Visual Perception- Who would have ever guessed that this would turn into a quick familiar dirty word in my house. Because of Visual Perception or LACK of might I say, Andrew's world has been turned upside down. My world has been turned upside down.
Now, we have been aware since 2012 that Andrew is dyslexic. In his reports from Magnolia Speech School in March of 2010 it stated that he was a "little" dyslexic. Some reasons for him being dyslexic could be because of his ADHD behaviors. From that test, Andrew's testing journey started. I took him to Tupelo and had him tested for ADHD. His results were he was 90% ADHD. In every situation he would act 9 times out of 10 hyper. Rock on.. I went to our pediatrician with the ADHD and Dyslexic reports (by the way.. I still owe 300.00 on the 2000.00 balance) and Andrew became medicated. He is currently on 50mg of Vyvanse everyday. He suffers extreme anxiety with this medication, but I can't bring him to the point of switching meds or adding meds to his already medicated life. In the 4th grade even with Dyslexic Therapy and medication, Andrew still had challenges. He passed and entered the 5th grade with Mrs. Sisk. She is trained in Dyslexia and was a HUGE help for Andrew. Rock on.. at the end of the year the SPED department decided to test Andrew for a ruling so he tested with an average range IQ, but during the test he should so many characteristics of Aspergers. Goodness... I never realized that my child showed characteristics of Aspergers. Anyway, he has a SPED ruling of Aspergers and is currently receiving therapy for Dyslexia. Last May, Andrew was tested for Occupational Therapy and it was decided that he needed the services for handwriting.
In October 2012, The Occupational Therapist from OCH evaluated Andrew and I finally after asking and having to get approval from the SPED department they finally released the report to me. When dealing with VISUAL PERCEPTION, Andrew has the age equivalent of 5 year old. Yep, that's right a 5 year old and we are just now finding this out. Out of all the testing we have paid for and got completed we now find out just how DYSLEXIC he is. I had to research just what visual perception was. Visual perceptual skills are the basic building blocks of all functional activity. No human activity is performed without the utilization of these skills. So from what I understand EVERYTHING that we learn, we learn through visual perception and Andrew has the age equivalent to a
5 year old. No wonder my child gets so frustrated very easily.
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| Andrew's first day of Jr. High August 2012 |
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So, you ask.. what are we going to do now? We are going to fight this battle that was given to us. Despite all the reasons why Andrew can't learn and all the set backs we have endured.... we are going to fight. We will make sure that he is not asked to copy much at all from the boards or books. We will learn even when we are told we can't. We will fight to our exhaustion to inform teachers to make sure Andrew doesn't have a meltdown so that's he isn't asked to complete tasks that we know are out of his reach. We will fight this battle with everything we have to ensure that Andrew will learn in an environment that he feels comfortable in without ridicule. We will win this battle.. with a visual perception deficit or not.. we will win.
