Visual Processing Difficulties

In familiar environments, do you bump into stationary objects?

Listen and observe to learn why John struggles to complete his homework. Does John know how to communicate his needs?

Toddler sitting on the floor transferring rice from one bowl to another with a spoon.

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Cheri Moore supports emotional health while building an individualized intervention plan to improve your ability to respond and maintain progress after therapy.

 

Visual processing activities are powerful showing you how hard you are working at listening and reading with comprehension and remembering.

When What You See Fails to Sync-Up With What You Hear

My experiences as a license special education teacher homeschooling a struggling reader caused me to question my knowledge and abilities as a teacher. Modifying curriculum and teaching through hands-on activities was not enough. I taught orally and then retaught visually and then taught some more.  By the end of my daughter’s year of second grade, my heart started to break. My child saw friends and peers reading and writing with ease.  She cried on the outside while I cried on the inside.

Why was I unable to teach my own child?  What did I not know?    

I found answers after I started asking the right questions. Imagine my disbelief when I learned my daughter saw letters turn upside down and move preventing her from reading with ease.  Wow, I had a little genius!

Speech Development and Maintaining Speech Fluency at All Ages Depends on What is Seen and Heard

A toddler picks up and drops an object over and over.  Do you assume the baby is trying to get you to pick it up? Actually, the toddler is developing depth perception, a visual processing skill. Listening to the object hit the floor integrates what is seen with what is heard, an auditory processing skill.

  • Eye-Hand Cordination occurs when the baby reaches and grasp object.
  • Depth perception occurs when the baby is unable to reach the object.
  • Sound perception occurs when the object hits the floor.

Have you ever noticed that a baby stares at your mouth and awondered, “Why?”  There are several reasons. While being held, babies see best your face.

Secondly, babies learn speech by watching mouth, cheek, and tongue movements. They enjoy watching anything that moves.

What is seen and heard teaches an infant how to talk.

Holding and talking with your baby is a must for language development, a 3-D experience. 

infant looking at the face of a stuffed doll with a yellow hat, outfit, and pink ribbon around the hat.

What is Your Norm?

Does your visual world feel unsafe, frustrating?

cow overlaid with a faint blurry cow and eyes below showing the pupil alignment for double vision
image of a cow in a field with two eyeballs showing proper eye alignment for single vision

Behaviors Are Clues that What You Hear and See Is Affecting Your Learning and Emotional Health.

  • Headaches after reading
  • Emotional, irritable, anxious without an apparent cause
  • Fearful away from home
  • Avoids age-appropriate activities like swings, slides, bike riding
  • Struggles to remember what just heard
  • Falls walking up the stairs for no apparent reason
  • Walks on toes
  • Holds tightly to someone’s hand while walking
  • Writes or reads with an unusual posture
  • Sounds cause distress

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How Toddler’s Behaviors and Emotions Speak Loudly about Visual Difficulties

Rarely do parents learn how toddlers’ emotions and behaviors are affected by visual processing difficulties. Professionals and doctors ask about behaviors associated with delayed visual-motor skills, speech, or even lack of eye contact. However, these areas of development are affected by visual acuity (20/20 eyesight), eye health, and the development of visual processing skills. 

How to Encourage Eye Movement Skills in Toddlers

Have you ever thought about watching your toddler’s eye movements during purposeful play? When my now young adults were toddlers, I looked at the pictures in the book with them. Once they could sit up, they often sat in my lap leaning against me. Other times, I sat near them with my focus on the toy. Oh how I wished I had known how to encourage eye movement skills in toddlers, also called visual processing skills.

How to Encourage & Observe Baby’s Eye Movements

From the moment of birth, babies start to develop eye movement skills by listening and watching. While your baby moves, sits, or cuddles in your arms, their eyes need to work together to keep their vision clear and single. Over time, eyes learn to work together resulting in instinctive movements, motor coordination, awareness of space between the eyes and an object. Equally important, when what is seen syncs up with what is heard, your baby develops speech. 

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FDA Statement On AIT

"Auditory Integration Training remediateds impairments in auditory discrimination (sound sensitivity and auditory distortion) associated with Autism, Learning Disabilities, and related disorders - ADD, ADHD, CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Deficits), SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), Dyslexia."