Anonymous wrote:There is disdain for vision therapy here, but not from us. We did it and it was hugely helpful.

Two points. One is that vision and eyesight are not the same. Our child had eyes that focused well but which weren't working together. It perplexed us for quite a while. Scored well on eye charts but put DC in various environments and they couldn't find their way to the exit or pick us out of a crowd. The eyes just weren't coordinating.

Second point: in our case what looked like attention problems were actually vision problems. Our child didn't know how to focus or what to focus on, so when the gymnastics teacher was demonstrating a skill DC would wander off to look at a gadget left lying on a nearby table. To adult observation it appeared DC couldn't hold attention. It turned out that DC's attentional issues were just fine but that they couldn't figure out what to focus on, especially anything involving any distance or depth perception.

Without VT I'm betting our child might have been diagnosed with ADHD. Now our child is regarded as having exceptionally good focus, attention and self-discipline.

I know this is an old thread, but I am hoping the PP who posted above might still read this board. PP, I have a 5 year old DC who is exactly like this. If you would be willing to share a bit about how you addressed this issue, I would be very grateful. We have had an evaluation by a developmental optometrist and next will have one with an occupational therapist. Thanks so much in advance.

My dc has a rare, though minor, medical condition. We - as well as teachers- suspected a vision issue for years but eye exams always were ok. We started seeing it impact things outside of school - couldn't read numbers on jersey close by when running. Constant Eye pain, eye rubbing at night. We saw improvement with very large font on kindle.

We researched VT and very turned off by some VT practices - 2x a week, 8 to 10 months. And when you talked to them, felt like a scam. Our pediatrician was also very skeptical and only agreed when top pediatric opthamologist practice saw medical issue related to primary medical condition - and one of the VT areas where there is more evidence. Pediatrician agreed made sense. Within 3 sessions direct with opthamologist, we saw major improvement. By 8 sessions done. Went from below grade reading level to 2+ grades above in months, hating to read to voracious reader. still re-learning spelling/writing that occurred during bad eye years. Interestingly, dc was becoming spacey - no longer an issue.

Go to a very reputable pediatric opthamologist, ask to do a screening. At minimum, they will measure convergence and do a screening questionaire. Some have more tests. Its best to do this after a school day when your DC has been using eyes more.

I heard a researcher on reading for kids with disabilities who made the point that given that kids with Cerebral Palsy with hugely disordered eye movements can learn to read with age appropriate accuracy and fluency, it seems unlikely that subtle differences in eye movement are the cause of reading disability.