Vision Therapy

[emmanizzysmama]

I've seen several posts where people mention their son or daughter having vision therapy. Can anyone share what it is like and whether they believed it has helped. My DD7 has had two strabismus surgerys

but her eyes still will cross within a minute of taking off her glasses. Her pedi opthamologist doesn't think vision therapy helps and says most times it is not covered by insurance. Thoughts?

[a27mom]

Vision therapy helped my dd quite a bit. But she very specifically had conversion disorder and had difficulty focusing and holding focus at normal working distances. Her exercises were pretty clearly specific to ocular muscular coordination. And we could see improvement as we worked on the exercises. Vision therapy was not extremely expensive because they gave us a home exercise program and we did that, with quarterly rechecks by the developmental optometrist. Our insurance didn't cover it, but we don't have vision insurance for her anyway. She says the words don't move on the page anymore, and she can get through a book without extreme fatigue.

[MrsH]

Ds8 started 2 months ago. No specific vision problem besides strabismus, but he had a little trouble tracking, and tired easily. His exercises are basically going through text and identifying specific letters. It takes 5 minutes a daddy and he's generally happy to do it.

 

He just went in for a check and all his numbers now look totally typical. Additionally, his reading specialist is raving about his sudden progress with her, and I've noticed a greater willingness to read to me, and much improved stamina.

 

Do I credit the VT? Not necessarily, it could have been a variety of factors. But we will continue it for now, to see whether there's any improvement in his attention.

[PeterPan]

I know one dc with that who was helped by chiropractic.  If you look into vision therapy, find a Fellow.  We did VT for convergence issues, so I know it's useful for certain things.  I would probably research the chiro thing first, simply because the story I heard had amazing results.

[matrips]

I would love to know as well, but most people helped by vt don't seem to have strabismus. I specifically found a covd optometrist for my ds, and she said vt wouldn't help him. Perhaps it has to do with the type of crossing and how much? I was sure she'd recommend it since she was a certified vt doc.

[WishboneDawn]

I visited the Quackwatch site and here's their entry. They aren't kind. :)

 

The interesting bit is that in your case therapy may help:

 

There is a proven segment of vision therapy known as orthoptics which can help with symptoms of visual strain or fatigue in individuals with mild eye coordination or focus problems (including conversion insufficienty), double vision, or even strabismus ("crossed" or turned eyes) and amblyopia ("lazy eye") [6-9]. Many optometrists, ophthalmologists, and Certified Orthoptists offer orthoptic diagnostic and treatment services.

 

 

So you may want a second opinion. Search out a doctor that does orthoptics though rather then "vision therapy".

[stripe]

I think it depends what's wrong with the eyes. Many people on the boards have taken their children for vision therapy for things other than the strabismus your child has. However, there are new developments, such as playing games that require two eyes, which is a better treatment for amblyopia than patching, because it promotes the use of both eyes together. McGill is a top-tier, mainstream, Canadian university with a highly regarded medical school, not a center for quackery, with this recent study:

 

https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/lazy-eye-disorder-promising-therapeutic-approach-226011

 

A research team led by Dr. Robert Hess from McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) has used the popular puzzle video game Tetris in an innovative approach to treat adult amblyopia, commonly known as “lazy eyeâ€. By distributing information between the two eyes in a complementary fashion, the video game trains both eyes to work together, which is counter to previous treatments for the disorder (e.g. patching).

[Tiramisu]

We will very soon be finishing up VT. I know that some regular optometrists and ophthalmologists definitely do recommend VT because they've told me so, so not all ophthalmologists feel the way yours does.

 

FWIW, most research studies regarding VT have had to do with convergence insufficiency and for that have proven very successful. I'm not sure about things like strabismus. At the same time, I was told by my regular optometrist that anyone can improve with VT and they've had entire sports teams do it, but he feels strongly that doesn't mean it's worth the investment for everyone.

 

At the 11 week mark of VT, the covd fellow we see says dd's tracking is now perfect and her convergence insufficiency is 90 percent better.

 

What I see at home is that dd is now making very infrequent mistakes in math. In the past, she would not make mistakes on a white board but make many mistakes when she worked with her textbook and notebook. So not having mistakes in her notebook is a big change. She also thinks her math is getting done faster. I no longer have to be on her back constantly about getting it done. In fact, when I ask her to do her math, she sometimes already has it finished. Math has always been something that depressed her and took a long time, and the the number of mistakes this year working from a textbook for the first time is what made me pursue the VT eval. So, for me, this improvement is something I am very thankful for, especially since she wants to study science.

