If you can't afford vision therapy...

[eternallytired]

The recent post on VT reminded me that I was intending to write a post, myself.

 

Several months ago I posted on here for advice regarding my youngest, who had begun sounding out words more than a year earlier but had not made any progress.  A few of you recommended taking him for a vision check with a COVD-certified optometrist.  The long and short of the story is that we found out that he needed therapy, but it would be too much for us to afford--and we were not willing to put it on credit, as the doc suggested.  (You can read the long version of this story on my blog, if you're really curious.)

 

A friend of mine happened to have a binder full of vision therapy exercises given to her during her tenure as an OT.  We've been doing the exercises at home 3-4 days a week for about 10 weeks, and YDS has gone from sounding out single words to reading Biscuit and Dr. Seuss books on his own.  I know correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but for those parents who might be feeling stressed and panicky because their child needs vision therapy and they can't afford it, I thought I'd share what we did.

 

The materials I was given were all simple print-outs with occasional hand sketches for illustrations; nowhere in the binder is any copyright information, and some of the pages are clearly labeled as take-home papers.  That said, I still don't want to infringe on potential copyright, so I summarized the instructions for a dozen activities (some with multiple variations--bonus!) on my blog.  If you are looking for some vision therapy materials to try at home, feel free to use these as a resource.  Hopefully they will ease someone else's stress as they eased mine!

 

**Side note: If it's of interest, the COVD doc also mentioned various primitive reflexes that weren't integrated, so in addition to the vision work (a couple exercises a day), we've been doing exercises to integrate primitive reflexes.  So far we've done several weeks each of Starfish (moro) and Superman/Meatball (tonic labyrinthine), which we found instructions for on YouTube.  I'm swinging for the fences by trying to cover everything I can!

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Thanks so much for sharing this.

[Terabith]

Kenneth Lane has several books with good activities.

[City Mouse]

When my DD had vision therapy, the activities she did came from this book.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Helping-Children-Overcome-Learning-Difficulties/dp/143923180X

 

Her doctor at the time was Mrs. Dr. Rosner, the wife of the doctor who wrote this book.

Edited December 15, 2016 by City Mouse

[BooksandBoys]

Thank you. I've been meaning to start a post asking for recommendations for at-home VT. Our nearest COVD practitioner is 3.5 hrs away. There is no way to make that work.

We've been doing some very simple vision exercises recommended by his metronome therapist, and I've seen a sudden improvement in reading (he voluntarily read a regularly-sized print book this week...first time ever!). I want to expand on these exercises since I've seen this improvement.

Thank you.

[ElizabethB]

Here is a good Kenneth Lane book with a variety of activities.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Ocular-Visual-Perceptual-Skills/dp/1556425953/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482435083&sr=1-6&keywords=kenneth+lane