Help with vision problems- Rod??

I would think the expert you originally went to should be able to give you activities to do at home on and off the computer and only occasionally go there for progress reports. My son was treated for convergence insufficiency which is just the oposite so obviously the exercises he did would be bad for your son. I will say they were all very simple things like beads on a string hung on the door and looking down the string. One thing that he might find helpfull is to “hide the alphabet” in a page ful of letters and he has to circle them. You start out with large writing one eye at a time and then two then the writing gets smaller. You time him. There were “3d” pictures but again these might be just the wrong thing to do since your son has the opposite problem.

especially if you are able to visit the first doctor once in awhile, or get his advice on which exercises to use. Most eye exercises are not rocket science, but you do need to know enough not to do the wrong exercises and either make problems worse or create new problems.

There are two home vision therapy books I have seen recommended. I don’t have either, and would personally hesitate to do home vision therapy without some supervision. However, it might be helpful for you to get these books and then consult with the first doctor, who may be able to advise you on which exercises to do. Your library may even have one or both books.

The books are “Developing Your Child for Success” by Kenneth Lane, and “Eyes On Track” which is sold by jfspublishing.com. You can probably find websites and reviews of both books by running some searches at http://www.google.com.

Mary

There’s another vision book called “A+ Vision Manual.” It’s a very thick book. I recently purchased it. The author includes a vision inventory list and, depending on the scores, it lists the exercises that would be best for the particular problems.

Does it address color vision therapy at all?

I would be very hesitant to implement this on students you teach. These need to be assigned and monitored by an optometrist who specializes in vision therapy, not by an LD tutor.

These exercises are individually assigned for a child’s specific problems and then monitored. It is not a generalized program. Please don’t think of taking this into your own hands. That seems very irresposible to me as a parent of a child with LD and visual perception problems, but what you do with your own child is your decision.

I don’t think this book does. But I did see a book at Borders that addresses it. I don’t remember the title, but I think it was “Reading by Colors.”

Good point!

If a child seems to have a visual problem, it’s probably best to have a diagnosis and do any home exercises with the guidance of a developmental optomotrist.

Also, in a class setting, the best “vision therapy” would probably be sports (especially for vision problems associated with Sensory Integration Dysfunction). I was talking with an O.T. the other day and she told me how soccer and karate are helpful for SID.

This makes me wonder about a possible connection between reduced Physical Education in most schools and society overall — and a tendency for many kids to spend more time in front of Playstation and T.V. instead of throwing and catching balls.

….just a thought!

Hi

Barb, I agree with everyone else’s general tone that this isn’t something you tackle without a specific diagnosis. I wouldn’t dream of doing VT on my clients because I wouldn’t know what specific problem they had, AND because I wouldn’t feel comfortable charging for something that I was essentially just “hoping” would do some good….which would be the case in the absence of a diagnosis.

Laura, while I agree with you in general about the outdoor play versus television effects, keep in mind that ALL of the kids who I see with vision problems affecting binocular vision skills also have at least one parent who had trouble learning to read….well, maybe not all of them, but certainly most of them. I’m convinced that there’s a genetic factor at play here.

And Barb, I would be nervous about the local optometrist because he should have been able to readily come up with some names of satisfied clients and because the VT’s I know would never quote someone a dollar figure that high without even knowing what they were going to have to be doing, and what the early responses to therapy were going to be.

As for the diagnoses you got, that’s out of my area a bit but I would question the original optometrist about what the convergence excess (which is the same as the esotropia, I believe) is causing as far as a reading problem. Following a full developmental vision exam, the VT can often tell whether a child is seeing double, blurred print or suppressing the vision in one or both eyes either steadily or intermittently. Or sometimes, the problem is the fatigue that arises from constantly holding both eyes together at a point that is uncomfortable given their usual alignment….this may be the reason for the glasses….to move the alignment point out to the reading range….ask him this also. One goal of vision therapy would be to move the convergence point outward so that glasses would be unnecessary, I suspect.

Finally, if you are going to regularly tutor kids with reading problems, make sure to ask the parents at the outset whether either of them had problems learning to read or an obvious vision problem when they were young. I feel this will be more productive than adding some vision therapy exercises to your normal tutoring routine, assuming you can eventually find an optometrist with a vision therapy dept that you trust.

