Vision Therapy: From Skeptic to Cheerleader

Posted by Darnelle | 3 comments

Get Back Here! I know what you’re thinking . . .

Vision Therapy? Why in the world would I care about THAT?”

WAIT! Let me ask you not to move on just yet. I understand that the topic of “Vision Therapy” sounds remote and weird and totally unrelated to any home school problems you may be having. I understand, because 8 years ago I said the very same thing (only with a know-it-all, condescending little attitude.) And, because I DIDN’T look into it as soon as I could have, I very nearly paid a price that no parent wants to pay. So, humor me, for just a minute and stick around.

First, let me say that my main purpose  is to encourage and equip parents who are trying to teach a child who is struggling to make academic progress. As most parents and teachers know, these struggles can be caused by a long list of situations such as:

• simple immaturity – they’re just not ready Mom (I had a child like this.)

• limited attention span – boys ages 4-9 are stunningly famous for this (I had a child like this, too.)

• dietary situations – for example: SUGAR (Dear Lord did I ever have one like this!)

• specific, tightly defined – and maybe undiscovered – learning style – (5 kids, 5 learning styles)

So whether you are dealing with a third grader who can’t spell, a fourth grader who can’t read, a fifth grader with comprehension issues, or a junior high student with abstract math problems, the root cause or causes can be, and probably are, varied and inter-related. In future articles, we are going to tackle these issues and more – in great detail.

However, I would not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t first address a situation that (if present in your child) will most certainly undermine your every attempt to help them , regardless of what academic “symptoms” they are displaying.

Let me explain.

When my daughter started first grade, she made some progress – some. I had enough experience to know that she probably just needed more time to mature. Time did not help. By the time she was 8 1/2, she was no further along in school than she had been two years prior. Her 6 year old sister could read circles around her. No matter what I tried – nothing. One minute she could read a word, the next, it was as if she’d never seen it. One day she could add two digit numbers, the next day, she was all over the page. Her writing was crammed together without any hint of spaces between words. She understood and even remembered letter sounds and phonics rules, and could explain them to me, but could not apply them to written words. By this time, she cried every time she thought it was time for school . Her personality changed, she withdrew. She began to cry if I walked two feet away from her at dance class. She wanted to play on the softball team, but would fold into tears during games in confusion. And she couldn’t explain any of it to me.

Because my background is in special education/remediation, I tested her up one side and down the other, and I can tell you that 2 + 2 never came close to being 4. Nothing that was going on with her made any sense at all and I had done everything I knew to do. Having her tested by “experts” in the school system would only get a label for her and would not solve the problem.

Then I remembered an article I’d read by a local optometrist about something she called – Learning Related Vision Problems. The article stated that children with certain “vision” problems would struggle in school in various ways and she listed these “ways”. My daughter displayed 19 out of 20 of the symptoms! But, I reasoned, that because she already wore glasses (since the age of 4) that her problems could not possibly be visual.

Now, skip to me, months later in that very doctor’s office, forking out good money for my daughter to be “evaluated”. In my heart of hearts I believed this was a complete waste of time. The kid wore glasses already, for Pete’s sake! How could all of her issues be related to vision? But I had run out of options, and I needed to feel like I was doing something! As I sat in the waiting room – for two hours – I became even more confused when I began to read the “Testimonials” book compiled by parents whose children had experienced ‘vision therapy’. On page after page, parent after parent, went on and on about how “vision therapy” changed their child’s life. They spoke of children “coming out of their shells”, and excelling in school, and enjoying studying and reading. They spoke of being desperate to help their children, who by all accounts, were crashing and burning just like my daughter had been. “How in the world” I asked my self, “is any of this possible? She’s not blind – she wears glasses! This is all too weird.” I wanted to leave, but I really had no where else to look.

Days later, back in the doctor’s office, I received a diagnosis. They found her to be a “Level 2″ therapy needs patient. She had double vision at 18 inches, (from her eyes) and also at several yards away. To be able to see a single image, she had to strain her eyes at a level she couldn’t maintain for more than a few seconds (much like if you or I would “cross” our eyes and try to hold it – ouch!) She had little control over being able to change focus from near to far and vice versa. She was unable to track objects (or words!) in any direction for more than a few seconds. In short, she had very little control of the muscles controlling her eyes.

