When our middle daughter Madison was in preschool, we noticed that she was not learning as fast, or processing things as well as our first daughter had at that age. We didn’t think much about it, and didn’t get too concerned because we thought she would outgrow it, that she would catch up. That did not happen, and this is where our story begins.
At that point, we had been home schooling our oldest daughter for one year and we were just getting comfortable with that role. When it came time to school Madison, I became very frustrated because I could not teach her in the same way, she just didn’t get it.
She needed a lot of hands on activities, she did not like to work out of a workbook, and she seemed to forget things from one day to another. When it came time to teach her to read, she struggled, and I lost my patience more times than I want to admit. This really affected our relationship. We both longed for the weekends when we didn’t have to do school.
We finally decided to seek help. The first step was to rule out vision and hearing problems. After taking her to the optometrist, we found out that she had severe eye tracking and convergence problems. That led us to check into vision therapy. We got several opinions and decided that was what she needed. I was hoping that would solve all the problems.
We drove two hours every week for eight months to attend a very expensive vision therapy program which was not covered by insurance. After just several sessions we saw a great amount of improvement. Her reading seemed to be less of a struggle. When she graduated from the therapy sessions the eye tests showed she had improved dramatically, her tracking was much better. So we thought, problem solved!
She did well for a while, but we soon became aware that eye problems were not the only thing we were dealing with. At this point I was very discouraged and school was not going well. Her self esteem was low, she continued to struggle to learn, and I was doubting my ability to teach her.
PREVIOUS PAGE
