to ask why our child is being seen so much though.

Amy, now that's a clever idea with the cellophane. He complains that he can't focus as well with the white background which made me wonder how I could darken the book. Hmm, not exactly sure where I'd acquire the stuff though.

I actually think there's a lot going on with him.. when we read together I keep track of his place with a bookmark being under the row we are reading, if I move that too soon there's too many words jumping around at him. We read a long chapter in his book together yesterday afternoon & he said that the word jumping thing only happened to him once but it felt like the words had lept off the page & were going in a circle around his head. He's never complained of that much movement before.

[Sally in Oz]

Amy, now that's a clever idea with the cellophane. He complains that he can't focus as well with the white background which made me wonder how I could darken the book. Hmm, not exactly sure where I'd acquire the stuff though.
.

Not sure if it is still readily available as things have moved to powerpoint slides, but when I needed to have coloured backgrounds to stop the glare from the white, we bought the plastic sheets that are used on overhead projectors. They came in a whole rainbow assortment of colours. This would work better than cellophane as they are study and crease-free

[Katherine in CA]

My ds is now undergoing vision training, just as his sister did 12 years before him!

Have you seen these websites?

http://www.visionandlearning.org/

http://pavevision.org/

http://www.covd.org/

Here's one of two computer programs that we had to purchase to use at home, along with the bimonthly office visits and the prescribed daily at-home assignments:

http://www.visiontherapysolutions.net/hts.php

Praying, Kendra, that you'll be led to the right solutions for your son!