[00:00:00] Lisa Chimento: If you have a child with photographic memory, flashcards are fine. Otherwise, they are generally ineffective as a teaching tool. They’re a great review tool after something has been learned, but to teach, it’s not going to work.

[music]

[00:00:21] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this very special episode of The Demme Learning Show. If you joined us last week for our conversation with Dr. Karen Halinga, we are continuing this conversation. This is part two of a four-part enterprise. Today, I have asked my wonderful colleague, Lisa Chimento, whom you’ll hear from shortly, to join me to talk about the things that she sees in the diagnostic process with families because we are talking about an epidemic. We are talking today about navigating students’ academic challenges. I have been at Demme Learning for 12 years, and the number and complexity of kids with issues has done nothing but grow year over year.

Now, I know for a fact that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I will also tell you straight up that these devices are not serving your children well. Just because I’m holding a phone in my hand doesn’t mean that your iPad isn’t equally guilty. It’s important for you all to recognize what we are telling you today is, listen to your instincts, listen to your gut, because your gut is accurate. If something doesn’t look right with your student, it’s not right. We want to be here to help you understand the pathway to make it right. I’m excited today to have this conversation with Lisa.

We have both been in the mitten drinnen, as my German father used to say, the dead middle of placement season. Lisa has been harried with the number of families that she has spoken to. I have spoken with many families. I think we can both speak for our colleague Amanda Capps to say, we’re seeing more and more kids with more and more challenges, and the solution isn’t just to offer kids a label of a diagnosis. We want to be able to help you be successful. Lisa, I’m going to let you introduce yourself, and then we’ll get into the meat of this matter.

[00:02:34] Lisa: I’m Lisa Chimento. I am a placement and support specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been with the company for nearly 10 years. Amanda Capps, as Gretchen mentioned, is the other placement specialist here, and she’s correct. We are in the middle of a busy season. It’s a bit of August madness, I guess you’d call it. [chuckles] When I started with the company 10 years ago, I was astonished at what I was learning, with families approaching us with different learning challenges that they were trying to navigate with their children. I had so much to learn.

I’m so grateful to you, Gretchen, for what you’ve shared with me and taught me. Dr. Karen Halinga has been very instrumental in helping me to learn. She’s such a brilliant lady. I’m so glad that you interviewed her a couple of weeks ago. That’s going to be so helpful, too. Anyway, I homeschooled my four children for 25 years. They are all adults now and out on their own. My husband and I live in Florida, and this is what we’re doing.

[laughter]

[00:03:44] Gretchen: One of the things I think that’s important for us to set at the outset is to recognize that the diagnostics that are coming through school systems are increasing. The people who are giving the labels, I don’t want to cast aspersions, but they’re not always qualified to give those labels. The challenge that we have is the business of the dyses, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, have become enterprise in many school districts. I don’t want you as a parent to have those diagnoses and then say, “Oh, that’s why my child cannot learn.” You may need a different path forward, but it does not mean that your child does not have the capacity to learn.

I can say that because I come from a place of having had two children, one who had a profound diagnosis and one who had a mild diagnosis. By the time I got to those kids, I got pretty smart. We have the capacity to figure out what kids need and then help deliver on that. Lisa, I have asked you to come here today to talk about your experiences. What are you seeing with some consistency with parents who come to you with children who their diagnostics to enter into a demi-learning product aren’t straightforward?

[00:05:21] Lisa: As you said, I’m not a diagnostician, I’m not a PhD, I’m not a neuropsychologist, I’m not an expert in these fields, but it appears that a lot of kids are getting diagnoses based on how they’re presenting. I like the word that you used in the title of this talk, the signals that people are seeing. If children are giving certain signals in their math skills or lack thereof, then they’re getting diagnosed with dyscalculia where it may be something else. It may be that what they’re seeing is a symptom of a different issue. For instance, it’s a very, very common thing that we’re finding that children are getting out of first grade, and they haven’t learned their facts by heart.

