Monday, October 7, 2013

Vision Therapy Week 2


Week one down and I was feeling pretty good about it. We met with Dr. G and she had some new exercises for Liam as well as wanting to continue some of the ones we did the first week.  This week we jumped for 30 minutes a day to about an hour. I did not track the progress with the blocks. I continued this as play time for fun. She did not say to continue charting, but to just do it if we had free time.

She wants Liam to continue tracking letters on the wall one eye at a time. This time however we spaced them 2 inches apart instead of one.  The beginning part of the week his results were:

  • Right eye it took 1 minute and 51 seconds with 7 errors
  • Right eye it took 1 minute 18 seconds with 5 errors. 

  • Left eye it took 1 minute 46 seconds with 5 errors
  • Left eye took 1 minute 30 seconds with 3 errors.


By the last day of the week his results were this:

  • Right eye it took 1 minute 17 seconds with 3 errors
  • Right eye it took 1 minute 22 seconds with 2 errors
  • Right eye it took 1 minute 11 seconds with 1 error


  • Left eye it took 1 minute 11 seconds with 3 errors
  • Left eye it took 1 minute 10 seconds with 2 errors
  • Left eye it took 57 seconds with zero errors

I was so excited to see these results at the end of the week. Liam was so proud of himself that he got zero wrong with his left eye.  I think it was the first thing he said to Dr. G when he saw her.

The second exercise was a new one. It was called Visual Motor exercise which was timed or used a Metronome. For those who don’t know what a Metronome is you can look it up here. You don't have to buy one, you can get it as an application on your phone :)

The first Visual Motor exercise was with lines. It was a sheet a paper that had straight lines with a line at the right or left side of the line or a line in the middle. For this one Liam had to use his right or left hand and hit the table depending on which side the line was on. He had to use both hands when it was in the middle.  The paper was so confusing with so many lines that we started with the page being covered and only one at a time being visible. See picture below.


I would time him and tally up his errors for this one. The results from the beginning of the week to the end were HUGE!

I covered whole page except one. Went one by one

  • First time it took 2 minutes and 30 seconds with 7 errors
  • Second time it took him 2 minutes and 13 seconds with 6 errors


Last day of the week:

I did not cover page and pointed to each row

  • First time he did it in 1 minute and 19 seconds with 6 errors
  • Second time he did it in 1 minute and 9 seconds with 3 errors
  • Last one he did it in 1 minute and 3 seconds with 2 errors.


To go from the whole page covered to uncovering it and just pointing to the beginning of each row was amazing. He even noticed how much he had improved.  We were both so happy.

The next exercise was similar but it was a paper with a line then it had a circle on the top, bottom or middle of line. He would have to say “Top, Bottom, Middle” to the beat of the Metronome.

Results:

First day: bmp (beats per minute)

  • 45 bpm he had 4 errors
  • 50 bpm he had 4 errors
  • 50 bpm he had 3 errors


Last day:

  • 64 bpm he had 1 error
  • 65 bpm he had 2 errors
  • 65 bmp he had 1 error



The last exercise was called the Brock String.This is a picture of Liam learning the Brock String with Dr. G




 This exercise helps him with 3-D and forces the eyes to work together. This one was by far our hardest. Liam had a TON of tears. He would get a headache and nauseous from this one. This one you have a string and it has three beads on it (green, yellow, red) and you have to put the string up to your nose and focus on the beads. Liam had to look at the first bead (green) and try to see it as one bead with two strings. This was super hard for him. He often saw two beads one string. The goal is to get the bead as close to your nose with both eyes focusing on it and keep it as 1 bead with 2 stings. We had a lot of trouble with this one. He also had to jump and go from the green bead to the yellow and then to the red and tell me how many beads he saw and how many strings. I was super confused about how to do this therapy with him. I think I did it wrong for the first 5 days. I ended up emailing Dr. G and she explained it better. We changed a few things up and it was a little easier. It’s kind of hard to explain his results because we did not do it right for many days but at the end of the week we were able to get the green bead from 44 cm to 20 cm from his nose. We are going to continue this one next week and maybe with more help from Dr. G I will be able to explain it better. 

A good tip for parents is to let your kids take a break. When Liam could not take it anymore I would let him run around the kitchen. This was especially fun because we have a no running in the kitchen rule. So he got to get energy out and break a family rule. You have to do what you have to do to get this therapy done. Good thing the starburst are still working too!

1 comment:

  1. You are doing a SUPER GOOD job, Mama!!! It is so wonderful when the CHILD gets excited about the progress. I know for Alli she really fought me a lot on the therapy when she was still patched for everything. That was a huge hurdle for us. Once both eyes were working together correctly it seemed like she stopped getting dizzy, naseous, having a headache, etc....Liam is so lucky to have you for a mom. YOU ROCK, Katie!!! And Liam, too....what a CHAMP that kid is!!

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