Vision Therapy??

I have one child that vision therapy worked well for and another it didn't. It all depends on whether it is really the issue that is causing the problem or is there something else going on.

scifinut mom to: ms 16, bp/adhd/anxiety/complex ld mr. 20, add/dyslexic I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand. -Anonymous

Quote Holly_WA:

Hi Holly,

I have a private reading practice and work with a lot of kids who've undergone vision therapy. I see these kids before they start and after they finish VT and for many of them it was the main thing they needed in order to overcome a reading struggle.

However, there are also kids who have other issues, including many who just don't understand phonics, or who have great difficulty dealing with the concept of sounds in words.

If you daughter is in speech therapy, it's likely that more than vision problems are involved in her reading struggles, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do the VT. I much prefer to have a child get most of the way through vision therapy before I even start working with them because they are usually much easier to work with and we can get right down to dealing with the other issues, whether they be poor phonics knowledge in general or more basic problems involving poor blending skills or confusion about the sounds in words.

As far as whether you should do vision therapy, the developmental optometrist should be performing objective tests of her visual abilities and should then be able to show you exactly which abilities are sub-par, if any. If there are none, VT obviously is not indicated. If there are some, and money is a huge issue, ask how addressing those sub-par abilities will improve her academic abilities and how likely it is that VT will improve the particular skills she lacks.

For example, if your daughter is seeing double at reading range and they can fix it, it's hard to see how that wouldn't improve her ability to do academic work. Nevertheless, if she doesn't understand phonics, or has poor blending skills, someone still has to teach those to her.

For a better understanding of the phonics skills and knowledge she might lack see the tests I've posted on my website at OnTrack Reading .
(I'm never quite sure the links will work, but go to ontrackreading.com if it doesn't.)

There are four tests on the sidebar under the section titled "The Phonics Piece." They are "Testing Blending Skill," "Testing Segmenting Skill," "Testing Auditory Processing Skill" and "Testing Code Knowledge." If a child needs VT and gets it, but performs poorly on the above tests, he will still struggle with reading. And, unfortunately, once the vision skills and the reading skills and code knowledge are all in place, other factors still can hold some kids back, but you'll have eliminated two of the major reasons kids struggle with reading.

Again, I highly recommend tackling the vision issues first and then the phonics course.

All the best,

Rod Everson

Here's a little more information on the VT department I work closely with. They get good results, so I thought people considering several different options might be interested.

First, they take objective measurements of various visual skills and can tell you what changes in those measurements the vision therapy is accomplishing

Second, because it's a therapy, changes need to be made in how the visual system operates over a period of time. In my opinion, this works best if the vision therapy includes some extensive home exercises to be done between therapy visits. That way the therapist is verifying progress at each office visit, and is able to prescribe new exercises based on the progress made since the last visit. In other words, much of the actual progress is made at home, guided by the therapist's recommendations. This is how it's done in the VT department I'm familiar with.

Third, from a cost perspective, if you are capable of getting your child to work with you at home, it's obviously cheaper to accomplish the same amount of progress this way compared to having a trained vision therapist conduct all of the exercises in the office. The VT department I work with charges much, much more to do all the work in-office, plus all the extra travel because sessions are scheduled more often.

My gut feeling is that if an OD insists on doing everything in-office (and therefore, all for pay) he's presenting himself/herself as a sort of "black box" into which you put the child and out comes a child whose visual system has been improved. I'm a little skeptical of such arrangements because from what I've seen, it's relatively easy to incorporate the parents into the regimen, plus then the parents have a far better understanding as to what changes are actually being attempted, and effected, and as I said, that way should be cheaper as well.

If a VT department is getting consistently good results, they should be able to supply several names of parents who were very satisfied with results. If you have no solid recommendations to go on, I would ask for those names and then call them before deciding where to go. This advice also holds if there is only one VT department around. It just might not be a good one, and you have to guard against spending a lot of money and getting poor results.

I hope this is of some use to those considering vision therapy for their child. I hate to see people finally find out about vision therapy and then end up getting second-rate therapy, because effective VT is what a lot of struggling readers really need if they are ever going to enjoy reading.

Rod Everson
OnTrack Reading