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If your child is exhibiting learning, behavioural, or physical challenges, there may be a vision-related component that can be helped by Vision Therapy.
Possible challenge: binocular dysfunction, poor peripheral processing
Vision Therapy can help all kinds of developmental challenges that are impeding your child’s success at school or in sports. Just as a child learns to walk, a child learns to use their visual system to gather information about their world, but sometimes the vision system does not develop on schedule and the visual information received is not complete. Eye teaming, eye hand coordination, tracking words on a page, visual memory, all can be enhanced by doing a program of fun activities in a particular order, from basic to more challenging.
Possible challenge: poor peripheral processing
Vision tells us where things are in space. VISION guides movement so it tells us if we are going to bang into a wall or misreach for an object. If a child is clumsy or bumping into things, it could be coordination issues, but it is just as likely to be a vision issue! If your child is not paying attention to all the vision they have available, and only look at that which is directly in front of their eyes, they are going to have the tendency to be clumsy or drop things. Or, they may not like to move much at all, unable to use their visual system to gauge their surroundings. There are many visual activities designed to make us aware of ALL the visual information coming to us, making your child less clumsy!
Possible challenge: binocular dysfunction, poor peripheral processing
When the visual system is not working well, kids do not like to focus on a page or screen for over 5-10 minutes; it is simply too much effort to direct a poorly functioning vision system to look at that page or screen, so they just avoid it in any way they can. It then appears like kids have short attention spans as in an ADHD diagnoses, but it can very well be undiscovered visual challenges. When poorly functioning vision systems are developed through vision therapy, there is better focus and attention.
If these or other visual skills are lacking, your child will have to work harder. You might see headaches, eye strain and fatigue are some of the possible results.in your child. Watch for them!
Many times, if there are developmental delays or symptoms of visual problems, a child will not grow out of them. Often they , they mightwill build coping mechanisms or patterns instead. Some kids use all the energy they have to manage at school, but after school, there are regular “meltdowns” at home. A child may withdraw at school, by daydreaming and not engaging in what is going on at school. Others may not be able to sit still, and this looks like attention problems or behaviour issues; for instance, a child may get out of their desk and starting walking around while the teacher is teaching.
Have your child tested! By getting your them tested in comprehensive visual skills, you will know whether your child is right on track or that your child needs intervention. Either way, their needs can be met. The earlier dysfunctions are identified and treated, the less likely the individualyour child will struggle in school and other child-centred environments such as the sports field. This also means fewer ramifications such as negative emotions, misdiagnosis of disorders such as ADHD, low self-esteem, special education services, etc. Book your evaluation now.
Vision therapy is a series of fun visual and visual motor activities, carried out in a particular order according to what your child or your visual system can manage at the moment and developing the visual system to work more efficiently resulting in less struggle at school, work and sports.
Essentially, we are guiding your child through these vision therapy activities to become more of a visual learner than they are now, so they can use a lot more of that mountain of visual information that is coming to them in the school setting in particular. The length of a vision therapy program is usually around 24 weeks. It takes this long to see sustainable improvement, as we are essentially changing habits of how one is presently using their visual system and developing a new way of viewing the world.
To get the most out of the vision therapy program, we ask that the child does home vision therapy activities 10-20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Vision therapy is like piano lessons, for example. The more effort you put in, the more you will get out of it.
There are hundreds of vision therapy activities, each with different emphases. We start with activities your child can manage without getting frustrated and then build on that as your child’s visual system improves! The ‘art’ of vision therapy is to match the most suitable activities to your child, and then progress from simple to harder activities. The order of activities is important, as we want to challenge the individual yet not so much that the activity is too frustrating. Each week, we are assessing how your child is making out with last week’s activities, and then assigning new activities. The ‘science’ of vision therapy is very sound and much researched. Read more here.
A very important part of the vision therapy program at The Eye Clinic, is optometric syntonic phototherapy, a very powerful application that helps speed up progress in a vision therapy program. The child looks at a light of a particular frequency (colour) for 20 minutes a day 5 days a week, preferably just before going to bed. Most kids are quite happy with this part of the therapy, especially if a caregiver reads to them while they stare at the light therapy unit provided.
Light of different frequencies (or colours) have different effect on the visual system. Some colours stimulate, others relax and other colour combinations, stimulate AND relax the visual system at the same time. The colour choices are based on the original diagnoses of the visual skills evaluation. The colour filters may be changed as the visual system changes during a vision therapy program.
Approximately every eight weeks, the optometrist in charge of the vision therapy program will evaluate your child’s progress. Sometimes, we will start to see changes as early as that eight weeks.
A vision therapy program is truly an exciting process and an investment in your child’s future! The developments in your child’s vision will be maintained so they can continue to benefit from these visual developments as they graduate from one grade in school to the next. Book your evaluation today!