Good luck…..Rod

Hi all,
I didn’t mean to imply I would do VT with my students. I am only looking for some activities for tracking, etc. I have used in the past with my classes. I also use the koosh ball therapy and some brain gym exercises. They have proven to be very helpful in the past. Didn’t mean to get anybody nervous. barb

Somebody else mentioned this on one of these boards recently. There is an old program, “Reading in Color”, by Gattegno; it was another high-tech approach to the old failed memorization system. If this is what you saw, it isn’t what you want; check before you buy.
By the way, in general the respect for fact and scientific proof among many self-help and education writers is very low; be cautious of things an author claims as proven facts unless you see the proof.

Well….I just spoke with a woman who teaches Optometrists in visual therapy and she told me that there’s no way you could “hurt” anyone with vision exercises.

According to this professor, although you may not be using the most effective exercises for each and every child, you cannot “harm” their eye sight.

BTW, I would love it if you would explain the exercises you are doing.

Thanks for any details!

Hi Laura,

You wrote “according to this professor, although you may not be using the most effective exercises for each and every child, you cannot “harm” their eye sight.”

While you may not “harm” their eyesight, in the sense of doing something injurious to the vision of each individual eye, you may well be “strengthening” the wrong behavior. Binocular vision problems are in a sense, behavior problems, in that the brain has not managed to construct the right set of synapses to get the eyes working together during near-point work. It is the job of the vision therapist, effectively, to break the incorrect synapses and build the correct ones. This is done by constructing a feedback mechanism so that the patient can see the difference between aligned and misaligned eyesight, and can slowly work to build the correct behavior.

Now, if you do the opposite exercise to the one required, such as doing something that strengthens convergence, when convergence is already too strong, then you will be building stronger synaptic connections when instead you should be doing exercises which will tend to break those connections and rebuild new ones to generate the correct visual behavior. In my opinion, you will in a very real sense, then be doing harm to that person. This is expecially true since most kids gradually develop their binocular vision skills. You might actually be doing an exercise that stops or reverses that development process, so that a child who might have finally developed binocular vision in mid-first grade would instead be struggling with a vision problem in second grade.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t know a lot about vision therapy, but I do know enough to appreciate the professionalism that underlies it, and that’s why I wouldn’t dream of intervening (even on a volunteer basis, and especially on a paid basis) in this area without a professional diagnosis. Even then, in fact, I would leave the job to the vision therapists and the parents and concentrate on teaching the necessary reading skills, information and strategies. Incidentally, if I do a good job in my area, the vision therapists find that they have a much easier time working with a child simply because that child is more capable of doing the necessary reading during the exercises.

Rod

Hi Rod,
I’m passing along your post to someone more familiar with vision therapy. Perhaps they will respond. I personally know very little about it, but you seem very knowlegeable. Thanks for explaining that.

I use a lot of Brain Gym exercises with my students. The one that deals with the eyes is the one where they track your thumb. Staying in the peripheral vision, your thumb tracks the shape of the infinity sign. The child tracks using both eyes together, moving only his eyes past the visual midline.

Also, I use the koosh ball therapy from Ron Davis’ The Gift of Dyslexia. While the child balances on one foot, you throw a koosh ball to one hand and then immediately another ball to the other hand. After they are able to do this consistently, you toss both balls at the same time. This can be very tricky for some.

The Brain Gym books have other exercises designed for better eye teaming. I really think Brain Gym may be the reason I have more students for tutoring than I have the time. barb

Boy, am I glad I never had that exercise inflicted on me!

I happen to have severe amblyopia and a relatively non-functional left eye, ear and balance problems, weak ankles which twist easily, lousy hand-eye coordination, and a problem of muscles spasming in stressful situations. This pattern sems to be hereditary and my brother, mother, and daughter (at least, and possibly more relatives) have similar difficulties in varying degrees.

If you tried your two-koosh-ball exercise on me first you would drive me to tears of frustration, and if you continued to force it you might succeed in injuring me seriously when I lost balance. If anyone forced this on my daughter I would have them up for child abuse.

On the other hand, we are all excellent readers …