Once we started homeschooling I realized my daughter struggled to keep track her eyes to the subject at hand.
Whenever I asked her to look at a letter, her head would move to the paper while her eyes looked elsewhere.
If I didn’t ask her to look, she’d easily see the target.
Perplexed, I taught her phonics by using several tricks out of my reading specialty tool bag that I had gleaned in college when I earned my elementary education degree.
The secret was to teach through senses other than vision: auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic
The auditory part was easy. We were using the A Beka phonics curriculum which had excellent script for explaining the sounds for each letter of the alphabet while teaching phonics, which I’d have her repeat after me.
For the tactile I did several things. First I cut letters of the alphabet out of flannel for her to manipulate on the flannel board. That helped a bit.
Then I created flashcards with letters of the alphabet cut out of sandpaper, which I’d have her trace with her finger. But her eyes still didn’t track to the sandpaper letters.
That’s when I filled a small plastic box with sand for a kinesthetic tactile activity. Then we sat on the floor with her in my lap and the small sandbox on her lap. I’d put my hand over hers to guide her pointer finger to trace the letter of the week into the sand while I said the letter in her ear and she repeated the word orally with me. We did that repeatedly for a few minutes, before moving on to cursive.
As we advanced from letters to words, we’d trace each of the stages of the phonics process into the sandbox while saying the sound repeatedly during the tracing. (Again, A Beka has a great phonics program for the process.)
That built a memory in her brain that made a visual connection when she actually saw the letter on the printed page later.
Epilogue 2024
Jumping ahead to the college years when vision therapy specialists evaluated how well her eyes tracked, an interesting conversation occurred:
Doctor to me: She has a condition called convergence insufficiency which means her eyes do not track well. We can help with that.
Doctor to her: School must have been terribly frustrating.
Daughter nods in assent.
Doctor: You most likely hate books.
Daughter: I like books a lot! I’m reading this one now. (She shows them her copy of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s books.)
Doctor: Oh, that must be homework.
Daughter: No, I chose this book for fun.
Doctor looks at me in silence.
Me: It’s true. She is usually reads those books in a couple of weeks time while balancing her job, etc. And she understands the book. She had a great conversation with Nathaniel Hawthorne when she got to actually meet him in Massachusetts a couple of years ago. (I smile. We’ve always loved the historic interpreters. My daughter was so excited to meet him, so she started reading his other books in her free time.)
Doctor in flabbergasted tone to her: How are you able to read that book with eyes that don’t track properly?
Daughter: Mom taught me neat tricks. I learned to read with a sandbox so I could feel the letters. Then later she told me to use a bookmark to help me track the words better.
Isn’t that a great testimony?
However I do wish we knew of vision therapy sooner. She had seen optometrists and opthalmologists but no one ever saw a problem with the tracking until we moved yet again and she got another new eye doctor before entering college.
Although that doctor claimed he could help her, he only took our money for an official evaluation but never provided therapy. When I called him on it his office suddenly provided a makeshift therapy office. No thanks.
A friend whose dad was in the vision therapy speciality area in another state told me how to find a certified specialist in my local area. That brought us to doctor number two who was much more helpful than doctor number one.
If you suspect a similar problem for your child, you can locate a vision specialist in your area at this web site.
