O.T. but wise folks here - convergence insufficiency

[Dekonick]

Have any forumites ever dealt with CI? My son has been dx with CI and I am having one hell of a hard time getting the school to admit it is an issue... His problem is that he is above grade level and thus they won't acknowledge that it has an impact on his education. :crap:

Any advice welcome...

[dekindy]

Assuming they do acknowledge it, what exactly do you want them to do?

[sjbraun]

Not sure what you want the school to provide your son. Seems like the most successful approach to treating CI are things you can influence.
I found this info on CI.

Treatment of Convergence Insufficiency
Treatments for CI can be categorized as active or passive:

Active treatment: A multi-site randomized clinical trial funded by the National Eye Insitute has proven that the best treatment for convergence insufficiency is supervised vision therapy in a clinical office with home reinforcement (15 minutes of prescribed vision exercises done in the home five days per week). The scientific study showed that children responded quickly to this treatment protocol...75% achieved either full correction of their vision or saw marked improvements within 12 weeks.8 the schools can do for your son. Found this info which suggests the most successful treatment wouldn't involve the school.

Now if your son is having eyestrain type symptoms, apparently common with CI, then I would think you could work with the school to provide frequent breaks for your son.

But are you looking for the school to provide some sort of therapy?

[Dekonick]

We just want them to allow some minor changes and accommodations - like not giving him busy work with cluttered, small print as this gives him headaches. We are providing all of the therapy at our expense and do not expect the school to provide this service, but they could at least acknowledge the condition and let him take breaks etc... The good part is that it can be cured with therapy. The bad part is he is struggling with any close work (writing etc...) and with any small print.

His teacher keeps telling us he is lazy and not working up to potential. She keeps telling us his writing is messy (no ****! the kid can't see up close so what do they expect?!?) but he does all of his work. All we want is the teacher to read some simple literature on the condition to educate her on what he is experiencing and then make minor adjustments - is this too much to ask?

[Bruce K]

As a middle school teacher here is what I would suggest:

Now that you have a diagnosis you should be able to request a meeting with the Special Education folks from the school and develope a 504 plan for accomodations like you are describing.

You might want to get your Pediatrician (or whoever made the diagnosis) to write up the proposed accomodations prior to the meeting

Good luck

BK

[rugbysecondrow]

What Bruce said makes sense. You need to speak to the right person and it sounds like the teacher is not that person. Beware that you want to not get on her bad side, but still look out for your son's best interests. I heard it said once that "it is hard to like the child if you don't like the parents", so think about your approach and see if you can try another tact to win her over in this process because it sounds like your current approach hasn't worked.



Good luck.

[VTCaraco]

Tough to wade in and offer advice without some context on what has passed. From what you've shared, the teacher is being unkind or worse.

Fundamentally, the key is to get someone to listen. But you need to remember that you have the same obligation. You're both seeing it with a propriety point of view. And I've got to believe that the teacher has no interest in being negligent or unkind to you or your son.

I'd be happy to listen to some more details and offer some advice as a teacher (and department chair ~~ which means I've also had occasion to mediate these sorts of things when a parent has been unhappy or discontent with someone from my department).
As the proud parent of a 13 year old boy, we've had some experience from the other side of the desk, too. I definitely understand how trying it can become.
PM, if you want. And maybe a phone call might make sense.

[93legendti]

My daughter had vision therapy last year when she was in 2nd grade and her dr. gave us a list of stuff and description of her condition and negative syptoms-to make the teachers aware. So I emailed the list to them. The teachers and division head were really responsive, letting her move any time she needed to get closer to the board; allowing her to take tests in quiet rooms, if necessary; allowing her more time (if she needed it) to complete tasks; and generally making her feel comfortable while she got her eye strength up. They even let us write her homework for her, as long as she provided the answers. It didn't happen often, but when my daughter exhibited issues, we let that make it easier for her.

It all worked, 'cuz last year she was reading below the benchmark and this year's teacher had no clue she was in vision therapy and had been in the resource room everyday for reading assistance. She now reads at/or above her age/grade.

If they had NOT been receptive/responsive I would have gone up the chain with the same docs from her dr.

Good luck, be persistent. We went thru this for 2 years. I was a child who read non-stop, usually The World Book under my covers with a flashlight, so it hurt me to see my child not be able to read well; not read for fun and having pain reading. Now, it seems like ages ago, when really it was 1 year.

But, the feeling I got when this year's teacher told me she reads at her age and she never would have known about past difficulties if I hadn't told her, made it all worthwhile. Hang in there.

[dekindy]

I think documentation is key here. Get a formal copy of the diagnosis to the school and follow procedure from there. Sounds like Bruce K has put you on a good course and your requests certainly seem reasonable. Good luck and your Son should be thankful he has such caring parents and advocates.

[sjbraun]

"your Son should be thankful he has such caring parents and advocates"

Word

[Dekonick]

Thanks for all of the advice. Looks like we are going to need to get an advocate and play hardball :(