Child not learning? ---look for the reasons------

[suelanda]

Children who are frustrated in school will often act out and more often than not, they are put in "special" situations that make them stick out in the group and they become the butt of jokes and teasing. They become labled and those lables are hard to shake. ADD, ADHD, Dyslexic and so on.
Two of my granchildren are home schooled. The younger is a boy who was having great difficulty learning to read, spell and all that written language that goes with it. Yet, this child has a level of understanding and a vocabulary that exceeds his output level by several grade levels. Orally he is outstanding. What is happening?
I am a retired teacher and my daughter and I searched for answers. I won't go through all of the steps but we checked all of the above posibilities, tested his eyes 3 times and his vision was 20/20. But he still put his nose in the books, wrote in scribble , couldn't spell and his frustration level was growing. There was a missing link. AT last we found it. His eyes were not working together. One eye focused on one line and the other eye on another line. This was even with a finger marker or a paper line marker.
We found a doctor who specialzes in these mechanical eye problems. He has been taking
treatments for a year both at the clinic and using CDR's on the computer and he is becoming confident and has grown two grades in his reading ability. He asks to read now. If you want more information , send me an email and I will put you in touch with the clinic that can direct you to a clinic in your area. They test first and design a programme for the mechanical eye problem that makes your bright child look learning disabled.
This was a part of our solution so I want to share it with everyone who will listen.
Suelanda [email protected]

this looks very much like an ad to me!

Hmmm. It does read that way doesn't it? Perhaps Suelanda could reassure us that she is not advertising in any way? Apologies if not, but we are a tad cynical here.

Suelanda here. Well, good for you. I would question motives, as well. I really am a grandmother of a boy who has this very unusual physical difficulty which has made it impossible for him to learn the written language arts. I also am a retired but disabled teacher. My grandson's difficulty didn't show in any of the usual disabilities that show up in those children who have difficulty learning to read. The frustrated ones who wear labels. I taught school for years and never heard of such a diagnosis. But somehow I would like to make you see the difference in him in the past two years of treatment. It is amazing. We searched long and hard to find that missing link and if you don't believe we found help for him, I hope you don't have a child with such a hidden disability. No it is not an ad. I get nothing for telling you about it. Well that is not quite true. I get the satis-faction of telling others to check out the possibility that another child out there might be fighting the same battle and the programme works.
NO, I do not know if it is available in the U.K. If you think this is something a child you know needs, perhaps you can look there and be as fortunate as we were to find the help they need.

Hello, Tissy, Rhubarb and SueW. I posted yesterday in answer to your thoughts on my first message. I am interested to know if you still think I am advertising. I understood your question, did you understand my answer?
I believe if you have not had the experience of a child with a learning block , it is most difficult to see that his family would be seeking everywhere to find a way to help him? Walk a mile in our shoes.
Cheers, Suelanda

suelanda, your post is very interesting, thanks. I will bear it in mind if we encounter such problems.

How about some more information? Does the clinic have a website? Can you quote us any peer-reviewed research? What's the treatment called? If its proven to work, then it probably will be available in Europe somewhere.

Yes, ladies I will post all of the information I have as soon as my body cooperates. I have been disabled for almost 20 years and find many activities like sitting so painful I have to stop. My daughter and the one clinic that I know about is in Washington State in the U.S. The eye specialist who developed this system began because she, too had a child who didn't fit anywhere and being an eye specialist already she began there to research. Many of the symptoms seemed to mirror a combination of nearsightedness or dyslexia yet neither was the answer. By the weekend, I will post all the addresses and information I have. Don't pay too much attention to the time that I write as sometimes you will find it seems to be the middle of the night here and indeed , it is. I live in constant pain and sometimes, go to the computer to get a bit done rather than lie in bed trying to sleep and not being able to do so. I am interested to find that I came upon a U.K. site. In actual fact I was interested in the subjects and the fact that it is being done by mums and grandparents and not people who have no contact at all with the "trenches". So often all we get is theory from some person who sits behind a desk and doesn't have a clue what is happening in the "real" world. I am sorry to hear of your daughter's problem. I hope you have been as fortunate as we to get some help for her. As a teacher, parent, and grandmother, I have always had a little saying on my bulletin board or now on my fridge: "Many years from now , it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in or how much money I had, but what will matter is how much positive
influence I had in the life of a child."
I will find my file and send all of the info. I have. I appreciate your questions. Hopefully, there will be some good done in the life of a child who might otherwise have "fallen through the cracks" Sincerely, Suelanda

