Politics Post

I wanted to give a kudos to patriotmom76’s post today on Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. I don’t necessarily endorse any of her other posts. But this one has some good points:

“Do you know how hard it is to find someone who is not a total hypocrite on the life issue?”
- YES! Mr. Obama is definitely anti-baby. Mr. McCain has been playing the “pro-life” card, but he works very hard behind the scenes to keep pro-life issues from coming to his table and he has other anti-life credentials.

“The two parties have so much in common now I can hardly tell the difference. They both want to spend us into oblivion increasing our national debt. They have no intention of abolishing the income tax and federal reserve system. One party wants more war. One wants more welfare and higher taxes. How about no more wars, phasing out entitlements, restoring our Constitutional rights, letting the American people keep more of their own money, and getting the Federal Government out of every aspect of our lives? That sounds like a good plan to me.”
- AMEN, sister!

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I took this one seriously at first. Then, I started reading it. Rather humorous and sadly, too true in many aspects. Check out “Vote Republican or Democrat, Don’t Waste Your Vote on a Third Party” at Rileydad’s blog.

An Evaluation for Possible Vision Therapy

As I have written about previously, my oldest child has strabismus. She recently received progressive lenses which were hopefully going to help her see more clearly close up as well as continue to correct her eye alignment for farther away viewing. After getting the lenses installed over two weeks ago and a special educational and instructional session for us parents (so that we could help with tips on how to use them as needed), my evaluation is that she is doing the same as with the previous (single-vision) lenses.

In a candid conversation with my spouse several nights ago, our daughter asked, “Do you like to read?” When told that the answer was definitely “YES!“, she asked why. She then went on to explain that she no longer liked to read because she didn’t have the “patience” to try to read. This was a girl who was reading at a 2.8 reading level eight months ago.

Due to a question on a questionnaire for a doctor’s office, I tested her a few days ago with her new lenses to find that she was at the very minimum of the scale (1.2 grade level). We use the McCall-Crabbs book and I used Lesson A4. I gave her three minutes to read the small selection and answer as many questions as possible. She answered three of the eleven in the time allotted and I let her answer the rest without stopping her. She answered only one question correctly out of eleven (number four - past the time deadline). Zero correct is indicated at a 1.2 grade level – the lowest on the chart.

To further my knowledge-gathering, I had her sit back, close her eyes, and listen to me read the SAME selection again out loud. I asked her the very same eleven questions out loud and she got nine of them correct.

I repeated this test a couple days later with test A41 with similar results. Her coloring, despite how much time and patience she puts into it, is not getting any closer to being “in the lines.” When taking her turn at hitting the softball with her cousins at the farm, she was barely able to connect with even half the balls her next younger sibling did. I just can’t help but wonder if she is having trouble processing the signals her eyes are sending her and matching them to her movements.

After a consultation with our wonderful local eye doctor, we have an appointment in mid-September for an evaluation with a specialist to see if Child #1 would benefit from vision therapy. This doctor, whose office is about an hour and a half from our home, deals specifically with younger people, strabismus, and vision therapy. We have a myriad of forms to fill out and bring with us and it looks like it will be an expensive ordeal. But we both would like our child to have the bumps smoothed out of the road. We are disappointed that it takes so long to get in for the evaluation appointment, but time will fly by quickly enough. It could take up to four visits to determine a path to take and then up to a year for the therapy. I will write about it again when we have more information.