Vision Therapy Can Alleviate Learning Problems

If your child is having problems reading, finishing assignments or staying on task, your first thought may be that she has ADD or a learning disability. You may be considering getting a tutor, putting your child on Concerta or Ritalin or having some special education testing done, but there may be another possibility you haven't considered.

As a first grade teacher, I some times work with children who don't progress in reading no matter how many classroom and home interventions are tried. I refer these children to the reading therapy department at our school where their eyes are tested. I'm not talking about the traditional eye test where you cover one eye and read progressively smaller letters on each line of a chart. The tests aren't done to determine whether a child is far sighted or near sighted and in need of prescription eye glasses. Rather, these children are tested to see how their eyes track and how they work together.

According to the Cambridge Institute for Better Vision's website, "balanced visual functioning requires that eyes move easily from point to point and work together as a team, that the brain can effectively use peripheral vision and that the brain can easily process visual information".

Reading is a very complex process. A young reader is recalling sounds and putting them together to form a word (decoding or sounding out), trying to recognize sight words from memory, while tracking across the page from left to right and top to bottom and at the same time trying to comprehend the meaning of the passage they are reading. It's easy to imagine how much more difficult this task is when the child is also dealing with eyes that don't work together or move across the page smoothly.

If you suspect your child may be dealing with a vision problem of this nature, you should consider taking your child to a behavioral optometrist.

A behavioral optometrist can prescribe glasses and contacts like other optometrists but they have also been trained in natural vision improvements and can provide a program of exercises that improve visual functioning.

These are some tests a behavioral optometrist may perform during your initial visit:

Measure distance and close range vision, measure how well the eyes and brain work together, check to see if the eyes move smoothly from point to point and whether they smoothly follow a moving target, see if the eye can easily shift focus from a near to a far target and screen for cataracts and glaucoma.

If the optometrist finds any deficiencies in these areas, there are exercises that can be done to improve visual function.

There are many different exercises that can be done as a part of vision therapy. One example is holding a pencil with an eraser topper at arm's length and alternating between focusing on the topper and on an object at a distance such as a clock on the wall. This exercise can be very beneficial for the child who has difficulty copying text from the whiteboard/blackboard which requires near/far focus. Another exercise is extending an arm straight out with thumb up and slowing moving it toward the eyes at nose level until two thumbs are seen. This will help the eyes work together. An exercise that can promote smooth eye movements involves slowly tracing a pattern that has been attached to the wall at eye level, first with one eye covered, then the other eye covered and finally with both eyes uncovered.

While vision therapists caution that they can't cure true cases of A.D.H.D., dyslexia, and other learning disabilities, the therapy has the potential to treat reading, attention and coordination problems and has benefits for the child who has trouble in sports, is easily frustrated, has poor motivation and does not work well independently.

Sources:
http://www.pathwaystobettervision.com/
http://www.bettervision.com/behavioraloptometrists.html
http://www.children-special-needs.org/parenting/pediatric_opthalmologist.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14vision-t.html?pagewanted=all