It creates this domino effect because they don’t know their facts by heart. Then when they get into multi-digit, multi-step problems, that lack of fact mastery means they’re being constantly interrupted. Their focus is interrupted within a single math problem. If, say, it’s a four-digit minus three-digit subtraction problem, that involves regrouping, borrowing. Every time they have to compute the facts between two numbers, their head comes off the page, and they’re off looking for that fact.

Okay, got the answer because it’s a valid way to get the correct answer. They can count. They can count on their fingers. They can count up in their head. They can tap on the table or use tally marks or whatever. Then they get their answer, but they’ve just interrupted their focus. Then they come back to the problem, and they try to find their place. Sometimes they’ve lost their place. Then they’re presented with the next set of numbers, and they’re off again. It’s an in-and-out, in-and-out issue. Then it will look like they can’t understand these higher-level concepts, and that’s not the case. The problem was their focus was being interrupted the entire time they were working on it. Then it just gets worse.

As the work becomes more complex, that focus interruption happens more often, and it affects it in a more negative way. Then it looks like, oh, my child has a math learning challenge, when what was really happening was because math is such a naturally sequential topic, and they have a gap in a foundational skill, it’s sort of this– what’s the word? A cascade effect, if you will. It’s affecting everything that comes after it. It’s not because they can’t understand the math; it’s because there’s a gap in a foundational skill. We’re trying to navigate through all of this. Part of the problem is because of the way things are being taught in many grade-based programs now, and it’s almost creating misdiagnoses.

We’re trying to be sensitive to that. As you said, I don’t want to be contradicting professionals, but I don’t know if they’re aware that there could be other things going on that maybe haven’t been pulled into the equation to investigate. Is that child counting for facts? Let’s consider the effect that that can have and how heavy a factor that might be in the whole situation. The other thing is there might not be that learning challenge, but there might be something else going on, and we’ll talk more about that going forward.

[00:08:53] Gretchen: The other thing I think that is important to say at the outset is there may be people in our audience who are listening to us today, and they’re saying, but I count for my facts. There’s a huge difference between you as an adult counting for your facts and your student counting for facts because you as the adult have a fully developed prefrontal cortex and the persistency to stay engaged until you get to the end of the problem. Your children do not have that wherewithal, and so we’ve got to make the process easier so that they can stay engaged.

Lisa, in preparation for this, you did an enormous amount of work. I wonder if you could maybe begin by sharing some of these stories, some of these things that you have seen that have led you down this path. I dragged you down this path years ago. I said, “Come follow me,” and so here we are today. Nevertheless, if you could talk about some of these situations. Maybe parents can do as we say, fit themselves in the frame, and see this is not uncommon.

[00:10:10] Lisa: I found quite a few of them, but I brought out a couple for us to possibly discuss today. One of the things that I have learned is that it’s a really good idea to listen to parents because they know their children. Especially if they’ve been homeschooling and they’re with them all the time, then they’re seeing upfront and close what kinds of behaviors are going on while that child is trying to learn. It helps me to begin to give them a series of questions and listen to the answer. One of them was an 11-year-old. I’m not mentioning any names, and I’m not even going to mention the sex of the child.

This was an 11-year-old student struggling with math. Now, mind you, because we do have language arts courses, but Math-U-See is our biggest product. Most of the people who are calling in are asking about math placement. Mom was seeking a new math curriculum. In my questioning, she mentioned that her child counts on their fingers to compute addition and subtraction facts. That led me down one path. Then I asked, how are they doing in their other subjects? Then she started sharing all of this stuff. She said they’re struggling in all subjects. She was considering doing an evaluation to determine if there were learning disabilities. Then I began asking more targeted questions.

Mom mentioned that the student, 11 years old, is flipping numbers and letters and will look at a word when they’re reading, see the first letter, and then take a guess at the word instead of trying to read that word. Interspersing upper and lowercase when they’re writing. There was not a good sense of space between words when writing a sentence. They were jamming their words together. She used the word smushing it on a line. She said they didn’t seem to have a good sense of how much space they had.

