Thomas' glasses

Along with the daily preparations of getting ready to move to Angola, we of course have the every day stuff we're doing as well.  School, activity days, scouts, etc.  But one extra weekly thing we do, is "vision therapy" for Thomas, two times a week.  About a month ago, I described Thomas' reading issues to my friend Melissa.  He has been "behind" grade level in reading since kindergarten, but this last year of homeschooling, I had the chance to read and write more with him and could see really that there was something else going on.  I could see that his issues were not developmental issues that he was going to grow out of as his teachers have suggested over the years.  The letter reversals were still constant.  While sounding out a word, he would mix up the order of the letters.  He would also pull sounds from words above or below the word he was reading.  So I started suspecting dyslexia, because I didn't know what else it could be.  I have taken him to optometrists before to see if he had a vision issue, but he has always had 20/20 vision.  I mentioned all of this to my friend at the poolside one day.  She said that Thomas sounded like one of her sons, and went on to describe vision therapy that helped her son in Jerusalem with similar reading issues.   As she described it, I recalled a little 5 minute conversation I had about a year prior on the way to a field trip with another friend/homeschooling mom in my ward that mentioned something like this.  I immediately called her to ask what it was.  Sure enough, it was vision therapy.  Long story short, I felt that between these "two witnesses," and what appeared to be God's tender mercies, I knew I needed to look into this for Thomas.  And fast, seeing as how we are moving to Angola where we wouldn't be able to obtain this sort of help.

I found only two therapists here that are somewhat close in distance, that specialize in vision therapy.  They are called "Developmental Optometrists."  Neither of them are covered by our insurance.  Oh well.   So I chose one to do some tests on Thomas--two different appointments, about 2 hours long.  The results showed that Thomas has a few issues with "accommodation" and "convergence excess."  This all basically means that his eyes come together too early before they hit the book he's reading, so they actually cross before they hit the page.  Normally, the eyes come together as they hit the page.  Because they cross early, the therapy can help to retrain the eye muscles to work together, track, perceive, and focus together.  Much like physical therapy, it strengthens the muscles, but with the eyes.  These conditions are often misdiagnosed as dyslexia, ADHD issues, etc. because the behavior of kids with these issues, is very similar.  They have a hard time staying focused and concentrating, they get distracted, work slow, etc.  This is why his teachers in the past have expressed all of these things, and have even yelled at him in class because of it.

That said, we went ahead and signed Thomas up for vision therapy twice a week.  We're hoping to get at least 8 sessions in before leaving.  We also bought a home therapy computer program with the wonderful help of Michelle, from my Alpine ward, whom I found out is the only licensed vision therapist in Utah.  If only I had known about this before!  We'll take the computer program with us to Africa and hopefully continue with the progress that he will make here.

These pics show our trip to Costco to pick out some bifocals that the doctor prescribed to help magnify what he reads so the eye muscles can relax.  He has 20/20 vision, but these glasses are not to help the vision, but to help with his eye muscles.  The glasses that he is wearing in the picture below are the ones he chose.  We got two pairs in case there's an issue in Angola.  Costco has a year warranty on their eye wear, so if something does happen to them, we can have them replaced when we come back to the states next summer.  Even "if he stomps on the glasses himself and you bring them back in 20 pieces," they will replace them the Costco vision guy said.  :)

The girls too, had to try on glasses.

And of course Rhea is always wearing her pearls.  Even on a Saturday at Costco.
We can thank Grandma P. for the pearls.  :)

We loved how these glasses reminded us of Sherman from the movie, "Mr. Peabody and Sherman."  Especially with Thomas exaggerating his front teeth.  :)