The past few months Leif's new teachers have been working hard at assessing him. He is a young second year preschooler and an older first year preschooler. Given these constraints they have worked hard to figure out exactly where he falls, where he might be having problems and to get to the roots of some of the issues we have been seeing.
I admit that I feel like I am wandering around in the dark right now. I have never had a little boy, never been a little boy, never even grown up around little boys. AB and I kept saying, "he's just a typical four year old boy".
However, Leif's teachers interact with a lot more four year old little boys than me (thankfully) and they didn't seem quite so convinced.
His teacher recently noted a few things in her testing of him. When looking at things, Leif needs to touch them. He is a very "sensoral" child. Leif also recently started refusing to do particular work like finger tracing and counting small items. I have had a number of recent conversations with his teachers in an effort to try and figure out if this is just immaturity or some sort of attention deficit (to which I cringed). As a first path forward, she suggested an eye exam.
To this point Leif has not had an eye exam as we never really saw the need. He has eagle eyes and can spot things far away quite well. I scheduled the exam so I could knock off one check mark.
This morning at 9:30am we went into the eye doctor. I never quite understand what optometrists are doing as they flip the lenses around and look. He could identify the top level of characters, but was hit or miss with the second level. I thought it was just obstinance, honestly.
They ended up going back and dilating his eyes, which maybe should have been my tipoff.
It wasn't.
At the end of the exam when the optometrist announced that he was quite farsighted, a touch nearsighted and had a stigmatism I think my jaw was on the floor. I remember saying, "seriously?"
She went on to explain that he falls into a very stereotypical category for this age group and that his teacher was spot on for sending him for an eye exam for his apparent lack of attention. She said it was textbook symptoms, a lack of interest in anything involving small work, writing and drawing. (Remember all those times I whined about my son refusing to color??)
Suddenly it all clarified.
Well not "all" but we are on track.
She handed me a lens to look through that would simulate one aspect of how Leif is seeing. Basically that things float in and out of focus very easily and it is really hard work for him to keep things in focus.
I took him out to the very limited section of little kid glasses. I was given a choice of one pair... a butt fugly plastic pair with big 270 degree circle bows so they stay on. Maybe I should have accepted that pair... but the plastic was a turn off - yes I like my plastic frames, but Leif needs durability.
When I turned my nose up the tech said that I could opt for another pair with a seperately purchased band that would keep them on his face. I picked a small pair of titanium flex metal frames and a pair of black sunglasses (sunglass frames were free, pay for the lenses deal) so he can be just like mommy.
I am still shocked my little boy was having that much trouble seeing all this time!
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