Hello Suelanda,
"walk a mile in our shoes" hmmm, I think you must be looking at us with rose-tinted spectacles. I have a nephew who has Downs Syndrome, a brother who has severe learning difficulties and I am now working with children who have special needs. So I do understand the frustrations that are encountered with diagnoses and misdiagnoses of so-called learning blocks or special needs. I am also aware of the eye problem you mention. The Health Visitors here are pretty vigilant about checking children's eyes, particularly when it comes to focusing.

Glad your grandson is now getting the treatment he needs.

Rubarb, No, I don't think I am the only one with problems , nor do I think I have all of the answers. Some , yes. But everyone has some challenges. I must really sound differently on the net from how I think. You and Tissy and Sue W. all seemed to think I was selling something when I first wrote with the intention of helping some family that had met this frequently neglected eye challenge that is not often caught and remediated and the child is labled and put in some programme where they simply do not belong.
One of you asked for references: The Site where you will find them is called the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. ( COVD) They have a web site here where you can find many references. They have members in ( I will put them in reversed AO) beginning in the U.S. it has spreat to the UNITED KINGDOM, TAIWAN,SWITZERLAND, SWEDED, SPAIN , SOUTH AFRICA, NORWAY, NEW ZEALAND, NETHERLANDS, MEXICO, MALAYSIA, JAPAN, ITALY, ISRAEL, INDIA, GERMANY, GREECE FRANCE, DENMARK CANADA, BELGIUM, AUSTRALIA, ANDORRA.

The COVD web site is: www.covd.org I went to that site last night and found some buttons at the top one was find a doctorI clicked there and found about a dozen of these Therapy Centers in the UK. I must tell you that my daughter drives an hour each way to take my grandson to his therapy but she believes it is worth every minute. They listen to books on tapes borrowed from the public library as they travel along.
There is also mention of a parent group web site at: www.pave-eye.com/vision I don't recall which one of you mentioned that you knew of this before but would you mind telling me how you found it? Over here North America, it is not the general rule for eye exams to be learning related such as eye movement control, focusing, near to far, clear sustained focus, eye teaming ability ( that was the main one for my grandson) -depth perception, visual motor integration, form perception and visual memory. For the most part "eyesight" is tested and if it is 20/20, the bright children can be left to be smart in everything that doesn't require reading , writing, spelling , or math. "The core subjects".Then comes the acting out and the frustrations. Moms I have given you enough to do some research for yourselves if you have a need for this kind of information. I would be happy to write to any of you , if you feel I could offer any further help. I hope I have answered your questions. I am here writing this because I thought this was a sharing between families who had difficulties and if someone had success with a problem it was good to share it. Suelanda

[email protected]

suelanda thank you for sharing such useful info with everyone. I can imagine that when you've had the problems you've had with your grandson only to find out it's something as simple and easy to correct as eyesight, you must want to tell everyone, to spare them the potential heartache. I'm sorry your reception here has been less than warm. Unlike Rhubarb, I don't find anything to do with the health system in this country vigilant or thorough, so I'm always doing extra research on things both major and minor related to my children. I welcome any advice other parents and professionals can give as to where to find information or how to recognize problems. I hope I will never need your info., but if I did I would be glad of the time and trouble that you had saved me.
By the way, I'm curious, how old was your grandson when they finally recognized the problem?

have to agree.the health system sucks in this country , my daughter has been deaf for many years, although partially, so she passed her baby tests and school tests and they put it down to her being a twin ( make me laugh)she was sent to a speach therepist who went off to new zealand and wasnt replaced, she is now nine and will be in senior school in two years - its now a race against time to make sure she gets the best out of her education and doest suffer on a personal leve for being deaf, cos kids can be cruel.

sorry if we seemed sceptical - but on this note, maybe it should be a different thread, is it our job to police this site? although its nice that we all feel so protectie of it waddya think?

