I had to laugh at the expression the optometrist was using: “Eye push ups!” Well, apparently that’s what we are doing. Lots of eye exercises.
It all started a while back when Nicky had a vision screening at his school. A report came back that said there were issues with accommodation, convergence and colour. I was a bit mystified about the colour as I know that he knows all his colours. And at that time I had a lot on my plate having just started off with the OT so it took me about a week or so to phone the optometrist. I only managed to get an appointment last Monday. (She is very booked up)
Penny re-tested Nicky with a whole lot of tests. I noticed when he read a column of numbers that he placed his face really close to the paper. So I started thinking that maybe the reason why he is taking long to do something could be to do with vision as well.
The biggest surprise for us was that Nicky is colour blind. It’s a bit of a misleading term because it isn’t the individual colours as such that are the problem, it’s when they are combined. He couldn’t identify coloured numbers surrounded by a different colour. So, going forward, it’s important that he reads in good contrasts e.g. black on white, rather than orange or red.
We are going to proceed with 12 sessions and by lesson 6 they will assess if he needs glasses or not. She hopes that the exercises will do their thing so that he won’t need them. But we will see.
The exercises are a lot fun. He had his first one last Friday.
The optometrist held a finger puppet monster on her finger and moved it side to side and up and down. She even made him count. (He has a thing for counting at the moment and is especially proud that he can count to a hundred). He counted columns of numbers with and without handheld spectacles.
Then she moved a bead back and forth along a piece of string towards his nose. (This is what she called “eye pushups”)
He also had to throw and catch the ball, looking for tiny pictures on it. So for instance, the optometrist would say she’s throwing the aeroplane to him and he must find it.
These lessons are not cheap but since the duration is more limited, hopefully it will all be worth it.
This is interesting, I never knew that color blind could mean this too. Hope it goes well. Would love to hear how things go by lesson 6.
Yip he will need glasses! Will prob write about that when it happens…
Very interesting blog.. thanks for sharing