If they got to the end of a line and had a longish word to write, then they would smush the word at the end of the line to try to fit it, or they’d end up going sideways down the edge of the page. That the student was running their finger under words as they were reading because it was hard to keep track of. They were losing the place on the page and getting overwhelmed if they saw a whole paragraph at a time, even if the words in that paragraph they were able to read. Just the idea of looking at that whole paragraph of words was causing stress. She mentioned that the student would sometimes skip small words when reading.

I began to share about binocular vision dysfunction, which is this situation that has become quite prevalent. I’m having this kind of a conversation with parents roughly 10 times a week now. Sometimes it’s with parents who already have diagnoses. They’ve been somewhere, they’ve done evaluations, and they come to me, “My child has ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia,” and it goes on and on. Then I start asking these questions, and vision has never been counted as a possibility. I don’t know if it’s because the diagnosticians aren’t aware of the possibility of a vision factor, or if they haven’t counted it as part of the process, but it is affecting children’s learning. That was one story.

Anyway, I sent her to the website that has the free screening questionnaire, and it confirmed. She went to a diagnostician, and they confirmed vision tracking issues. They began vision therapy. After a couple of months, Mom emailed me back and let me know that it was going really well, and she was already seeing really good progress.

[00:14:14] Gretchen: As our audience listens to us, it’s important that we are not a one-man band. What we are looking for is to be the careful arbiter of the things that you tell us. We are comparing that with the body of evidence that we have seen over a number of years. When we’re talking about eye movement disorders, we’re not talking about whether your child can see 20-20. We are talking about the point at which your child’s eyes begin to fail to work together properly. If that is even the smallest amount prevalent, it looks and behaves exactly like dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyslexia, but it has an organic cause.

I’ve often had parents say to me, “My pediatrician says my child’s vision is fine.” Dr. Halinga talked a little bit about this in our webinar last week. We’ll link backwards to that webinar so that you all can see this for yourself. Basically, to recap for those of you who did not join us last week, when an optician examines you for glasses, and of course, Lisa and I are both sitting here wearing glasses, they look at one eye and then the other eye. Then, when they pull everything back and they look at both eyes together, I want you to think if you’ve had a vision exam, how long that both eyes together lasts. Usually, it’s less than two minutes.

What we’re talking about is the cooperation of your eyes working together over time. The faster it falls apart, the more you have challenges. Here’s something else that’s really important. In order for information to be retained long-term, your information has to come into your eyes. At some point, it has to cross the corpus callosum to be seated in your long-term memory. Many of you who are joining us today or who are listening to this webinar have kids that have a great day. Today was a great learning day, and then tomorrow, it’s as though today did not happen.

We are offering a reason for you to understand that when that information comes in but it doesn’t get properly slotted, that’s how that day disappears. Your child’s not trying to exasperate you. It’s the reality of the situation. Lisa, can you talk about the student who was very creative but had been trying all kinds of things to memorize facts? This is an important story because this kid was older. This child’s 12 years old when you had this conversation.

[00:17:19] Lisa: Of course, think about this. These years have been going by, and student and parent are working really hard. It’s not like they’re just forgetting about it, and then they’re attempting something at 12 years old. They’ve been working for years. This was a very creative child. Mom mentioned that they were counting whenever they had to add, subtract, multiply facts. They had tried everything known to a parent. Of course, flashcards is one of the first things that’s mentioned. I will mention this to anybody listening. If you have a child with photographic memory, flashcards are fine. Otherwise, they are generally ineffective as a teaching tool.

