Reading Sight Words – Visual Processing
A common problem with Cerebral Palsy is visual processing. Visual processing is the process of the brain taking in what it sees and turning that into information the brain can use. Additionally the brain will organize the information as it processes the intake. Haley has a visual processing disorder. It is not sever but she has been tested in a number of various scenarios and definitely had difficulty processing information. When she was younger this manifested itself when she was trying to navigate a room or find a toy. As a six year old in first grade these things are not as hard for her but she still has issues for instance we had a teach conference today and they said she can’t seem to find her snack on a daily basis in her desk. To see inside her desk she has to lean over (concentrating on balance), look into her desk sidways, and process everything. We as parents made a few suggestions to either find a desk where the top opens or use a basket that Haley can look in and see. Truthfully I’m very happy that the teacher and para-pro were so observant to see the difficulty she has been having with this seemingly easy task.
There was a topic my wife had been concerned about. Haley will revers her b’s and d’s and of course with my Dyslexia that can be a concern. I have been less concerned about it because I don’t see her struggling with it she just still get confused and I figured it was age appropriate. The teachers agreed. The bigger problem we all have seen is the difficulty she has with reading “sight words” Sight word are words that need to be memorized. The problem is that when Haley looks at the word she doesn’t always fully process what she is seeing. This is explicitly true at the end of the day when she is tired.
I think I’ve mentioned previously in this blog that Haley is an extremely talented auditory learner. She learned to crawl up the stairs by talking her self through it. Hand, Hand, Knee, Knee, Foot, Foot. Haley already knows all the letter sounds and most the letter combination sounds too but if she doesn’t see the letter because she hasn’t processed whats there she can’t read the words. So the other night I suggested Haley read each letter out loud to us before guessing at the word. As she does this her rate of learning the sight words has increased tremendously and we don’t have her guessing what a word is anymore. Yeah Success! Small steps make big progress over time.