 

(ETA: By the way, I have seen research studies that correlate visual problems with low math scores so the visual-math connection is very real. When people on these boards express worry over their kid's math problems and math taking an extraordinary long time, I tend to think there could be an undiagnosed visual problem behind it.)

 

Also, dd has been much more agreeable when it comes to school work in the last month. She was not this way for the first half of VT. Not at all. It was worse than ever and I took off all pressure except for VT and the essentials. Now her response most of the time when I ask her to do something is, "Okay, Mom," in a pleasant tone of voice, as though work and general life activities are somehow easier for her so she doesn't have a stressed out, overwhelmed response.

 

She likes to organize and clean and she's been doing that more than usual lately. You should see my refrigerator and food cabinet. :)

 

This week the VT doctor wants dd to read for an hour in one sitting and pay attention to symptoms. We'll see how that goes. I have not had her reading anything extended for school besides science, though she does pleasure reading. It will be interesting to see how she does with a biography. She never had reading problems exactly but her comprehension for longer readings wasn't great, unless it was science related.

 

Hope this helps!

[Tess in the Burbs]

My dd did VT this past year.  She had headaches when reading and while she used to love to read, it had gotten so bad she could barely read anything without crying.  Her glasses for reading(far sighted kid) were fine.  She went every other week for an hour appt to do exercises in the office, and did daily stuff at home with the flipper glasses(goes from pos to neg...try reading with it, it's hard!).  We took a month break and came back to finish a few more appts.  Her recheck at this point showed some issues lingering so we did a few more appts.  Then we ended up getting her new glasses with a stronger prescription.  Her conversion is better but they were honest that we will need to do therapy again over the years as her eyes develop.  For now, the stronger glasses have enabled her to read long periods of time again with no headaches!  She does all reading/school with glasses now, not just reading.  

 

Did it help her convergence issue?  Yes.  Cure it?  No.  It's like physical therapy for the eyes.  Insurance did not pay for it.  I negotiated a price with the head guy in the office b/c the office staff charges a higher rate ;-)  Call back several times and talk to different people.  Then get the lowest price written in the chart!  

 

In less than a year's time my dd was reading long books again, enjoying reading books again, and didn't cry every time I asked her to read.  It was worth the money.  I saw her eye issue in person(one eye relaxes when trying to focus on something which puts it out of alignment, hence the headaches b/c it's all double).  In hindsight I would do it again.  And it was a pain.....45 min to the office, hour visit, 45 min back home.  I paid tolls to get there.  But totally worth it.  

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Vision therapy is still very controversial in many circles.  My ophthalmologist considers vision therapy a quack and any eye doctor doing it is a quack, too.  But he also says there is no such thing as dyslexia, just lazy students.  My children are dyslexic and my ds is in VT.  We no longer go to that ophthalmologist, by the way.  

 

DS has heterophoria (left eye tracks out of alignment).  Not one normal eye doctor ever caught this issue.  He has 20/15+ vision so he flies through normal eye screenings without difficulty.  But after reading about all the kids that seemed to have odd issues with reading/math etc. and some things sounded similar, and many of those kids ended up getting developmental screenings, and discovering there were vision issues, I decided to get a developmental screening just this year (DS is 10).  I had to ask for that type of screening specifically.  And sure enough, he has heterophoria.  We had a choice, if we wanted to proactively address the issue.  Put him in prism glasses or VT.  Since he doesn't need corrective lenses, making him wear glasses for the rest of his life seemed to just be putting a band-aid on the issue instead of actively addressing the issue.  I did research and VT has been shown to help many with this issue so we went with VT.  VT is helping.  There has already been a difference.  But it is a lot of work, and can be very draining and painful.  We had to back off on quite a bit of other areas so as not to overwhelm him.  But he can already read better across lines of text and does not seem to have as much difficulty with number location during math.  Do I think it was worth the money?  For us, yes.  But I really wish we hadn't needed it.  It is exhausting to go through.

 

All this to say I think VT can help in many instances.  I have seen too many success stories by people I trust to consider it a junk therapy.  I don't think it works for everyone, however, and I have not heard of anyone personally that used VT with the situation you describe.  Perhaps you could contact the COVD and ask?

