Somebody please pick me up off the floor--extortion prices for SN kids

[Anonymous]

My sister got vision therapy in high school after struggling for many years. She is very bright, but always had trouble with reading. She'd been diagnosed and then undiagnosed with dyslexia many times over her school career. Finally it all came to a head when she couldn't get a reasonable score on the SATs. She had a perfect score in AP calc, but couldn't break a 1000/1600 on the SATs. Her math score was sub-400. It turned out that she couldn't see to bubble the scantron. My parents paid big big bucks for vision therapy. She spent a year going to therapy, but it brought her SAT score high enough for a.full college scholarship. She credits vision therapy with her being able to get into a college at all, a scholarship and making it through college. It made a huge difference in her life. She now has a PhD in Chemistry and works at a.tech start up in Silicon Valley. It's not all voodoo. If your eyes don't track, it can make a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

Can anyone cite any actual clinical trials that show vision therapy is effective? And for which specific issues? Anecdotes are not data.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]My sister got vision therapy in high school after struggling for many years. She is very bright, but always had trouble with reading. She'd been diagnosed and then undiagnosed with dyslexia many times over her school career. Finally it all came to a head when she couldn't get a reasonable score on the SATs. She had a perfect score in AP calc, but couldn't break a 1000/1600 on the SATs. Her math score was sub-400. It turned out that she couldn't see to bubble the scantron. My parents paid big big bucks for vision therapy. She spent a year going to therapy, but it brought her SAT score high enough for a.full college scholarship. She credits vision therapy with her being able to get into a college at all, a scholarship and making it through college. It made a huge difference in her life. She now has a PhD in Chemistry and works at a.tech start up in Silicon Valley. It's not all voodoo. If your eyes don't track, it can make a huge difference.[/quote]
Interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are two types of vision therapy. One you do everything in the office, and one you do mostly at home on your computer. We did the home one and it worked.

How about doing both? Anything in the office should also be done at home. Daily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yup. Everyone’s got their hands out to take money from SN kids and their families. It’s sickening really.

Welcome to American medicine. It's very big business!

[Anonymous]

OP here again. I used the provider directory for the association and called several vision therapy practices. Several of them were in-network and even for the ones that weren't the prices were reasonable (in the realm of or cheaper than what you pay for speech or OT). I have no idea how one practice can price their services so far outside the norm of their competitors. Maybe they rely on a clientele that's too dumb to do even basic research???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. I used the provider directory for the association and called several vision therapy practices. Several of them were in-network and even for the ones that weren't the prices were reasonable (in the realm of or cheaper than what you pay for speech or OT). I have no idea how one practice can price their services so far outside the norm of their competitors. Maybe they rely on a clientele that's too dumb to do even basic research???

Some people have that much money and are willing to pay. Glad you figured it out.

[Anonymous]

Not sure what district you’re in, but in MCPS, they have vision therapists. One was coming for my son’s classmate & we were able to add her services in for my son as well. It was also a service infants & toddlers would provide, but my son didn’t quite qualify for regular vision therapy yet at that time. May be worth inquiring about at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I cannot begin to tell you how much money we've wasted on BULL SHIT "therapies" - wishing on a hope and a dream that something was going to help DS.

I've become so jaded and so skeptical over the years because of this, not to mention much lighter in the wallet area.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure what district you’re in, but in MCPS, they have vision therapists. One was coming for my son’s classmate & we were able to add her services in for my son as well. It was also a service infants & toddlers would provide, but my son didn’t quite qualify for regular vision therapy yet at that time. May be worth inquiring about at school.

OP here. Thank you--I didn't know this and it brings up a point--how unproven can this therapy be if MCPS provides therapists for it and insurance offers reimbursement with treatment codes and all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone cite any actual clinical trials that show vision therapy is effective? And for which specific issues? Anecdotes are not data.

Oh gosh, if only there were some way to search the internet for scientific studies...

Try this one Sparky, and if you don't like it, try "vision therapy studies" in the Google machine.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5030323/