Vision Therapy for Kids - Anyone have experience with this? I was sooo proud when my son's 3rd grade report card came home with all A's & B's. Especially when I knew how hard we all worked for those grades. My son is a smart fella - but he really had to apply himself to get those grades. This year we started reading more chapter books - more words in smaller print on the pages seemed to be giving him trouble. We recently had his eyes checked & he did get reading glasses. Both of his eyes were good - but one was a little better than 20/20 and the doc said it looked like he was straining the other eye. The glasses were to even out his eyes so hopefully he would use them equally. My son sometimes complains of headaches when reading & says sometimes the words seem to be jumping or falling off the pages. He also loses his place easily while reading & sometimes reverses his letters when writing. Although he is reading above grade level he loses interest in reading very quickly. Lately it's become a battle to get him to read at all. Although he is doing OK in school currently - his handwriting & spacing really need some work. He tests orally much better than he does in writing. Recently someone suggested that I might want to have him tested to see if he is having visual tracking problems. I'd never heard of this before - but after looking at a couple of websites for local optometrists working in the field of vision therapy - I think it is something that I may want to look into further. I'm not sure if my insurance will pay for this or not ... but if it helps, it would be worth it. As I said before, he is doing OK in school now - but it is a struggle. I don't want him to hate school. He's always loved school in the past ... and still does for the most part. I just don't want that to change. In order to get a "DR." in front of his name, he'll need to complete many, many more years of his education. Anything that will make school more enjoyable would be a plus. I really found the articles related to vision therapy & Learning Disabilities including ADD very interesting. In any case ... have any of you had experience with vision therapy. If so ... was it helpful? Below are links to the two optomotrists in this area who deal with this: http://www.optometrists.org/centersforvisuallearning/vision_therapy.html http://www.vision-therapy.com/drtoler/ Have any of you ever used these folks? If so, what did you think of them?
We used Doctors vision center (Dr. Durham) in Cary for several years. My son is dyslexic and dysgraphic and he also had 20/20 vision. So it went unnoticed for years. His handwriting was atrocious!!! He could not converge his eyes. (look cross-eyed) and was having a problem looking from close up to far away (or viceversa) it caused problems with reading and writing and looking at the board at school etc... His brain was also was seeing two images instead of one. (most people automatically make one image, he didn't). So the poor kid was really struggling. The good news is it has REALLY helped. The bad news is it was terribly expensive and insurance (blue cross) didnt cover it. We have spent over $6,000. It is $108.00 a session! They wanted him to go twice a week, and I could only afford once a week. There is lots of homework which he hates. It is really weird stuff like walking like a duck with your arms turned in a certain direction, to taping objects on the wall and he having to look at each one with a metronome ticking beats... but it has been worth it. We are not going right now as middle school is killing him and missing more school and adding more homework would be too stressful. (plus I need to save a bit more money) But I wish we could afford to do more right now. But for all that money... he can now look cross-eyed!!! :-D:-D:-D (we did find a lady doing it illegally, without a doctor. She did it in an office for years, now does it out of her home, but hubby was not comfortable. She only charged $60 or so an hour.)
It is worth it to take your son to Dr. Durham for an evaluation. I took my daughter about a year ago. Although her tracking skills were horrible, Dr. Durham did not recommend vision therapy at that time because she felt it might be developmental (she was just 6). I liked that she did not immediately jump to suggesting an expensive course of vision therapy! I need to take my daughter back for a re-evaluation but have seen marked improvement over that year in her tracking skills. My insurance covered all but one test for the exam. I think that additional test was around $50.
Good point, all the testing WAS covered. We had a regular co-pay and the testing was extensive. It took 2 appointments of a an hour and 1/2 each!! They didnt want to exhaust his eyes and get bad results.
