Brianna's Vision Therapy

I know that I have been really bad about blogging on anything. Partially this is because I am so busy with appointments and lessons all week long. Soon some of that will hopefully be a little less crazy. Right now we are especially crazy because in addition to tae kwon do and ballet we are doing vision therapy with Brianna twice a week. How did we get here, you ask?

Well, some of you know that reading has been a struggle for her. We would go over it again and again and the improvement in reading speed and visual memory was just not happening. I was frustrated and she felt stupid. I knew that her intelligence levels were high but I didn't know how to reconcile the two issues.

Well, one day I was reading the paper and there was an article on a condition called convergence insufficiency, where the brain does not use the eye muscles correctly for close up work. Many kids are actually diagnosed with learning disabilities due to slowness in reading as well as terrible visual memory and comprehension because of the effort to read in the first place. The National Institutes of Health found that 70% of kids markedly improved that had been given a learning disabilities diagnosis in a recent study. I also read a letter to the editor from on optometrist who has been doing vision therapy in his practice and has seen the improvements first hand that the study proved. Most people don't realize that while we get tested for distance vision we are rarely tested for convergence or perception issues having to do with how our eyes and our brain relate to one another.

I decided, what the heck, I might as well take her in for a vision evaluation. As I already knew her distance vision is perfect. However, as he started doing the perception and convergence testing I watched as one of her eyes would literally just check out after a few seconds. Yes, she had it. After I knew how you preliminary test for it, I checked out my Dad and Curtis who have it, so I should not be surprised that she inherited this. Now she is doing vision therapy twice a week where they literally train the brain and the eyes to work together. She also does vision homework that we bring home. In the two months that we have done it her reading has improved exponentially and her confidence is so much greater. She doesn't cry over reading and that she is just too tired to read any more. Her visual memory is kicking in and her comprehension is there. She actually remembered that the dark ages in Britain are named such because we don't have written records from that time period. That was a first, so some of her attention issues are actually improving with the therapy as well, either through greater confidence in the scholastic area or that her brain is also making other connections as well.

Overall, the time that we are putting into this is completely worth it and I am so thankful to have found out about it and found Dr. Price and his office. It has made a world of difference. Many times children with CI are diagnosed as having learning disabilities or ADD. They will complain about doing close work and many times suffer from unexplained headaches. Insurance companies are starting to take note and many cover the therapy. It takes a combination of in- office therapy and take home exercises. The time and money invested is completely worth it though when your child suddenly just takes off and starts meeting the potential that you know they've always had, but just couldn't meet before.