Then the doctor told me how this diagnosis “looked” from my daughter’s point of view. When she looked at written work (books, letters, word cards, mom’s handwriting, etc.) all she saw was a jumble of squiggles. Because her eyes did not work together, each eye saw its own image – double vision. She never saw individual letters, much less words on a page, much less spaces between words, much less punctuation! Trying to focus, for seconds at a time, made her dizzy, nauseous, and full of dread concerning anything related to school. In a crowd, her double vision at a distance, magnified the crowd, and she would lose sight of me as soon as I stepped away. In dance class, with mirrored walls, it was even worse. On the softball field, sometimes she saw one ball coming toward her, sometimes she saw two. Though she “understood” everything that had ever been taught/told to her, what she “saw” never matched what she heard – she wasn’t seeing what the world saw. Confusion reigned supreme in her little mind and she had no way to explain it. So she withdrew, and cried and displayed strange behavior and had meltdowns.

I don’t remember how long I cried after the doctor explained it all to us. I just remember promising God that if He would heal her heart of all of the confusion, that we would do our part and commit to the months of therapy. He did, and we did. Within the first two months of therapy, she began to change. As her double vision changed, for the first time, to single vision, she began to be able to explain the changes that were happening. I cried. At times her therapist would shed some light on how and why my sweet daughter said and did things that made no sense. As therapy continued, all – ALL of those problems and behaviors vanished. Today she is a 15 year old high school student who would rather read than eat. She is reading The Chronicles of Narnia for the 100th time, she draws, knits hats and scarves, plays guitar and makes A’s and B’s in Algebra – without crying. And if she loses me in a crowd these days, trust me, it’s because she’s trying to.

I want to say that never once, as a small child, did she ever run into walls, or stumble a lot, or anything else that would lead us to even imagine that she had any vision problems that were not solved by her glasses. She learned to walk at 9 months, talked early and hit every milestone a parent would expect. There were simply no clues until her academics demanded visual attention that she couldn’t give. As a former special education teacher, I can tell you, that NO ONE would have known what to do with her, because this type of vision screening is not normally done. An optometrist can not find these problems by looking into a child’s eyes with his/her equipment. They must be specifically evaluated using techniques that are unique to an optometrist trained in diagnosing such situations. Remember, my daughter, and many others like her, had been professionally, medically treated for their “vision” problems. This means that they are given glasses to accommodate for the inability of the muscles controlling the lenses of the eye. This corrected the “blurriness” of what she saw, but didn’t change the fact that she saw two of everything – something caused by a totally different set of eye muscles.

Anywho, years later, I went through the training myself, and worked as a vision therapist for the very same doctor. I just can’t tell you how many times I sat with crying parents who were just discovering that their precious child had been struggling in school for years with an undetected, weirdo eye problem. And then, months later, we always were the best of friends as they perceived that I had worked some miracle in their child’s life. I’ve seen it happen so many times, but it NEVER got old!

So, you can see that, no matter how brilliant a teacher I may have been (very funny, I know), no matter how much effort I might have exerted, no matter how many methods I could have experimented with, my little girl would still be struggling to this day, had her vision not been properly taken care of. She’d still have double vision, little success in school, unexplainable fears, and probably a few nice “labels” like, dyslexic, ADD, learning disabled and a host of other things dragging her down and trying to convince her that she was dumb and unable to become all that God had planned for her.

No, Thank You.

I will leave you with links to a couple of awesome web sites that are good starting places for anyone with more questions.

http://www.advancedeyecenter.com/vision_therapy.html

http://www.visiontherapystories.org/

Take some time and really look around these sites. They are filled with lots of information along with many, many success stories. And, if it turns out that you never have these particular needs in your family, then just keep this information in your back pocket for someone else. But, trust me, if you ever find yourself in my situation, and some of you will, you’ll be thanking God for this “long-winded article you read way-back-when in that home school magazine.”

Most of all – and I can’t stress this enough – pray, pray, pray! Our creator, the One who knows how many hairs are on your head, knows exactly what is going on with that child of yours – in detail – and He’s talking! Ask Him.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all . . .

and it will be given to him.” James 1:5

Finally, don’t forget to write me – so we can cry together – and then later, do the happy dance!

Darnelle is a wife and a mother to 5 children: 4 homeschoolers currently in 3rd, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades and one college sophomore. All 5 children have been home schooled from preschool. She has experience teaching in public, private, parochial and special schools but her favorite . . . is home school! Her certification is in the areas of special education and remediation. Her writing aims at assisting parents in finding and then correcting trouble spots that often cause academic problems and struggles. Children – and their parents – who are free from the burden of academic struggles, can begin to love learning again, just like God intended! Visit her blog, All Things Work Together.