They’re a great review tool after something has been learned, but to teach, it’s not going to work. Like I said, unless you’ve got a highly visual child. They’ve been trying all these things. Then again, I start asking questions. Now, mind you, sometimes I ask these same questions, and the parent will say no. Then I’ll say, okay, then we’re ruling vision out as a factor, and it might be something else going on, and there’s a different set of questions that I might ask. In this case, I asked, the handwriting is probably where it shows up the most. If you have got a functional vision problem, an eye movement disorder, it really shows up in handwriting.

This child flips numbers and letters; they write very large, jamming words together, not leaving appropriate spacing between words. This was another one that Dr. Halinga taught me, writing from the line up. If you’re writing a number, a letter that requires a downstroke, a one, a T, something like that, for a child who is struggling visually, where things are moving on the page in their vision, to try to start from up here and then end at that line is really hard. They might come short of the line. They might pass through the line. What they do, because kids are smart and they find strategies that work for them, they’ll start from the line and go up.

I just talked to a mom today who said her child was writing Ss from the line up and 8s from the line up. That’s a smart strategy, but you have to recognize for these kids, that’s their normal. This is what they are living with, so they’re learning to adapt and find strategies that work for them so that they can have some kind of success in their work. Anyway, I referred this mom to the covd.org screening questionnaire as well. Those letters stand for the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. It has nothing to do with COVID, but I think they’ve rebranded themselves OVDRA, but the website address is still the same as far as I know.

She went, and of course, the child was answering yes to all of those questions. She went and found a developmental optometrist and got a diagnosis of convergence insufficiency. That’s one term that you might hear. Tracking issues are another one. We’ll see a couple more that come up going forward too.

[00:20:32] Gretchen: At this point, it’s also important for parents to understand this is not always the answer. There is no one singular answer. The answers are as unique as your children’s fingerprints. However, if you have tried multiple solutions, Dr. Halinga said last week, a child who is not a fully emerged reader by the age of eight is going to struggle. What she means by fully emerged reader is a child who is reading chapter books. Where we often see kids and their challenges arise is when books go from a 14 font, which is where Dr. Seuss is, or a 16 font, down to a 12 or a 10 font in something like Little House on the Prairie.

All of a sudden, the child who could make it work can’t make it work anymore because there’s too much stuff on the page. That’s what you’re seeing. In the process of exploring what is going aside or awry, what we’re seeking to do here is to increase your knowledge as a parent so that you can be observational. I watched a young man two weeks ago who was reading. He’s old enough to be able to read this way, but he reads like this.

Lisa: Looking out of one eye.

Gretchen: Yes. The reason is because, long story short, his brain has turned off the tracking to one of his eyes. He has struggled for so long that his left eye no longer sees appropriately. He’s doing everything that he needs to do with one eye. What that also means is he’s inordinately clumsy. His mom said, “He walks into door frames all the time.” Yes, you would if you only had one eye that was functionally working. There are ways back from this, but it’s important to recognize that we as parents need to be very intentional. I want you to hear my heart when I say this. Just because your child has a diagnosis of dyslexia does not mean that they can’t learn.

I have a 27-year-old who was told by diagnosticians at the age of eight that he was not college material. In fact, in front of my child, these people said, “Don’t bother to send him to college. He won’t make it.” He has a degree in computer science; he owns his own business; he’s extremely successful in what he does. He is a contributing member of the community. He is part of the local Chamber of Commerce. In fact, he is the head of the Young Entrepreneurs for the Chamber of Commerce. If we had listened to those diagnosticians, I’m not sure where he would be today. The only reason I tell you my personal story is I want you to know my heart hears you when you hear that diagnosis, and the German in me stands up and says, “I don’t have to listen to everything that’s spoken over my child. I want you to recognize that as well. Lisa, you have a younger child that you had mentioned as one of the children that you have dealt with recently. Can you talk about that?

[00:24:26] Lisa: Yes. Another story of a nine-year-old, fourth-grader. Mom called to report that that child had good understanding of place value and even knew the procedures for regrouping with multi-digit addition and subtraction. They could carry and borrow, but was still counting to compute facts and struggling to remember spelling words. I started asking the reading questions. Are they skipping over small words? Do they get to the end of a line and reread the same line or skip a line? Are they using their finger or piece of paper? What’s the reading comprehension like? That’s another big one.

