When my son was in year 3 in school he was unable to form letters or numbers . His school provided him with a laptop as his spellings were good but they did not think he was able to write and the OT the school had provided said that the law only requires a child to be able to sign his name BUT I had big dreams for my son , i believed he will be able to write . Now as a teenager his hand writing is neat and nice and he loves writing stories .
At first I had purchased different tracking activities but quickly realised that my son was unable to follow the templates as his focus , tracking and eye teaming were very poor . After working with a vision therapist here are my recommendations.
Here are my 5 tips :
- Working on the primitive reflexes is a game changer . Primitive reflexes : We all have active neurological reflexes present in our central nervous system , those enable us to function as we do in a day to day life . We are born ,with a number of primitive reflexes, and those facilitate our development in the womb and make it possible for us to undergo the natural birthing process as well as stimulating our natural development during our early life . They are tested at birth , and when present , indicate that the neurological development in the womb is as it should be . After that, they hang around until we reach certain developmental milestones , such as smiling for the first time or taking the first step, and are able to to perform normal infantile movements in the correct manner . Once we reach that stage , they have no further play in our life and our brains inhibits or removes them from our central nervous system . As the primitive reflexes are inhibited or removed , they are replaced by postural neurological reflexes, which remain active in our central nervous system for the rest of our lives, ensuring that we can undertake normal daily movement patterns. BUT when these primitive reflexes stay from some reason or other in our central nervous system they are a BARRIER TO NORMAL DEVELOPMENT. some of the symptoms include : *Difficulty with visual tracking and crossing the midline.
- Difficulty with reading and following a line of text. easily losing their place when reading.
- Difficulty reading small print.
- Double vision.
- poor listening skills.
- poor handwriting and difficulty coping written script.
- difficulty with spelling.
- poor hand eye coordination.
- impulsive and emotionally immature for their age.
Activities for crossing the mid line.
Gross motor activities.
Fine motor activities