Visual Processing Disorder

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> Our Challenging Children (gifted, ADHD, sensitive, defiant)

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amother

Sun, Jan 30 2011, 11:13 pm

My almost 4 year old DS has been diagnosed with this. I've been trying to research exactly what it is, but theres very little information online.

He's not a severe case, since hes actually very good at puzzles, legos, etc, and his visual recognition skills are amazing. He's too young to be reading, but hes been steadily learning all the letters in the English and Hebrew alphabet at the same rate as his classmates in school. His visual memory is pretty good too, since he can remember things he saw a long time ago and can recognize them aftera long time.

But his motor skills are not good. His eye contact is almost non-existant. His social skills are below average. And most of the things I tell him don't even register. (and no, he's not autistic, we had him evaluated for that too. It was my first thought) And he has other sensory issues, which his OT says are just his way of overcompensating for the visual aspect.

I havent started therapy yet, and this is all based on the 2 hour evaluation he did.

So, anyone have any experience with this?

Coke Slurpee

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 12:01 am

I'm sorry I don't know anything about visual processing disorder.

But I was wondering if the Dr. that did the evaluation came highly reccomended becuase most evaluations are conducted for much longer than 2 hours. I'm not doubting the Dr. or the diagnosis I just want you to be aware and make sure that you did use someone thats known to be good.

Raizle

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 12:24 am

I think that might be something one of my kids had.
We were given exercises to do for a period of time and if it's the same thing, it is treatable and can go away after treatment.

who evaluated your child? mine was evaluated by a behavioral optometrist

amother

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 5:10 pm

OP here,

Coke Slurpee wrote:

The test took 2 hours. But then she sat with me for another hour to explain it to me. I guess the fact that she was willing to spend so much time with me on that really sold me. Also, she worked with my little brother years ago and I was studying early education and wanted to see what she was doing so I used to take him to therapy all the time. The woman DEFINITELY knows her stuff. So I'm not really worried about that.

Raizle wrote:

An Occupational therapist evaluated him. But like I said, she's got tons of experience, she's the owner of the practice, and is incredibly detailed about everything she does.

marina

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 7:25 pm

I recommend that you seek a second opinion from someone who typically diagnoses visual disorders, not an OT.

It seems odd that your child would be learning letters and have good visual memory even though he has a visual processing disorder.

Are your son's auditory skills highly developed to compensate for the visual deficit then? Can you use those strengths to help his visual weakness?

amother

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 7:59 pm

Hi
One of my children was also diagnosed with this at approximately the same age as your son. The ot at his schoolalerted us to the possibility of this disorder. Bh it was not a severe case. I took him to Dr. Leonard Press in Fairlawn , NJ. He is a developmental Optometrist. He is a published author and highly regarded in the field. He said my son would benefit from doing the eye exercises for 9 months or so. His evaluation is $400 or so. My insurance reimbursed part of it. Please be aware that many Pediatric Opthamologists do not believe in this disorder at all. Visual memory can be ok and a child can still have this disorder where tracking, scanning and convergence (ability of eyes to work together) can hinder reading progress, ability to track a moving object, like a bus or a ball during a game. It can even affect driving one day. We ended up having the therapy done with Dr. Sarah Lane in ManasquanN NJ. She was trained by Drm Press but works closer to where we live than he does. Also, many developmental optometrists have visual therapists or student interns doing the sessiin with your child. For that kind of money, I wanted my child serviced by the actual Dr, which is what we got by DR lane. Prices vary but its about $125 - $150 pers session. Sessions are 30-45 min, once or twice a week. Also, you must be committed to doing the exercises nightly. My son had a classroom assistant who did it with him daily. After six months, Dr Lane said we could complete the last 3 month segment when he is older. Not sure where you live, but SUNY Optemetric Center in Mahnhattan is good. There is also a Dr Harry Wachs in the Washington , DC area. Also, my son does go to a private ot who is trained in visual processing disorders to encourage maintenance. Also, your son's lack of eye contact may also stem from a sensory issue. Possibly looking at someones face is too stimulating for him visually.

Hatzlacha!

amother

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 8:34 pm

amother wrote:

Wow. Interesting... What's the difference between a visual optometrist and an OT? in terms of treatment? diagnosis?

amother

Mon, Jan 31 2011, 8:47 pm

Previous poster:
Optometrists are trained with a medical background for these issues and probably are most qualified to diagnose. An ot treats the issue from a different angle. They may teach the skills w/o addressing the underlying issue. Not perfectly sure, but I like to seek top treatment so as not to kick myself later. As *4 they say, "hindsite is 20/20 vision!"

