Let me give you the latest on Elizabeth.
We got her report from the eye doctor who is evaluating her for vision therapy, and may I say, he spent so much time talking to me. I was so pleasantly surprised by the detail of his report.
He said due to her dyspraxia, yes he knew what it was, she tends to see things. Be them pictures, words, computer screens, life as a whole.
Her eyes see it, and quickly take it in, and work from the initial “snapshot”
Her eyes do not take in, slowly, the subtitle details, cues or if we are talking about learning words to read, the syllables and letters of the word. In other words, she doesn’t mentally sound them out.
It is like.
She sees it… Inputs the image… Done.
That is why she won’t read all the choices on a multiple choice test and quickly picks one answer. Or why she replaces words she doesn’t know with other words the BEGIN with the same letter.
Or why she is SO quick to act off of what she sees, sometimes without judgement and then she can make mistakes.
WOW! It all fits.
There was a lot more said but these points just bring out the key things noticed by us.
He told us that the goal of the vision therapy is to have her eyes work better together to then be able to SLOWLY take in information. To train her eyes to be able to go SLOWLY over details.
We set up our first therapy time. Now here is the thing, when Elizabeth is on board for anything, the path is almost effortless. When she wanted braces, she went in so happily, greeted and won over the entire staff and did exactly what they said to do. BUT, when she didn’t want to go to the dentist, earlier in life, she actually had such a difficult time that my poor Dad, her dentist, was almost in tears himself.
Happy to say! Elizabeth wants this so much! She is ready, she said, to see better and have “my eyes not hurt when I do too much.”
So needless to say, we went to the first therapy session effortlessly, she did what was asked, happily and we have been doing the work each day!
She reminds me if I forget. I have to say I will take it! As opposed to the almost dragging her, that we have had to do in the past for therapies that she didn’t want to do.
It is like Occupational Therapy for her eyes and involves moving a patch from one eye to the next while doing some eye tracking movements. That involve rolling marbles for her to watch roll and “capture” with an upside down glass. As well as, tracking light patterns on the ceiling with laser pointers. She is one color and tags mine, that is another.
There are 3 exercises we are doing each day.
I am excited to say we are one month in and actually go for our next appointment next week (2/11/22).
I will be excited to see what they say about her efforts and what is next. I will give the update next month!
I hope everyone has a peaceful month.
Michele Gianetti