This one makes my heart hurt because they’ll get poor reading comprehensions as if that child can’t understand what they’re reading. If there is a vision problem, it has nothing to do with their intelligence or ability to understand. It’s just that their eyes are working so hard to see the words on the page and read them correctly that their brain can’t possibly be thinking of the content of what they’re reading. That’s another big one that will show up with their reading, that they’re being scored very poorly on reading comprehension. This child was showing all of the handwriting presentation. I recommended her to the covd.org website. It recommended that she see a developmental optometrist.

She made an appointment, and her child was diagnosed with saccadic eye movement disorder and had started vision therapy. You might want to go. You know that term very well. [laughs]

[00:26:09] Gretchen: One of my children is a research biologist. She does very intensive work, very vision-focused work, what she does. She works with arrays of 256 little tiny things like this that she has to put a singular drop in. For years, she had had migraine headaches. As an adult, the root cause of her migraine headaches were the fact that her eyes tracked together but not on the same plane. Being able to pull her eyes into the same plane reduced the incidence of migraines for her by half. In fact, she went from four migraine preventative medications to one in the year that she wore prism glasses that helped pull her eyes into the same plane.

Lisa, can you talk to us now a little bit about when a parent gives you some ideas and says, “My child has a diagnosis of dyslexia,” or “I believe dyslexia is present in my child,” or “I’m waiting to have my child evaluated for dyslexia.” What are some of the things that parents would see that may point them in that direction?

[00:27:38] Lisa: These are questions that I also ask because like I said, it’s not always a vision thing. Sometimes it is dyslexia. Some of the clues to that are that difficulty with the letter-to-sound correspondence because dyslexia is an auditory processing issue. It’s going to show up in those kinds of things. An inability to rhyme. You could give a very simple one-syllable word to your child and ask if they can give you a rhyming word, and they would have a hard time with that. You could give your child a multi-syllable word and say, “Let’s clap out the syllables, basketball,” and they would not be able to hear those syllables.

Very often, what I’ve heard from parents of dyslexic children is that they’ll avoid being read to. They prefer to do the reading themselves, maybe, or don’t want to read at all, and they’ll avoid even audiobooks. The mispronunciation of words is another one that will happen. A couple of other interesting and maybe seemingly odd things that will show up with a dyslexic child, they’ll sometimes have difficulty with pencil grip.

[00:28:48] Gretchen: You’ll see this. Let me see if I can do this because I’m left-handed, but I’m trying to show you all right-handed. You’ll see the thumb is very pushed far forward. When a child holds a pencil like this, they very quickly become fatigued because you’re putting the hand muscles into a position that they can’t sustain.

[00:29:12] Lisa: That’s not comfortable, and it starts to cramp. Sure. They also struggle with finding– that word retrieval process of where they know what they want to say and can’t find those words. Another one is, it’s not often, probably, but it will sometimes be accompanied by speech delays or hearing impairment. We are dealing with, generally, and for the most part, auditory processing issues. Those will tend to point. Sometimes, a child will have both. They will have dyslexia, and they will have a vision issue, but they are causing different problems. It’s important for parents to be aware of these things so that they can determine what thing is causing these different issues. Then, because vision can be more quickly, I can say, corrected. Dyslexia is a developmental issue. It can be worked with over time, and students can absolutely gain great ground and do very, very well. With vision, we’re talking about a more quickly resolved problem if it is a problem. If you can see a developmental optometrist, and they either prescribe some sort of corrective lenses, like a prism or vision therapy, then you’re seeing correction in much shorter order.

