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Matt's Story Part III
In Part II of Matt’s Story, Dr. Boulet filled us in on the struggles faced by 8 year old Matt and his mother, Kay, both in learning and behaviour at school. If you want to read Matt’s Story from the beginning you can find it online at www.gatewaygazette.ca. Part I was in the February 15th Grande, Page 6 and Part II was in the March 15th Grande on page 8.
Matt had been suffering with severe farsightedness and visual control problems since he was an infant. He has been struggling against himself to move his eyes in a skilled fashion across the page and likely fighting moderate headaches most of the time. The basic tasks at school have been much more challenging for him as compared to his classmates. He was legally blind in his right eye and hanging on with very difficult vision in his left. His depth perception was non-existent.
At this point, tears began to form in Kay's eyes. Mothers especially tend to blame themselves for not noticing visual trouble. I reassured her that this was fairly common, that children are adept at compensating for difficult vision. It doesn't help that they think it's normal and so they never say anything. Farsightedness in particular is hard to spot because children will generally see perfectly well at distances; farsightedness is also much more of a problem for children than nearsightedness, which is much easier to spot. (If a child should ever complain about their vision, they should see an optometrist asap.) Kay needs to stop thinking about what was not done and focus on what needs to be done over the next year. It is never a good idea to punish oneself for anything, let alone something we have no control over.
We will see where things go with Matt, but he has a number of visual obstacles to overcome and that doesn't come easily. He and Kay will follow through on a number of activities to assist in building fundamental skills of vision and he will work with me to regain as much of his sight as we can. I will be following Matt for the better part of the next year and then yearly after that. I'm confident that we'll improve Matt's vision and visual function significantly over the next 8 to 12 months and this should assist him in making the necessary improvements in the classroom, leading to improvements in his self-image and behaviour. In particular, he will begin to see with much more clarity and control, and will be able to more effectively work with text. Matt will still have to address his own actions as contributing to the problem and avoid repeating negative cycles of behaviour.
It seems clear to me that Matt's trouble in school, while influenced in part by his experiences at home (a move and divorce), can be largely attributed to visual dysfunction, starting with a crippling glasses prescription, blindness, motor control problems and perceptual trouble (memory in particular). The physical pain and discomfort caused by his untrained and uncorrected vision almost certainly has been a major contributing factor to his irritability and lack of patience. It's also easy to think that being distracted by bad vision and all the problems it brings can lead to memory problems. The fact that Matt went through three years of troubled schooling with no one suggesting a visual assessment shines a light on the need for teacher training in this area.
To be continued....
Dr. Boulet is an optometrist and owner-operator of Diamond Valley Vision Care in Black Diamond (403-933-5552 or info@dvvc.ca.) He is also a former high school teacher and continues to work with children who have trouble learning.
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