Approximately 25-30% of all children and young adults have an eye teaming or visual skills problem significant enough to cause difficulty in their daily lives, including schoolwork and sports activities. Many "behavioral" issues such as A.D.D. and general disinterest in school can be linked to vision problems.

If you can answer YES on a regular basis to any of the following questions, your visual skills may not be functioning at a proficient level.

1. Do you experience eyestrain and headaches after reading for a short period of time?
2. Do you find it difficult to concentrate when reading?
3. Do you often have a short attention span?
4. Do you frequently lose your place when reading?
5. Do you rub your eyes often?
6. Do you find the words moving on the page in front of you?
7. Do you squint or blink excessively?
8. Do you read with the book very close to your eyes?
9. Do you repeatedly confuse the left and the right?
10. Do you often appear awkward and clumsy when climbing, throwing, or participating in other sports activities?

Answering YES to any of the above questions could be a clue for you to seek more information about yours or your child's unique vision needs. Many students have poorly developed visual skills or abilities, which are not up to the level of demand required in a classroom. As a result, learning can become increasingly difficult and stressful for these students. In order to compensate for this lack of ability, children will attempt to adapt to somehow meet their needs. The most common ways students compensate for this lack of vision skills are:

1. Avoid reading or near work entirely.
2. Attempt to do the work, but require much more time than others and still only have limited comprehension.

Vision training/Therapy
Vision, like many other things in life, is a learned process. In learning to walk, a child first begins by creeping, crawling, standing, and finally walking. A similar process occurs with vision; the gross motor skills must be developed before fine motor control can take place. Before an individual can actually begin to "see," a series of gross motor developments must take place. Any delays or omissions in the developmental stages can create future problems. Vision therapy can be used to train these developmentally delayed skills and help the individual achieve greater success with learning and other skills (i.e. coordination, depth perception, etc). The training activities can be done at any age to improve visual skills and performance.

If you are wondering if your child may benefit from vision therapy, the first thing to do is to have a comprehensive vision evaluation. If problems are seen in this examination, then a visual performance evaluation of the child and a consultation between the doctor and the parents is indicated to address/discuss the individual needs of the patient.

Sometimes eyeglasses alone may be prescribed to provide relief from the complaints associated with eye teaming or visual skills problems. If eyeglasses alone are not sufficient, vision therapy may be the treatment necessary to eliminate the visual skills problems.

Vision therapy is a treatment approach involving carefully selected and sequenced activities practiced by the patient. This treatment restores normal strength, flexibility and function to the eye teaming system and leads to complete relief of all symptoms.

Additional Vision Therapy Resources
If you have additional questions or would like to learn more about vision therapy, please contact our office or check out these other web sites: