Elisa's Journal

This summer, I had the three youngest kids screened by a developmental optometrist, and they call had deficits--not in visual acuity so much as eye teaming, visual perceptual skills, visual motor integration, etc. I read somewhere that many kids labeled with ADHD actually have problems like this, especially convergence insufficiency, where one or both eyes can't maintain a teaming position for very long. When I asked my world-famous ophthalmologist relatives if all ADHD kids should be screened this way, they told me "No, we think every school-aged child should be screened by a developmental optometrist." They said even small visual processing and teaming deficits can lead to huge problems in learning or bigger struggles for gifted children to make good grades. As it turns out, my eldest boy's reading speed was about a 1st grade level because he consciously had to pull his right eye inward to team with the left one, then it would stray outward, breaking his binocular vision, then he would pull it in again, etc. After the first series of vision therapy exercises, he's quadrupled his reading speed! I'm a believer! Hopefully, this is the bulk of his problems iwth reading comprehension and dysgraphia. Only 26 more sessions to go!

On the lighter side, they've been remodeling my neighborhood Kroger. It looks really nice. Last week they started putting up beefy new poles for the handicap parking signs, which I pointed out to my youngest, Annika: "Look Sweetie, they're putting up nice new poles in the handicap spots." She looked alittle puzzled, then a light of sudden cognition sparked in her eyes and she asked, "So, they grab on to those poles to help them get out of their cars?" I guess at times, our kids know less than we think they do , but as they grow older, they know more than we want them to.

Posted by elisa at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always have mixed feelings about this time of year. On the one hand, I love having my babies around and I enjoy missing out on the homework hour from Hell. Plus, this is my first year after several that I have no one to homeschool. What the heck will I do with all that time? On the other hand, I can't wait to get them out from underfoot. The messy rooms strewn pillar to post with questionable scientific experiments, the occasional whining to go to this place or that, the pressure to squeeze in as much entertainment as humanly possible into those 10-12 weeks. I pant as we speak. I'll have to say, I've never seen the kids more excited about starting school before. The two boys start 8th and 11th at a charter school, new to both of them. The youngest girl starts middle school. No more elementary school dioramas and macaroni artwork. I asked Annika if she was alittle nervous about starting 6th, and she claims not. But when I tucked her in the night before the first school day, she was sound asleep, clutching onto her favorite stuffed horse, Flicka. She's had it since she was two, as anyone could tell from its appearance (it looks like it's been dragged through a McCormick Reaper, a wood chipper, a mine field, and then attacked by a swarm of rabid moths.) She hasn't paid much attention to Flicka for the last couple of years, having apparently shed all things childish in her old age, but she obviously saw the need to pull it out from her disaster area closet, dust it off, and cling it to her chest THAT night. The oldest girl graduated from college this summer and is now preparing for the med school admissions test, the MCAT. We see her wakling around in a zombie trance every once in awhile, all pale with bloodshot eyes, but we try to steer clear lest those eyes shoot daggers at us. Kinda cranky lately. The next oldest girl is still enjoying her summer before starting back to college in the next couple of weeks. She's had the thankless task of mulching our front and back yard--no picnic in this 98 degree 300% humidity weather, but I can't say she's been very diligent about it. Sure, it's a challenge picking that small window of opportunity between the peak scorch factor and the nightly mosquito block party, but her social life takes the front seat. The other day, she was all dressed up to go out and, with purse slung across her shoulder, picking her way through flowerbeds in 4 inch heels, she was shoveling a few wheelbarrows of mulch into place. Today, she finally finished. I'm sure the neighbors are grateful not to have to weave and bob around a mountain of mulch anymore.

Posted by elisa at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are so many questions I cannot answer in life, like where's the donkey in Donkey Kong and why doesn't Sarah Jessica Parker get that damn fleshy growth removed so I can stop staring at it in all her movies. But there is one question I can categorically say I know the answer to: Am I ready for the kids to go back to school? A big fat YEP. The incidence of nagging, begging and "I'm booooorrrreeeedd" have reached an all time zenith and my thighs have expanded to the size of tree trunks thanks to frequent visits to fast food joints and vacation-related dietary lapses. Plus, Lukas was tellling me about the time he and I went shopping for "Christmas Reefs" so I guess he still needs alittle work done in the hands of Spring Branch ISD. I've been alittle nervous about my homeschooler returning to public school after a 3-year absence. But my fears were dismissed when I picked him up from the airport at 1:32 AM today. He went (by himself) to Sacramento to attend a National Teen Leadership Conference. Even made the 27-minute connection in Phoenix and everything! (I was almost certain I'd receive a call from him from some satellite phone deep in the jungles of the Congo asking to be picked up.) He made loads of close friends, was able to navigate around a college campus without missing a lick, and, out of 200 attendees, was one of the 8 who received awards! He learned all sorts of leadership and communication skills and led his gang through many a fun pranks. So I guess we're all ready for friends and routines and (gulp) homework.

Posted by elisa at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)