Jillian's Story by Robin Benoit

Author:Robin Benoit [Robin Benoit and Jillian Benoit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-612548-11-1
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Jillian began vision therapy (VT) on the Monday before Thanksgiving. I didn’t know then exactly how thankful we would be for VT. The only opening was on Tuesdays from 12:15 to 1:15. Jillian’s teacher and the school administrators were fantastic. They agreed to let me take her out of math ten minutes early every Tuesday, miss lunch, and return about ten minutes late for music.

So this became our regular routine. I would either pack a peanut butter sandwich lunch from home or drive through McDonald’s, eating lunch in the car as we drove to VT. Lindsey Hebert asked that I sit in on each appointment as it would help me see what Jillian needed to do in her at-home practice sessions five nights a week.

Jillian really embraced the idea of vision therapy. Looking back, I think she knew she needed help in some way. She knew that schoolwork was harder for her than most others in her class; she recognized that it took her longer to complete assignments and complained that her sister was finished with homework much more quickly than she was.

She had commented to me that she wished her teacher wouldn’t hang up her drawings or stories because her picture or handwriting was not as pretty as the other students’. It seemed like a relief to her that there was a program available with someone trained especially to help with vision issues.

“I like Ms. Lindsey. She is so sweet. Sometimes I’m not very sweet back, though. I get cranky because the exercises make my head hurt or make me nauseous. But, that’s just sometimes. I like jumping on the trampoline, playing with the ball on the string, the puppets, and putting golf tees in holes.”

Jillian picked out a blue folder in which to keep all of her written VT material. She decorated it with her favorite stickers. Every week, Lindsey sent home Jillian’s assignments with an explanation of how to do the exercise. We put a check mark next to the exercise every day that we did vision therapy.

Lindsey awarded Jillian points for every exercise she did in her office, plus those from her home assignments. The top sheet on Jillian’s file was a points tracker. At the end of each session, Jillian colored in her points for that day on the bar graph. She used a different color each week, which gave us a vivid picture of how she was doing.

The points tracker was a good motivation tool. It clearly identified weeks that she didn’t do VT at home for at least four or five days, due to trips, illness, or an overload of school homework. If she didn’t get to color in very many points, she would make up for it the next week.

The other outstanding motivation related to the points tracker, was the prize box, to which Jillian could earn a trip every few weeks. Jillian loved picking out a fun toy or small craft from the box as a fun and special reward for her hard work.

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