It started subtly—the occasional complaint of words moving around on the page or struggling to line up the numbers in a math problem. I didn’t think much of it until I got the email from my daughter Beth’s math teacher stating that she was refusing to complete a project. It didn’t make any sense. This was a fun project that the kids normally enjoyed. It involved proportionally enlarging a cartoon to poster size using a grid system.
That evening at home, I questioned Beth about what happened. She explained that as she tried to transfer the material from one drawing to the other, she kept losing her place. As her frustration level rose, she completely gave up and refused to do the assignment.
Thinking she might need glasses, we visited the eye doctor. While her vision was 20/20, her eyes were not functioning properly, and we received a referral for vision therapy. She was evaluated on multiple areas including tracking, convergence, 3D manipulation and visualization, coordination and focusing by Dr. Christa Roser of Vision Therapy Associates.
The results were literally eye-opening; her eyes were significantly behind where they should have been developmentally.
What is vision therapy?
Our big question was, what exactly is vision therapy? While a routine visual screening looks at issues like clarity (20/20 vision) and diseases of the eyes, vision therapy deals with problems in how the eyes function in conjunction with how the brain processes the visual stimuli it receives.
Vision therapy may be used to treat the following:
- Focusing problems
- Eye movement issues
- Misalignment of the eyes
- Inefficient eye teaming
- Visual information processing disorders
These issues are often associated with specific symptoms. However, care must be exercised. According to occupational therapist Karen Graybill, “…young kids do not usually know they are having visual issues because what they see and how they see it is their ‘normal,’ and they do not know any different. Often, kids do not know, for example, that frequently losing their place or seeing double isn’t something other people experience! It is up to teachers and parents to recognize possible visual concerns and ask more questions about what the child is experiencing.”
Symptoms to watch for:
- Losing place or skipping words/rows of print
- Eye strain
- Fatigue or headache when reading or using a computer
- Squinting or closing one eye
- Double vision
- Print running together or blurring
- Letter, number or word reversals
- Poor hand-eye coordination
- Depth perception difficulties
- Struggling with remembering/comprehending reading material
How does it help?
Our next question was, can vision therapy help with the learning difficulties Beth was experiencing? According to Dr. Roser, “25% of school-age children have a vision issue impacting how they read and learn.” While most optometrists do not claim that vision therapy is a direct treatment for learning disabilities, it is focused on correcting visual problems that interfere with reading, learning and educational instruction. With close to 80% of learning being acquired through visual means, it’s reasonable to conclude that correcting vision issues might improve certain learning difficulties.
A plan was developed for addressing Beth’s visual weaknesses, and she came home with a bag of materials used for completing a variety of daily exercises. Weekly sessions with her eye care specialist were coupled with these at-home exercises. The exercises involved using specialized lenses and prisms, strengthening a weaker eye by covering the dominant eye with a patch, using a Brock string (a string with beads at various distances to strengthen convergence and divergence—the eyes’ ability to turn inward or outward while focusing on targets at different distances), tracking moving objects, solving problems by visualizing the steps involved, visually manipulating objects three-dimensionally and memorizing material by using visual mnemonics.
Beth’s progress was checked at her weekly therapy sessions, and the improvement was rapid and impressive. Beth’s not alone. Tim Miller, a seventh-grade science teacher, has this to say: “My daughter, who is now 24 years old, has endured the tribulations that go along with having a learning disability, as well as ADHD and Asperger’s. She benefitted greatly from the learning systems provided by vision therapy. It provided her with better focusing techniques and established a routine to attacking some reading difficulties often associated
with ADHD.”
Where do vision problems come from?
When asked about the impact of COVID on visual health, Dr. Roser replied, “The dramatic increase in screen time during the COVID pandemic has absolutely had a negative impact on the visual systems of children and adults. Extended time looking at screens causes eye strain and tunnel vision, which can affect overall visual functioning. We have even seen young people go cross-eyed from excessive screen time.”
With the potential for such significant vision problems, what can parents do to help avoid them? According to Dr. Roser, “Parents can prevent vision issues by encouraging good visual hygiene (monitoring working distance with near work, good lighting, taking breaks with near work and limiting screen time), and activities which promote the development of good visual skills. This includes playing outside (especially ball play), eye-hand coordination tasks such as coloring, dot-to-dot, mazes, hidden pictures, word searches, jacks, marbles, crafts and building with blocks of all sorts.”
While vision therapy might not help everyone, it proved to be extremely effective in helping resolve Beth’s issues. So, if your children are struggling and voice any of the above concerns, a visit to a local vision therapist might be greatly beneficial both for you and for them.