[Mukmuk]

Ds 1st did VT at 6. It was very helpful in that afterwards, he could read with stamina. Before, he'd complain that words jumped on the page. The gains haven't stuck though. On and off, ds has had vision therapy for about 6mths to a year at a time. Each time, there'd be improvement in his reading habits, but it seemed to ebb. He did get rid of his convergence problem permanently. But tracking is a continued issue.

 

I should add that last year, ds became very addicted to computer games. This is specifically the large screen, playstation sort that requires the use of peripheral vision (at the neighbor's). I finally managed to put a stop to it, but his reading did not pick up. A recent check revealed that his tracking has really declined as a result. We're back on track with VT, and already, there are gains. I'm hopeful that *this time, the gains will stick*. Ok at least he knows what to avoid.

[stripe]

Prevent Blindness America has a reasonably active forum; the section on Children and Eye Problems is at

http://198.170.234.66/discus/messages/20/20.html?1396175799

[marge]

 

but her eyes still will cross within a minute of taking off her glasses.

 

Has the ophthalmologist said that the crossing is a problem? My DD (3.5) just got her first pair of glasses because her left eye crosses. He told us it was likely a vision issue and that glasses would enable the eye to relax and stop working so hard. He also said that when she takes off her glasses, we'll probably notice a more pronounced crossing because the eye is used to the glasses.

[RootAnn]

My oldest has strabismus & has had glasses since she was about three. There is sometimes a noticeable crossing when she takes her glasses off, but she rarely does that (only takes them off for swimming or sleeping).  We did not do Vision Therapy, but glasses have helped quite a bit & we are hopeful she will almost, if not quite, "grow out of it" with proper treatment. She sees the eye doctor every year at a minimum. At the beginning & when she goes through a growth spurt, she has had her prescription changed every three months.

 

I found interesting reading on Little Four Eyes blog when my daughter was little & just getting glasses for her strabismus. 

[PeterPan]

Tiramisu, congrats on your success!!  

 

:party:   :party:

[SKL]

It helped my daughter a great deal.  Like any treatment, though, it doesn't fix everything.  I would go for a comprehensive exam and see what they say.  In my personal experience, the cost is no more than a regular optometrist and I get much more bang for my buck.  And some of it is covered by insurance - you need to check it out line by line.  The developmental optometrist's office should be able to help you figure that out.

[MerryAtHope]

I've seen several posts where people mention their son or daughter having vision therapy. Can anyone share what it is like and whether they believed it has helped. My DD7 has had two strabismus surgerys

but her eyes still will cross within a minute of taking off her glasses. Her pedi opthamologist doesn't think vision therapy helps and says most times it is not covered by insurance. Thoughts?

 

Our consultation was covered by insurance, but not the therapy--so it may be worth it for you to see if the consultation would be covered, and then decide.

 

My son had 3 diagnoses: Convergence Insufficiency, Accommodative Infacility, and Oculomotor Dysfunction. Sorry, I'm not familiar with Strabismus surgery. For my son's issues, yes, vision therapy definitely helped.

 

We had a distance to travel to our VT, so they let us come only once a month and do exercises at home. That may have lengthened the overall time it took to get through things (only changed activities once a month), but it drastically cut the cost for us. My son had a lot of issues with primitive reflexes, and all the reading I did before I decided to do this said that it's very important to work on integrating primitive reflexes--that not doing so can result in VT not working. Our office agreed (even said in their opinion it was not worth doing VT if one was not going to work through primitive reflexes first). That part took many months for my son and was the most frustrating part. (He was 13, and 13 yo's don't generally want to do crawling exercises and the like! Ironically, his army crawl experience came in handy later on for a relay race, and I caught him doing it for fun one other time--but when he first worked on it, he found it very frustrating!) He actually had work to do with 5 or 6 different reflexes. Once he got through them though, he sailed through the vision exercises. Those included some computerized games, sometimes paper and pencil, sometimes other exercises--as someone else said, physical therapy for the eyes. That's a good way to put it!

 

We spent about 20 minutes per day working on them, sometimes a bit more--just depended on the assignment for that month. Usually we had 5 or 6 different things to do, and each took 3-5 minutes. 

 

When we started, my son was using lots of audio books. Mid-therapy, he started trying to read along (previously he couldn't keep up the pace). When we finished, he had put them aside because he could read faster than the audios. 

 

I only wish we could have afforded to go through VT sooner for him, as it would have spared him so much frustration and self-doubt. 

 

Best wishes to you and your daughter as you decide what to do. Merry :-)