Vision issues

[Clarita]

DD5 complains about blurriness when viewing far away things. We brought her to an optometrist and she doesn't have near sightedness. When the doctor dilated her eyes she could read the eye chart perfectly when shown the letters line by line, without dilation she reads the eye chart like she has blurry vision. 

No one thinks she's faking it but our current optometrist can't do anything about it really aside from tell us to limit her consecutive close vision time (reading/writing, we don't do much tablet or TV time). I know people here have mentioned vision help beyond an eye glass prescription. What do I look for, for that sort of help? Tell me about it in general. 

[Rosie_0801]

That can happen when one's neck is out of alignment.

[Clarita]

15 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

That can happen when one's neck is out of alignment.

How can I tell? What can I do?

[kbutton]

28 minutes ago, Clarita said:

When the doctor dilated her eyes she could read the eye chart perfectly when shown the letters line by line, without dilation she reads the eye chart like she has blurry vision. 

Was she shown line by line without dilation as well, or did they show multiple lines at a time? Not being able to isolate a line would be an issue if it’s own.

covd.org is where to find developmental optometrists who check ocular motor issues and stuff beyond the normal eye health exam.

Doing a lot of up close work can cause eye strain that makes it harder to see across a room, but it should be temporary.

Kids can potentially compensate with vision issues for a long time before they are obvious.

 

[Rosie_0801]

22 minutes ago, Clarita said:

How can I tell? What can I do?

If that is the problem, a chiropractic adjustment will fix it almost immediately. If it doesn't, that wasn't the problem.

[Clarita]

4 hours ago, kbutton said:

Was she shown line by line without dilation as well, or did they show multiple lines at a time? Not being able to isolate a line would be an issue if it’s own.

She did both multiple line and single line with and without dilation. She mentioned the multiple line issue but she wasn't that bad for a 5 year old. Also when asked she said the letters weren't jumbled but she just got confused by all the letters 🤷‍♀️.

[Clarita]

3 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

If that is the problem, a chiropractic adjustment will fix it almost immediately. If it doesn't, that wasn't the problem.

👍

[Kanin]

On 4/6/2024 at 4:48 PM, kbutton said:

Was she shown line by line without dilation as well, or did they show multiple lines at a time? Not being able to isolate a line would be an issue if it’s own.

 

Do you know what the name for this would be? Or eyes jumping to the line above while trying to concentrate on one line?

[kbutton]

9 minutes ago, Kanin said:

Do you know what the name for this would be? Or eyes jumping to the line above while trying to concentrate on one line?

Not really! Sorry! I know some kinds of movement are saccadic movement, but I think that might be side to side.

It might also be a symptom of more than one kind of problem.

One of my kids had issues with tracking that were tied to retained reflexes, and it presented as not being able to keep his place while writing. If he moved his head to look, his hand no longer knew where it was. If it was his hand that moved, his eyes didn’t know where to look. 

[PeterPan]

On 4/9/2024 at 2:10 PM, Kanin said:

eyes jumping to the line above while trying to concentrate on one line?

You need a developmental optometrist as she likely has developmental vision problems. Also get an OT eval to check for retained reflexes. When the primitive/neonatal reflexes are retained, it glitches development of the visual reflexes, leading to developmental vision problems. If you get a good OT eval and someone to integrate reflexes, you could do that for 3-6 months then test vision fully with the developmental optometrist to see if things are back on track. And the jumping I think is saccades. COVD is the org to find a developmental optometrist.

[Kanin]

10 hours ago, PeterPan said:

You need a developmental optometrist as she likely has developmental vision problems. Also get an OT eval to check for retained reflexes. When the primitive/neonatal reflexes are retained, it glitches development of the visual reflexes, leading to developmental vision problems. If you get a good OT eval and someone to integrate reflexes, you could do that for 3-6 months then test vision fully with the developmental optometrist to see if things are back on track. And the jumping I think is saccades. COVD is the org to find a developmental optometrist.

Thank you so much! I passed this along to her mom. 

[PeterPan]

18 hours ago, Kanin said:

Thank you so much! I passed this along to her mom. 

The eyes jumping is multiple things. They look at how smoothly the eyes track across the text. If the person has issues with convergence, the eyes will sometimes shut off, alternating, so the person loses their place as the eyes take turns. However there can also be issues where the eyes literally jump rather than tracking smoothly. A good dev optometrist will have specialized googles that track eye movements while reading. They can see the issues and quantify them. However, again, you really do need to treat the retained reflexes, which are super common. Sometimes (fingers crossed) the vision issues correct themselves when you correct the underlying reflex issues. If they don't, then you do vision therapy to get things on track. When vision is affected, visual processing will be affected. Visual processing is going to include visual memory, so you'll see effect on spelling, etc. 

Interestingly, they're usually going to target EF (executive function) while doing vision therapy, so kids sometimes get AMAZING improvements from the combo of working on so many things. When you bump EF and working memory and visual processing, decrease headaches, etc. kids just function better. 

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

A good dev optometrist will have specialized googles that track eye movements while reading.

That is SO cool!

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

However, again, you really do need to treat the retained reflexes, which are super common. Sometimes (fingers crossed) the vision issues correct themselves when you correct the underlying reflex issues.

Interesting, I had no idea about that.

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Interestingly, they're usually going to target EF (executive function) while doing vision therapy, so kids sometimes get AMAZING improvements from the combo of working on so many things. When you bump EF and working memory and visual processing, decrease headaches, etc. kids just function better. 

Yay!