There seems to be extremes. There are stories like Custardos, and then there are stories of HVs and GPs being too vigilant and frightening parents. I had a friend who actually posted on this site, her HV told her that her baby might be blind because he wasn't focusing properly (I think he was 4 months old at the time!!!) and he wasn't following objects around with his eyes. The poor girl was sent to a specialist, the baby had various tests done and again they told her the signs didn't look good. But the results came back, the baby is fine, there is absolutely nothing wrong with his sight, just a pessimistic and over-vigilant HV.

From my own experience I've also found that the GPs and HVs tend to err on the side of caution. My dd was nearly taken in for tests because she was neither walking nor crawling at the age of 10 months. It turned out she was just lazy, by 14 months she was walking.

But yes Suelanda, this is a site for sharing info like that, and I hope I didn't come across in the wrong way either! It's just that there are a lot of mums on this site who have children with special educational needs and I'm sure they have every sympathy for your grandson's plight.

Suelanda, I'm sorry if I appeared unwelcoming. As SueW said, we have had advertisers on this site masquerading as parents, and as the site was in danger of being pulled due to lack of funds we are all rather protective of something we hold very dear! Your first post does read very much like one of those "advertisement features" that appear in magazines- actually an ad pretending to be an article.

I've had a look at the covd site. It is interesting, but in itself nothing special. We have optometrists here, who are trained and qualified to detect and treat visual disorders. My own daughter has a squint, and sees one every 2 months. I asked her optometrist about visual therapy, and it is widely available. The problem is alerting healthcare professionals, such as GPs and HV's,and educationalists that behavioural and learning difficulties can be due to visual problems. There are reasonably simple screening tests that can be done. That's not of course to say that all educational problems are due to visual disturbance, they're not, but it is reasonable to check. I'm sure that any mumsnetters out there who are having this type of problem will be beating a path to their local optometrist's door!

Tissy& Rhubarb, my motive was misunderstood and I see your protective attitude and respect it. I was not all upset about my grandson but more so greateful that we had found a remediation for his problem. Rather than others who may have a child with a similar difficulty going through all of the problems we did in searching for that list that you spoke of, which we did use. I wanted to share with any moms who were struggling. I thought that was the reason for this site. Obviously you feel that I posed some threat to your site and I regret that. I was offering some hope to someone other than yourself who seems to have found all of the answers already. Whe we are trained and the training has flaws, as none of us can know it all, it is so helpful to have someone offer something they have found successful in a similar situation. We learn from each other. I saw that thinkiing in this site and that is why I wrote.
Thanks to both Custardo, who has learned, the hard way, how cruel kids can be to each other. I wonder if you have had the chance to speak and explain to the children in your daughter's class
how they can help her? I have seen that work in my own classroom. When you give the peer group a way to help and not hinder a child who needs their support, they often take a positive and not a negative approach. I do believe in policing the site to keep it from ads and other negative acts which would be something that would make it in danger of being pulled. I am sure it is a great comfort to many who are going through the years of raising children.
SofiaAmes, thank you for your kind words. As I read your post, I was thankful that you could understand my reason for posting. True , no one may not need this information now, but knowing it in the future may help another child, and family.
My grown children know that I have made some mistakes and had some successes that they have not yet yet. They also know that my suggestions are just that. Nothing more. If you like the ideas I have to give, then ,"You're welcome". If you do not, then do things another way. Whatever is best for you and your family. Suelanda

To SofiaAmes, In answer to your question, my granson showed signs of a problem about age 3 or so, it sort of creeps up as they begin to develop. He was 7 when it was diagnosed and he went into therapy and he is nine now. Thanks, for asking. I was really shocked by the early reception of trying to share his story. Thanks, Suelanda