We just had our first vision therapy session today. The Dr. had three students working at the same time. Has anyone else had similar experience? Given what we’re paying for this, I was expecting an individual tutoring session.
I hung out and sort of watched what was going on. I was not unimpressed with what I saw, although, I have nothing to compare it with. She seemed to stay on top of what was happening and the children were busy all the time. Sometimes working alone and sometimes together. The kids didn’t care that they weren’t alone. In fact, she had them wear some funky glasses (that was my son’s description) and toss bean bags back and forth to each other.
When the session was over I asked my son about it. He said some of the exercises were really easy but the bean bag toss and the tracing (traced an object while wearing glasses with two different colored lenses) were pretty hard. Given that they were hard for him, I’m guessing those are his weaker areas.
She gave us two exercises to do each day and told me we only need to do them for about five minutes.
The bad part came when we got home and my son discovered he had no free time. It was time for homework, dinner and bed. Needless to say, he was not happy.
Re: VT w/ multiple patients at once? Is this common?
We’ve done VT now in 2 different offices, and both offices see kids in groups so I don’t think its that unusual. DS also has about 5-10 minutes of homework.
Linda, I feel a little better hearing that VT is usually the same for the first few weeks for everyone. That was my impression and I was a little worried we were wasting our time.
We do VT as well. It is not uncommon to have more than one patient working in the large room but there are multiple therapists. My son always has a therapist working with just him. I would be concerned that your child’s individual deficits are not being addressed by the group approach.
We also had to do 20-30 minutes of homework every day. The only thing that I can think of is that our therapist said that the first 6 weeks of therapy is the same for everyone. After that, the program addressd his specific deficits.
I would ask if they plan to give him individual attention at some point. I also would agree that the things that were easy were probably things he didn’t need and are a waste of his very valuable time.