Saturday, August 30, 2014

Lamb 2's Vision Therapy Evaluation

Lamb 2 was due for his next evaluation so he had it on Monday, August 25. His smooth eye movements were the best they have ever been.  There were improvements but on his standardized test his scores were the slowest they have ever been, even slower than before he began vision therapy. He was slower but more accurate. Being so slow puzzled and concerned the doctor. Because of this the Dr. is going to tell the vision therapists to make visual processing speed and visual information processing the most important skills for him to work on during vision therapy time.

Lamb 2 did a simple shape with pattern blocks to flip it upside down or sidesways. But when the Dr. offset the shapes Lamb 2 could not do it. This was discouraging to me because I know that both VT and OT have spent a lot of time working on this with Lamb 2. So the second priority for Lamb 2's VT time is working with pattern blocks. 

Lamb 2's vision therapist thinks that Lamb 2 has opened up a whole new world recently to be able to see and process things he has never seen before. She thinks it is taking him time to process what he reads and hear himself say what he reads. She is going to work with him to hopefully speed his reading up. Overall she is pleased with the progress Lamb 2 is making and the effort he puts into therapy.

Since this evaluation did not go as well as we expected, we really do not know how much longer Lamb 2 will be in vision therapy. We scheduled another evaluation in 6 weeks instead of the normal 8 weeks to see if he is making progress as we expect him to. Lamb 2 has gone to VT twice a week every week since January 1 with the exception of two therapy sessions when he was ill. We even planned our vacation around his therapy time. Lamb 2 has faithfully done the exercises required both at home and at OT. We were expecting 9-12 months of VT and hoping it would be closer to the 9 months but it is looking like it will be closer to the 12 months.

We are planning on Lamb 2 having surgery for his large turbinates. This would need to be scheduled after he completes VT so he doesn't get behind in VT while he recovers from surgery. We are planning on 8 weeks of recovery after surgery. Ideally we would like to have him have surgery before the end of the calendar year since we have met our deductible, but we need to wait and see how all this works out.

The evaluation showed us that Lamb 2 is progressing well, but slower than other kids his age and than kids typically do at VT. This is not the fault of Lamb 2 or the therapists as everyone is working hard with Lamb 2 and he is working hard himself. So we'll continue what we have been doing and evaluate again in 6 weeks. His vision therapist expects that once things click in Lamb 2's brain he will take off quickly. The doctor analyzed Lamb 2 to try to figure out what is slowing him down. He also is trying to figure out how to get him back to his scores in April that were good scores for a 7 year old. The next step is to see how to get him up to good scores for an 8 year old.

We were hoping this evaluation would show that Lamb 2 was almost done with therapy to save both time and money at therapy. This evaluation showed us that there is progress, but he is not ready to graduate from VT soon. So we keep plugging along, going to therapy twice a week and trusting that God will work out all the other details for Lamb 2.  I am also reevaluating all my expectations for Lamb 2 in homeschool as he is not ready to do the academic work that I was expecting him to do this fall after 9 months of VT.

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