Chloe’s condition: Despite no detectable issues with her optical vision, she has difficulty maintaining visual attention and delayed visual reaction times since birth. As an infant, she was not interested in toys directly in front her. On the CVI spectrum, she has been assessed to be a 6-7 on the scale of 1-10 (with 10 being normal vision).
Physician: Dr. Christine Roman, Western Pennsylvania Hospital; Dr. Sandra Newcomb, University of Maryland; Dr. Anne Fulton, Neuro-Opthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital
Treatment: Strategies for her teachers to employ to reduce the complexity of her visual environment to improve attentiveness
Dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder)
Background info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispraxia
Chloe’s condition: Impaired coordination – “clumsiness” – in her gross motor skills. Delayed fine motor skills (e.g. writing, using buttons and zippers).
Physician: Dr. Beth Latimer, Pediatric Neurologist, Greater Washington Headache Center
Treatment: PT and OT with a variety of therapists and active exposure to sports (e.g. swimming, running) to the extent of her abilities
Delayed receptive and expressive language
Chloe’s condition: Delayed receptive language and severely delayed expressive language skills
Physician: Dr. Beth Latimer, Pediatric Neurologist, Greater Washington Headache Center; and a variety of private and school speech/language therapists
Treatment: Speech/language therapy; Metabolic cocktail (this is a liquid mixture of vitamins compounded at a pharmacy that, while not specifically target to improve speech/language, seems to have significantly improved Chloe’s amount of expressive language
