developmental optometrist?
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Anonymous
| Amazing how Dr. Zeller once again chimes in at any mention of vision therapy....with her name....and website. |
Anonymous
| Well she's working it. Which tells you something. |
Anonymous
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OP here. Thank you Dr. Zeller for taking the time to respond. I will check out the site you mentioned.
As an aside, I generally find the support and information on the Special Needs board here quite valuable and helpful. Those of with special needs children are often overwhelmed with choices and given conflicting advice as to how to proceed. The occasional poster who make this process even more difficult by offering unhelpful and disparaging comments should go elsewhere. |
Anonymous
Caution, op. The site the Doctor mentions is not unbiased. Check out the sponsors of the site. |
Anonymous
| Not to mention that posters are not supposed to be advertising their services. As the parent of a special needs child, the fact that she comes on to our forum here to do this offends me much more than anything anyone has posted here. |
Anonymous
OP: you're welcome.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend, only offer information. If you don't want to see me, see another developmental optometrist-- at least the child will be getting the care he or she needs. I hear on a daily basis-- Why didn't we hear about developmental optometry before?-- which is especially heartbreaking when the child is fourteen, thinks he's stupid and a failure, has tried a million other therapies with only partial success. I hate it when a mom cries in my office feeling she failed her child, because nobody ever told her how we can help. When children come to us earlier, remediation is much quicker, potentially saving parents a lot of money on both vision therapy and the other unsuccessful therapies they would have tried before eventually ending up in my office anyway.
If I posted anonymously, would that have been better? I prefer to be upfront and honest and let you know who I am. Like I wrote above, go see another developmental optometrist if you don't like my style. I feel it's more important to get the message out about developmental optometry and vision therapy than to bring people specifically to my door because I see daily how VT improves lives. And there are a LOT of great docs in the DC area, to whom I refer regularly when they are more convenient to the patient.
Yes, the sponsor of the site is the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. If you look at the research listed on the site, much of it is from the optometric literature, but a significant portion is from peer-reviewed ophthalmology journals, education journals, and psychology journals. Amanda Zeller Manley, O.D. |
Anonymous
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Can someone direct me towards non-sponsored literature substantiating the efficacy for vision therapy?
We had an appointment the other day with an optometrist and I felt blindsided and furious. My DC clearly needs glasses, but the optometrist is trying to convince me that what DC needs instead is hours of expensive therapy. I left with an rx but I'm not at all sure it's the one that DC needs. I think the practice of offering this kind of therapy instead of the service that optometrists are usually visited for -- glasses prescriptions -- is unethical. |
Anonymous
| PP, I understand your frustration. Go see Vike Vicente, a Harvard trained pediatric opthamologist in Chevy Chase. He will examine your child to let you know whether you have the right prescription and will also tell you whether or not your child needs vision therapy. To be clear, he does not do vision therapy in his office -- he is a medical doctor, an opthamologist, but he is familiar with what the developmental optometrists do. |
Anonymous
| I would also suggest Marshall Keyes, a pediatric ophthalmologist in Rockville. he is fabulous with my DS who has an ASD. |
Anonymous
| For an independent evaluation you could also go to Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore. We took our DS there b/c the OT and his school thought he needed to be evaluated for VT. I feel like it was the best thing I did (to get a totally unbiased opinion). |
Anonymous
| PP, after going to the Wilmer Eye Institute did you end up getting vision therapy? |
Anonymous
| 21:03 - That sounds like a great idea. Who did you see at Wilmer? Also, I checked out their website, but they didn't mention vision therapy screening as one of their services -- do you know what they called the evaluation that you received? |
Anonymous
| Just wanted to put in my two cents as an adult who has gone to Dr. Cohen since early childhood. Both my brother and I had somewhat major vision problems as a child and went to vision therapy with him for a few years. Helped dramatically. My brother now doesn't even wear glasses and I'm just plain old nearsighted like half the population. i still use him as my regular eye doctor every couple years. Also, I remember as a kid that I actually had fun going to it. They make games out of it. |
Anonymous
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My cousin's kid is in vision therapy, and it has really changed her life. She blogs about it here: http://lifeandtimesofstella.com/2011/03/22/how-vision-therapy-is-saving-stellas-toes-and-then-some/#comments
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Anonymous
| I plan to take my dc to BOTH a pediatric opthalmologist as well as an OD. Why not both? |