[00:30:36] Gretchen: The other thing I think that’s important is because we’re not diagnosticians, we’ve just been in the trenches alongside families for a number of years here. It’s important to recognize that you can have a dyslexia diagnosis and binocular vision dysfunction or eye-teaming issues. Both of my children who have dyslexia diagnoses had vision function issues. One was acute, one was mild, one had to be remediated before he could even begin to learn to read, and one didn’t present with any kind of vision issues until puberty. I’ll be honest, with that kid, I blamed this thing. I said to him, “Get off your phone. This is a phone problem; get off your phone.”

It wasn’t until we were at home together through the joys and auspices of being trapped by COVID that he listened to me do diagnostics over the phone with families, and he came walking into my office, and he said, “You know that survey you have people take?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I scored very high on that survey.” I have to admit to you all, I was not June Cleaver in that moment. I said, “You did not. You’re just looking to get out of something. Bring me the piece of paper.” When he brought me the paper, indeed, he did have vision issues. Now, he knows that we’re having this conversation today. We talked about it briefly at dinner last night.

He said, “Mom, you’ve got to tell parents that we want to learn, we want to succeed academically, and we don’t know why we’re not succeeding. The only conclusion we can draw is that we’re stupid.” He said, “I knew I wasn’t stupid. I was just frustrated and didn’t know how to tell you.”

[00:32:37] Lisa: People are working very hard. The problem is your child is probably not going to come to you and say, “I’m having these issues with my eyes,” because that’s their normal. That’s what they’ve been experiencing for years, possibly, and they don’t know anything else. You can look for the clues. I had a student here once. His mom was thinking of homeschooling him, and she wanted me to do a math assessment. I had him come here to my house, and I watched him working. He put his pencil down after doing every problem and rubbed his eyes, and then picked it up and did the next problem, and rubbing his eyes, and rubbing his eyes. His eyes were all red.

I asked him, “Are your eyes burning? Are they itchy?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Take a break.” I gave him a break. Then he went back, but the same thing was continuing. As I’m watching him work, he’s writing diagonally up the page. I thought, “Okay, there is my second clue.” [chuckles] Then I’m looking at his work, and he’s got flipped numbers. His numbers are forwards, backwards. His columns were all out of order as he was writing. Then after he finished, I called his mother on the phone, and then I started to ask the questions about reading. I asked working memory issues. He didn’t have his facts. Then I told her about possible vision.

She went to her pediatrician, and he said, “That’s not a thing.” Then I said, “I hate to disagree with a professional, but it is a thing, and we’re seeing it every day. Please follow up on this.”

[00:34:11] Gretchen: There is a contingent of people who will say that that’s not a thing. My rejoinder is, then explain to me why we’re seeing more and more kids diagnosed with dyslexia. Someone said to me just three weeks ago, “That’s because the diagnostic tools are better.” That is true. We do have a greater understanding of what dyslexia is, but that doesn’t mean that that diagnosis should be the destination. It just is a signal to you that you have to figure out how to modify what you’re doing to help your child be successful. Lisa, in these closing minutes, what thoughts would you like to leave our audience with?

[00:34:56] Lisa: It’s an amazing thing. The past couple of weeks, because we are smack dab in the middle of busy season, we’re getting lots and lots of calls.

[00:35:07] Gretchen: Of course, I ask you to step out and have this conversation with me, but it’s because we’re seeing so much of this happening right now.

[00:35:13] Lisa: Yes, we really are. There have been a lot of recent calls. One happened about two weeks ago, and it was an interesting one, a mom of a 12-year-old child who’s been struggling, working so hard for years, but struggling with math, with reading, with spelling, with handwriting, and working memory. I asked all the questions.

It’s such an interesting thing because I’m on the phone with these people, and I can hear the gasps in my ear, and then I hear, “Yes, how did you know?” She did the screening questionnaire, and it came up yes, and she called a local– while we were talking, she said, “Oh my gosh, I just realized my older child had the same thing going on, but it was years before.”