Coke Slurpee

Tue, Feb 01 2011, 12:43 pm

Quote:

Quote:

My son has the same thing where his two eyes don't track together. He has difficulty with Hebrew and English reading and also has difficulty with sports. I just didn't know what it was called. Last year we took him to a top pediatric optomitrest, Dr. Margoulis in Illinois. We did about 2 mos of visual therapy and his reading improved greatly. He is struggling now again with the hebrew reading and we are taking him back for a re-eval to see if its a tracking problem now or perhaps something else is preventing him from reading fluently.

dGirl

Mon, Jun 13 2011, 10:28 pm

amother wrote:

OP, I wonder if you could describe the 'behavior' of your son's eyes, when he's looking at an object, or at a person.There's so much related to vision that the OT may not specialize in, and may be sourced in different areas, based on the displayed symptoms.

amother

Wed, Jun 15 2011, 2:51 pm

dGirl wrote:

amother wrote:

OP here,
It's not his vision. I had that checked too and he has perfect 20/20 vision. It's in how his brain processes the information that comes through his eyes. (VISUAL as opposed to VISION)

It's not an eye muscle weakness like Nystagmus either. (I know someone who has that and this is not the case)

It's just things like when I need to make sure he's paying attention to me and I tell him to look at me, he'll turn his head to face me but his eyes will stay focused on something else. (If I didn't know any better I'd say he knows if he looks into my eyes then he knows I mean business and has to do what I say and he doesn't want that). Or sometimes when he's looking at a book his head will swing back and forth fast. At the same time, he can make a 100 piece puzzle by himself and that's all visual...

Another thing is his pre-writing skills are also below average. He can draw a face, but it will be sideways. Almost as if he drew the face and then flipped the picture 90 degrees. And even then, the face is barely recognizable. He can't draw a triangle or a square. He can't even trace a letter or a line (even if he just has to trace OVER a line that's already there) I mean, I would think a child who is 4 years and 3 months old should be able to trace a line...

But he has gotten WAY better in the past few months. I mean, he still has a lot of trouble with certain things, but he's learning to focus his eyes better.

dGirl

Thu, Jun 16 2011, 9:19 pm

I really hope that you find the help you need then, but just wanted to add how fascinating it all is. It really gives on added kavana in saying "pokeach ivrim". There is sooo much that goes into sight before we can actually see and process. Out of everything I learned in my university courses, information about the eye was by far the most breathtaking.

otsrock

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 9:55 am

OTs can refer to developmental optometrists to determine the root cause of a problem, and then many times the optometrist will refer the child back to an OT (who knows about ocularmotor skills!) to work on visual issues. For example, an OT would give a child a scanning task - let's say a sheet of different letters and the OT sees if the child works on it left to right or randomly, and if they miss any letters they are supposed to cross out. An optometrist would probably have a more sophisticated method of checking for scanning issues, but in the end they both work on scanning and the recommended exercises would probably be more functional, like a scanning worksheet which resembles reading more than the optometrist's complicated machinery. Does this make sense? OTs are trained to be more functional so we would want to see where this is impacted the child academically the most and target that.

Mama Bear

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 11:13 am

I spoke to someone at Eye Learn, a center that's dedicated only to VPD and they told me that it cant really be diagnosed before age 6.

amother

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 11:17 am

Mama Bear wrote:

I spoke to someone at Eye Learn, a center that's dedicated only to VPD and they told me that it cant really be diagnosed before age 6.

Whether or not it can be officially "diagnosed" (whatever that means in this case), there's no reason they can't treat it before that point.

I work with kids. Many of them don't have an official diagnosis, but they have symptoms of certain developmental disorders. Whether or not they have the diagnosis, I treat their symptoms.

amother

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 11:19 am

My niece is borderline dyslexic and has a visual disorder. She has been making big strides with Dr Breuer (I believe in Washington Heights). In fact, it's likely that my sister has this as well and it was never diagnosed or treated.

Mama Bear

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 11:39 am

Vision therapy is extremely costly. Why would someone spend so many 1000s of dollars on a big 'maybe'. My 5 1/2 yr old is having trouble keeping his finger in place in the alef bais sefer. one evaluator decided it's a visual processing disorder. As soon as I heard how much vision therapy would cost I nearly fainted. B"H it turned out to only be an OT (attention span) issue.

Anyway I dont know nearly enough about this to really comment.

amother

Thu, Jun 23 2011, 10:06 pm

Mama Bear wrote:

I spoke to someone at Eye Learn, a center that's dedicated only to VPD and they told me that it cant really be diagnosed before age 6.

OP here.

That's because the most obvious symptoms of VPD involve difficulties reading and writing skills, which usually emerge around age 6, which is when parents start to worry about it and take their kids to specialists.

But it doesn't mean you can't diagnose it. DS has a very mild case of it but it was apparent to the OT within minutes. (he was playing with legos and said he was making a house, but was randomly placing pieces, including placing a door piece right behind another piece, basically making the door not work. This is something most kids get instinctively. In DS's case, he just places stuff randomly with no planning bc he has trouble planning something visually)

They say the same thing about diagnosing ADD and ADHD. But just bc it's not as apparent before age 6 doesn't mean it's not there. And it doesn't mean it cannot be treated. Life is just as hard for the child and for the parent before it's actually diagnosed as it is after.

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