Convergence Insufficiency and Toe-Walking!

I've made it known several times that we are "new" to homeschooling. We pulled our kids out of public school June 2008. This is our second year of homeschooling. I've had my share of struggles when it comes teaching my kids, especially my daughter, web-princess. I have shared in the pass how math, for example, has been a huge road block for us. So has the reading, she still isn't quite reading for her age level; she's still behind some.

Well we are pretty confident that we have found out why? It appears that our daughter has convergence insufficiency. This could every well explain why she isn't reading at her age level and why she struggles with math or anything that requires reading really. So we now have to work with that! Nothing is just easy is it! We have been given some vision exercises to do with her @ home and if they do not work she will have to have vision therapy.

Briefly for those that do not know convergence insufficiency is where your eyes don't turn inward properly while you're focusing on a nearby object. This can make reading very difficult because text can appear blurred or even floating on the page. It also can often go unnoticed because it's possible for a child to have 20/20 vision and still have blurred text while reading do to the convergence insufficiency. So this is not something that will be typically be picked up in a school vision screening test. It often can be missed at normal eye doctor's visit too. You need a doctor that would know to look for this or is a vision specialist.

Some of the symptoms of convergence insufficiency besides difficulty reading include difficulty concentrating. Learning all of this made me thankful once again that I'm homeschooling. I have a feeling given the symptoms of convergence insufficiency and that fact that my daughter has 20/20 vision she perhaps would have been mislabeled as child with ADD. Not only that but I perhaps would have been forced, or heavily persuaded, by the school to put her a medicine that she clearly does not need!

Now that we know this about our daughter we have to find way to work WITH her vision difficulties and NOT against them! I can tell you a huge weight was lifted of our shoulders this pass weekend.

Superstar Surgery: I've had a few people ask when is Superstar's surgery now? He is having surgery Nov 18th for his toe-walking! Thanks for asking and keeping him in your prayers.
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Now the funny of the day: So DH and I were IMing this afternoon and he said in the IM "Well I'm going to go read your blog now".  I then tell him, that's fine but I haven't written anything up yet about web-princesses vision. He replies "That's okay reading your blog is how I know what's going on with my family"

That just made me laugh and reply back to him: "What are you doing?" "I'm looking @ my wife's blog. She said she's schooling them but I don't know if that's true until she blogs about it" "Once she's blog about it then I know it's been done."

To which my hubby replied back:  LMAO that's sound like a blog quote!


So honey this is for you: Yes, I do educate those children of ours. They can now count to 3 and tie their shoes. It makes me proud to know that they got themselves an edge-me-cation!!!! Thanks for letting me teach them!
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Okay seriously that was a joke! My husband and talk regularly when he's home and we IM each other regularly during the day, especially @ his lunch hour like we did today! He's well aware of what goes on and doesn't need to read the blog to find out. It was just a funny! Those that know us would see the funny so I wanted to share! Oh and the kids can count beyond 3, they can count to 5! :)