Madison's Journey--Living with a Visual Processing Disorder

Madison is a bright, sensitive, caring 9 year old girl who is growing into a beautiful young lady. When she was born, as most mothers say, it was truly one of the happiest days of my life. She was a wonderful baby...always happy and smiling. She met most of her milestones on time, although she didn't crawl until she was about 10 months old. However, she walked at 12 months and kept cruising along. She talked early, had a large vocabulary, but did have speech issues with articulation. She started speech at age 3 and "graduated" fairly quickly.

She began preschool at age 2 and absolutely loved it. She enjoyed the "play" based program and grew socially and emotionally. During the next 2 years she continued in this program and blossomed even more. She loved having books read to her, singing songs, coloring pictures and dancing around. As a former kindergarten and first grade teacher, I knew how much emphasis was being placed on kindergartners knowing their letters so I began to casually introduce the letters of the alphabet to Madison. This was an extremely difficult task for Madison. She may remember one for a minute, then forget it the next. She may remember one for a day, then forget it the next. She may not even be able to tell me what a letter was 2 seconds after I had told her the name of the letter. So, being the teacher that I am, I began to try all of the "fun" things that I used to do with my students. We made letters out of play dough, we wrote letters in whipped cream, I had her trace them on sand paper, lace letters with yarn, write them in sand, make pictures out of them, etc. But no matter what we did, no matter what had worked with most of my students, Madison could not retain letter names...please do not get me wrong, we did not do this daily or even weekly. We would just do this periodically until she reached kindergarten. However, this is when I realized that something just "wasn't right".

In the fall of 2005 she began kindergarten. She struggled to learn her letters. My husband and I conferenced with her teacher who said she needed to work on letter identification, but when asked if she thought there was a problem she assured us everything was fine. Madison changed schools in the middle of kindergarten and started her second semester at a private school. She was still having difficulty with letter id, but the teachers assured us once again that this was nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, at home, we were working diligently to try to get Madison to retain her letters...not an easy task. She stayed at this school through first grade with the same feedback from the teachers. She is a little behind, but it is nothing to worry about. And let me tell you, as a teacher, I was asking, "Do I need to be concerned?" The answer was always "No".

In many cases, well behaved girls fly under the radar when it comes to learning disabilities. They follow directions, they can be quiet, and in Madison's case, she has a strong work ethic, so she is always on task. Well, at the end of first grade I told my husband that I knew there had to be something going on. She was different than any student I had taught and we needed to get her the help she needs. Most private schools do not have testing, so we decided to have Madison privately tested for a learning disability. As it turned out, she has a visual processing disability. This effects many aspects of her life and education.

We ended up taking her out of private school and putting her back into public school. On the whole, in my opinion, public schools have much more support for learning disabled children than do private schools. During her second grade year we started sending her to a tutor. I needed to be mommy again, not just the person that made her do "school stuff" all the time. We created her IEP (Individualized Education Program) with modifications for her school work and started her new year. Although the modifications made things more manageable, reading and writing (spelling especially) were still extremely laborious for Madison. My associate pastor mentioned Vision Therapy to me as an option for Madison. Vision Therapy is controversial (and expensive if insurance doesn't cover it), but after doing a little research, my husband and I decided to give it a try. What did we have to lose? So Madison began Vision Therapy at the end of her second grade year as well. (I will give more information on this later.)

She is now in fourth grade and continues with tutoring and vision therapy. She just received her mid year report card and received all A's and one B in writing. She is very proud. She could not do this without being her own self advocate. She knows her modifications on her IEP and makes sure they are met. But I do have to say, these grades come with hours of work. We probably spend an average of two and a half to three hours a day doing homework, then she has to read, then she has to do 15-25 minutes of vision therapy homework a night. She goes to bed crying many nights saying that she feels her life is falling apart and that she just has too many things to do. My husband and I tell her constantly that we are proud of her and that we only want her to do her best. We never emphasize grades. She puts enough pressure on herself as it is.

Somehow, through all this pressure, she remains such a caring, loving spirit. We are so blessed to have her as our daughter, and Andrew is so lucky to have her as his sister. Her disability gives her the ability to be such a wonderful person!