Discussing Autism

Many children with autism, SPD, and ADHD also have an underline disorder of visual processing disorder that is often missed and even misdiagnosed. I have heard parents in my Special Needs playgroup tell me that their Occupational Therapist’s respond to them with comments like “oh, he just sees things differently” or “that is part of his Autism Disability”. However, if a Visual Processing disorder goes undiagnosed a child misses out on an entire different set of teaching strategies and interventions that can be utilized both at home and at school.

To quote my favorite SPD parent, Did you know, statistics say about 80% of our SPD kiddos will also have VISUAL and/or AUDITORY processing deficits? Yes it’s true… 80%! That is a huge number! Additionally, according to Patricia S. Lemer, M.Ed,. NCC, Executive Director, Developmental Delay Registry, “Vision plays a major role in language and social–emotional development. Children with language delays, attention deficits, pervasive developmental disorders and autism all have inefficient visual systems. If a toddler is not speaking or relating to others, a vision evaluation is essential. Given this information, it is something that we as professionals and/or parents should be acutely aware of.

Because we just recently pinpointed AJ’s Visual Processing Disorder via an outside evaluation we are also just starting to learn exactly how it affects him. Sure, we knew that he had some visual issues; his far sightedness, his hypersensitivity to lights, fast paced television shows, sunlight, etc, his inability to label colors and correctly track while counting, his clumsiness and lack of tracking and coordinating body movements with objects, and his disorientation in large crowds or when trying to find objects when they are in “junk drawers”.

The key to having a visual processing disorder detected is to see a specialist, an expert in central visual impairments, or a neurologist because an eye doctor can often miss signs like visual tracking, crossing the midline (with the eyes), fluidity, and may not even test your child’s reading or writing ability and may miss the flipping of letters such as b’s and d’s, p’s and q’s, and the also common 3 and E. (Read this for three common tests to do at home)

But what are the symptoms of Visual Processing?
When the brain is not processing visual input correctly the body tries to compensate by fidgeting, acting out, being disruptive or often defensive. You may see poor handwriting, slowness and difficulty reading, failure and frustration when trying to finish work, slouching in the sear, leaning head into hands, covering one eyes or rubbing both, or tapping toes or fingers. These children may also have trouble with gross or fine motor skills.

What are the problems your child will face?
1. Visual Discrimination: problems identifying color, form, shape, size, position and where an object is in its environment. Difficulty gathering information from graphs, charts, and pictures and recognize shapes, letters, or objects when there is a background.

2. Visual Closure: Inability to identify or recognize a symbol or object when the entire object is not there. For example, AJ can not tell me what is missing from a face if the nose is not there.

3. Object recognition: Inability to recognize familiar objects. Some researchers believe that this is due to visual memory or that the child may not be able to see the object as a whole. This can interfere with the child’s ability to consistently recognize colors, shapes, letters and words.

4. Whole/Part Relationships: Inability to recognize either the whole object or parts of the object. ie: the child may be able to memorize the entire word but not be able to identify the letters within the word.

5. Other areas: Fine motor skills, gross motor skills, spacial relations, and identifying objects in space (playing ball or seeing a table that matches the background).

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