She had just forgotten, but her older child had been struggling early on, had a vision diagnosis, went through vision therapy, and that child is doing great. I don’t know if she said that student was in high school or college now, reads like crazy, is doing wonderfully. She hadn’t made the connection between the two children, and here it was, the second child was going through the same exact thing. She started to cry on the phone. Broke my heart because I could hear what they’d been doing, and they were working so hard and running into the same roadblock over and over again. I said, “Let’s take down that brick wall. Give them a call.”

She went to the same vision therapist that her older child had gone to and called them, and they made an appointment, but she wasn’t going to be able to get in for several months. This mom, I’m so proud of her. I’m so impressed by her. She called that office every single day for the following two weeks, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a cancellation one day, and got her child in there, and they did the diagnosis, and they’re going to start the vision therapy. She’s so relieved, and I just love that.

If you’d have called [chuckles] a developmental optometrist’s office and you’re getting a delayed appointment, call every morning and see if they have cancellations and try to get in there and get it addressed as quickly as possible so that you can get your child back on track. Let’s help them get that situation resolved, and then we can work with you to help them gain ground because it’s going to be a game-changer for them to be able to work hard and then see the fruit of that work rather than working hard and not seeing any progress. That must be such a frustrating thing, and we want to try to reverse that.

[00:38:13] Gretchen: I also think it’s important for you all as parents to recognize that not all diagnosticians are created equally. You are looking for someone who’s going to collaborate with you. If someone says all of the therapy needs to be done in their office, they’re not necessarily the best fit. You’re looking for someone who’s going to set up a program that you can reinforce because what you’re doing is changing muscle structure. Muscles need to be worked regularly and consistently in order to have the benefit of that.

In this instance, it’s really important to find someone who’s going to collaborate with you and come alongside you to give you a program that you can implement at home and then check in on a weekly, biweekly basis in an office to make sure that you are continuing to make progress. You may have a child who has been through vision therapy, and puberty is a game-changer in so many ways. Sometimes you need to revisit the vision therapist when puberty arrives.

I know that one of my own children who went through vision therapy before puberty actually had to revisit his vision therapy exercises after puberty, because he recognized that he was becoming rapidly fatigued with the volume of information that he was reading at the high school level, and he said, “I need to return to doing those exercises.” It only took us a couple of months, but it’s a necessary thing for you to be able to stay on top of, and that is really important.

Lisa, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I can’t believe that I actually had the audacity to pull you away in the middle of diagnostic season for an hour to have this conversation, but I really am very grateful indeed that you wanted to have this conversation with me. I want to thank our audience for attending today. I want to thank you all for trusting us to come into your living room. We will be recording two additional conversations about this subject. I will be recording a conversation with our very own beloved Amanda Capps. Amanda is a placement specialist here at Demme Learning as well. She’s the mother of eight. God bless her. I always say it that way.

I’m the mother of six, but I spread mine over 20 years. She has eight in a much more concise timeframe than I did, and she’s still an active homeschooling mom. She has also had children with learning challenges. That recorded conversation is going to talk about being in the position of being the parent and recognizing something is not right and figuring out what you needed to do to fix it. Amanda has had a variety of kids with a variety of challenges, and not each solution has been the same either. I think it’ll be a very valuable conversation.

The last conversation in this series is with Dr. Rosalie Hopkins. She is a fellow of the College of Optometric and Vision Developmentalists that we spoke of earlier in the conversation. In the show notes, you will find references to all of these conversations. You will also find a reference to covd.org if you believe you have a child who perhaps has some vision issues and you need to see what to seek out next. Then last but not least, I want to tout the virtues of Lisa and Amanda. They have a wealth of experience in supporting you all and helping you. If I can help, please call the company and ask to speak to me or ask to speak to Lisa or Amanda.

I believe that you would receive valuable advice from any one of the three of us. Thank you for trusting us to come into your living rooms today. We appreciate you so much, and we don’t take it for granted that you’re willing to spend an hour with us today.

[00:42:26] Lisa: Thank you. Bye.

[00:42:27] Gretchen: Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.

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