THE STORY OF "CANDICE"

By Janine Nelson, M.S., edited by Margaret Dore

My husband and I were concerned about our daughter, whom I’ll call "Candice" when she passed her first birthday without showing any readiness to walk or talk. She finally took her first step at 19 months of age, but still was not talking and had frequent tantrums when she couldn’t communicate with us.

When Candice approached her third birthday without talking, we took her to the University of Washington to have her evaluated. They determined that she had normal hearing and eyesight, but was far behind in all areas of language development. They thought Candice was on the verge of talking and so they recommended that she not have speech therapy. We took their advice.

In kindergarten Candice’s communication difficulties were clearly effecting her ability to learn the alphabet and to read. Tantrums became daily events. I was in frequent contact with Candice’s teacher to voice my concerns. I thought it was a bigger problem than delayed development. "It will take care of itself in time," was all the help I got.

Prior to first grade, we had Candice tested through the Issaquah schools. Again, they found everything to be normal except language development, she was not delayed enough to qualify for extra help. We tried to teach Candice to read. She had extreme difficulty with comprehension and retention. What she recognized once or twice would be foreign the next minute. She did not learn nouns -- even when the actual object was placed in her hands. She could not retell the meaning of even a single sentence. Neither phonetics nor rote memorization made a dent.

When we tried to explain anything to Candice, she would not look directly at us. We were constantly saying, "Candice, look at my eyes when I’m talking to you so I know you are listening."

After briefly holding our gaze, her eyes would dart all over the room. We thought she was willfully refusing, little did we know she didn’t sustain eye-contact because she couldn’t. We’d get angry and she’d dissolve into a tantrum.

Every new school year I made an appointment to talk to Candice’s teacher about her difficulties in hopes that she would get a little extra attention. None of her teachers ever really "heard" me -- Candice was always doing "okay" as far as they were concerned because she managed to pass.

It didn’t take long for Candice to see herself as stupid. Her sisters were reading circles around her and coming home with high marks while Candice struggled. She expected less of herself, and so did we. In third grade Candice’s teacher kept the spelling test scores for the class on a big poster in front of the classroom. Candice was the only child who never scored 100%. She became more discouraged, tried less, and accepted her position as one of the "dumb" kids.

By fifth grade I noted Candice omitting and/or inserting small words as she read -- resulting in her grossly misunderstanding what she read. I tried to get her to read homework instructions to me aloud very slowly. This was somewhat helpful in her comprehension, but did nothing to help her retention. Almost nightly Candice had heavy tears over homework assignments that she didn’t understand and that took her hours to finish.

With the increase demands of middle school looming ahead, we contacted a "specialist" who tests children for more subtle problems. The first thing she wanted to do was a complete psych battery including IQ testing. I knew enough about testing and diagnosis that I was put off by the prospect of IQ testing. I thought this would only reflect her language deficits, not her intelligence. I also suspected we’d be told Candice was ADD -- which was not a label we wanted pinned on her, nor did we want the drugs that go with it. We declined to proceed and felt rather hopeless for Candice.

Then in June I took all our kids to Dr. Amy Riskendahl, a developmental optometrist, for routine eye exams and I found out Candice needed vision therapy (which I’d never heard of!) Dr. Amy explained the problems Candice was having in her vision (poor eye movement, poor visual memory, convergence problems, and suppression) and suddenly most of her problems made sense. Candice stared vision therapy right away.

By the time Candice started middle school in September, we were already seeing results. She came home with spelling test scores of 100% in the first weeks of school. She is now able to sit with her homework for long periods of time and she no longer dissolves into tears of frustration. She had maintained A’s and B’s all year long and feels pretty good about herself and her ability. Now she expects more from herself because she knows she can do it.

We are so gratefully to have walked into Dr. Amy’s office -- serendipity! I hope our story can be helpful to other parents who are struggling to help their children.