We desire to communicate the challenges our daughter Gaelen experiences on a daily basis. After considerable struggles at school, especially with difficulty concentrating, likewise handwriting, reading, and comprehension, her previous school brandished conditions such as dyslexia and ADHD about. However, no amount of remedial work had any effect, and rather than medicate for ADHD, we opted to Homeschool – this was beneficial as we were able to schedule copious breaks to help Gaelen with her ADHD. Her difficulties, naturally, had an adverse impact on every area of her education, something she is still "playing catch up" on.
In May 2016, we discovered the actual root of her issues, a diagnosis of exophoria - a convergence insufficiency. Historically, …show more content…
Specific to reading: As a result of this outward tendency, she experienced double vision, which was naturally further pronounced with a decreased font size. Furthermore, every time she would blink, her eyes would dissociate and the visual axes would diverge away from one another. This caused her to lose her place through a perceived "jumping" of words and sentences. The loss of comprehension, after brief periods of time, was a direct result of the amount of concentration it took for her to maintain eye teaming while moving from word to word; the focus was concentrated on moving her eyes together in order to read each individual word that reading was just a list of words as opposed to a sentence with …show more content…
(It was eye-opening for us to realize that her vision demanded she writes in this manner in order to counteract the double vision, giving her the ability to read her own handwriting!) Merely drawing a square was a challenge as she could not close the last corner properly; she would either intersect the starting line or end short of the starting line, even with absolute intent and concentration. Despite these difficulties, she never communicated with the specific problems she experienced as she had no reference for normal vision. What need was there to communicate difficulties when she believes visual acuity to be the same?
Since her diagnosis, and considering this condition is inoperable, she has attended extensive Vision Therapy to correct the strong tendency for her eyes to drift outward during close work. Although she has attained the goal of correcting much of this condition, her Developmental Optometrist has indicated that she will always struggle with this outward tendency, especially in times of stress, illness, or prolonged close work. As part of her report, the classroom recommendation was to "reduce stress and related fidgeting or fatigue through shorter visual work
In May 2016, we discovered the actual root of her issues, a diagnosis of exophoria - a convergence insufficiency. Historically, …show more content…
Specific to reading: As a result of this outward tendency, she experienced double vision, which was naturally further pronounced with a decreased font size. Furthermore, every time she would blink, her eyes would dissociate and the visual axes would diverge away from one another. This caused her to lose her place through a perceived "jumping" of words and sentences. The loss of comprehension, after brief periods of time, was a direct result of the amount of concentration it took for her to maintain eye teaming while moving from word to word; the focus was concentrated on moving her eyes together in order to read each individual word that reading was just a list of words as opposed to a sentence with …show more content…
(It was eye-opening for us to realize that her vision demanded she writes in this manner in order to counteract the double vision, giving her the ability to read her own handwriting!) Merely drawing a square was a challenge as she could not close the last corner properly; she would either intersect the starting line or end short of the starting line, even with absolute intent and concentration. Despite these difficulties, she never communicated with the specific problems she experienced as she had no reference for normal vision. What need was there to communicate difficulties when she believes visual acuity to be the same?
Since her diagnosis, and considering this condition is inoperable, she has attended extensive Vision Therapy to correct the strong tendency for her eyes to drift outward during close work. Although she has attained the goal of correcting much of this condition, her Developmental Optometrist has indicated that she will always struggle with this outward tendency, especially in times of stress, illness, or prolonged close work. As part of her report, the classroom recommendation was to "reduce stress and related fidgeting or fatigue through shorter visual work