Articles

Vision Therapy for Children

Poor attention and letter reversals are but two of the many symptoms displayed by children with learning disabilities. Others often include: poor comprehension, poor hand eye coordination, working slowly, losing place while reading, and poor memory.

Unless a child's learning problems are addressed, they may affect the child's self esteem, behavior, and ultimately reduce the child’s future potential learning capacity by as much as 75%.

Four years ago, a team of professionals in the fields of vision, psychology, and education developed a remarkable therapy program that attacks the causes of these problems and dramatically improves a child's ability and speed of learning.

One mother commented at the end of the ten week therapy program that, "I can not believe the complete change for the better I see in my son. He now reads everything he sees where before I could not get him to read a thing. We would struggle together for hours every night trying to get through homework. Now he comes home with 100's...He is more confident in everything he does."

Another mother commented, "Our daughter has displayed more awareness of the world around her without becoming involved in distractions. She feels that she is achieving, and is proud of her accomplishments."

Results such as there are the norm. When deficient processing skills exist, a specialized program is developed to strengthen skills required for accurate and efficient learning. A professional therapist conducts very intense and carefully sequenced one-on-one activities.

The ten week program has resulted in the average improvement of 3.1 years in visual processing skills and 4.6 years in concentration.

To identify children that could benefit from this program, a comprehensive screening is provided.

Here are some symptoms and checklists to review and see if vision therapy is right for you and your child:

Appearance Of Eyes:

• Reddened eyes or lids
• Eyes tear often
• Encrusted eyelids
• Frequent sties on lids

Complaints When Using Eyes

• Headaches
• Burning Eyes
• Itching Eyes
• Nausea after reading
• Print blurs
• Double Vision

Teacher's Observations When Student Reads

• Head movement
• Loses place often
• Needs finger to keep place
• Omits words frequently
• Re-reads lines
• Skips lines
• Short attention span
• Fails to recognize some words
• Confuses similar words

When Student Writes

• Writes up or downhill
• Repeats letters within words
• Omits letters, numbers or phrases
• Misaligns digits
• Covers one eye
• Tilts head
• Fails to visualize
• Writing poorly spaced or crooked
• Fails to recognize same word when repeated in text
• Makes mistakes when copying from chalkboard
• Unable to stay on ruled lines
• Poor placement of words on page

Other Problems

• Must feel things to understand
• Repeatedly confuses right and left
• Difficulty with similarities and differences
• Avoids desk work
• Blinks, squints, rubs eyes
• Fatigues easily

Contact us today for your comprehensive eye exam!