Putting 2012 to Bed

As we are closing up 2012, I feel like there is a lot of great things that have happened this year. From our children reading better, to catching touchdowns, to expanding peripheral awareness, to new office gadgets, to a new website, to this new blog! Here at Optometric Physicians, we have a lot to be thankful for.

Thank you to all for being apart of our journey. You have allowed us to be apart of your families, and I thank you for all your hard work and dedication.




Today I wanted to touch on the most popular blogs this year:

1. Our series on Perceptual Skills:

I.Visual Discrimination

II. Visual Memory

III.Spatial Relations

IV. Form Constancy

V. Sequential Memory

VI. Figure Ground

2. How to Make Vision Therapy Home Exercises Fun! & Fun Home Exercises! Continued....: We all know Home Vision Therapy needs to be fun to help motivate our patients. Those blogs are great resources.   

3. Let Your Children Explore and Play! : I am a big advocate of hands-on-activities, as opposed to electronics like an iPhone/iPad or a Nintendo DS.

4. What are Primative Reflexes? : This is a great subject, and is a very challenging subject to understand, which is why I think it makes the "most popular blog list" this year. For the whole series: What Causes Reflexes to Be Retained?, Retained Reflexes related to Learning Difficulties.

5. Is there correlation between ADD/ADHD and vision problems?: Most of my patients are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and since there is a correlation between the two, it intrigues our readers.

6. And finally - Vision Therapy Resources: Who doesn't want to know more about Vision Therapy?! These are great resources that some of my parents loved.

There it is... I have enjoyed blogging and learning more about what I am passionate about - VISION THERAPY! What were your favorite blogs this year?! What would you like me to blog about?

Have a great holiday season! And looking forward to seeing you all in the New Year! 

Our New Gadgets and Gizmos

For a long time now I have been wanting to do a blog on the new cool things that have been brought to our office. As our practice grows we have the opportunity to find more ways to accommodate and help our patients. One way we stay up to date is through technology. Today I am going to talk about two technological ways we are making what we do better!

First up: Sanet Vision Integrator (SVI). This 46” touch screen monitor is designed to improve visual abilities for a wide range of patients with visually-related learning problems, strabismus, amblyopia, and traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is also very effective for sports vision enhancement work with athletes.

The key features that make this “all in one” instrument so useful are the variety of programs and many ways that visual abilities can be enhanced. The SVI instrument actually “speaks”, instructing the patient to respond to verbal commands, improving auditory-visual integration and memory. The SVI can be used to enhance the following visual abilities: Pursuits, saccades, fixation stability, eye-hand coordination, visual reaction time, speed and span of recognition, automaticity, and contrast sensitivity, plus visual and auditory sequencing and memory. In addition it is extremely effective when working with visual acuity improvement in patients with amblyopia, TBI patients with visual field loss, visual-spatial neglect, and visual-vestibular integration problems, and with patients with rhythm, reading, and math problems.

As you can see, it is a great asset to our Vision Therapy Program. Click here for video demonstrations.

Next: Diopsys^® NOVA-VEP. This test called Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) objectively measures the functional responses of the entire visual pathway from the anterior segment of the eye to the visual cortex. By using VEP, the device provides quantitative information to support the interpretation and management of eye and vision deficits, and reports and documents the results of practitioner intervention for tracking patients’ response. It is easy to use, non-invasive, and provides a quick qualitative analysis of the VEP waveform and easy quantitative analysis of the amplitude (strength) and latency (speed) values. We test children six months of age and older, patients with a degenerative process such as glaucoma or multiple sclerosis (MS), or patients following a neurological event like traumatic brain injury (TBI) or stroke in order to help the clinician detect visual deficits such as optic nerve disorders, amblyopia, and other neuro-visual disorders.

In easier terms it is measuring the communication between your eyes and the brain. Isn't that our goal with Vision Therapy?! Now we have a test that shows us the wavelengths of the brain activity through both eyes. This test can also show the effectiveness Vision Therapy has of each patient. WOW!

As you can see these are two tests to be very excited about. Thankful we have the opportunity to provide our patients with the best up-to-date technology.

Lastly, another new thing is Optometric Physicians of Middle Tennessee has a twitter! If you would like to follow click here.

Thanks for all the followers and readers, we appreciate you! 

COVD Conference

Happy December! I have had a lot of great feedback from last blog post, titled Travel Therapy. I was going to do an individual blog on Stocking Stuffers, but the list I gave you on Travel Therapy, are all great gifts! Also, a fellow Vision Therapy Center in Brookfield, Mich., did a blog post titled 81 Vision Friendly Gifts for Kids. It has a great list a gifts for Christmas that help improve hand-eye coordination, visualization, and space perception.

Speaking of fellow vision therapists, I recently went to Fort Worth, Texas, for College of Optometrists in Vision Developement (COVD) conference. COVD does conferences once a year, and the course I took this year was called VT101. We discussed everything from the use of prisms and to sensory/motor fusion. After each class all the vision therapists would talk about all the different exercises we do. I met Vision Therapists from Denver, Colorado to Canada. I came back to the office with more knowledge and FUN activities that all my patients have enjoyed.

All in all, it was great to get all the vision therapists from around the world together. It is great to be surrounded around people who are just as passionate about Vision Therapy as you are.

Until next week we will chat about some of the new stuff in our Vision Therapy area. Have a great weekend! 

Travel Therapy!

It is the holiday season, which means... lots of road trips coming our way. When I was growing up, my family traveled at least five hours to see our relatives. I remember coloring, listening to my cassette player (oh yeah!), playing Yahtzee with my brother, and playing "I Spy". Nowadays, most of our kids are playing with electronics or watching TV.

Today's blog is called Travel Therapy for a reason! I am going to give you some great Vision Therapy exercises to do on the road (or airplane)! Your children with have no idea they are doing therapy!

 Travel Bag Goodies:

1. Hidden Pictures: This improves your child’s Figure Ground skills.
1. Search Google - Printable Hidden Pictures.
2. Or go to Amazon!
2. If you remember from this blog: Put a small sticker on the window nearest your child, and instruct him/her to look at the sticker for a few seconds, then to look outside at the farthest thing their eyes can find, and then back at the sticker again. Have your child do this at least 10 times every time they get in the car.  
3. Word Searches: Improves Visual Closure and Figure Ground skills. 

1.      Search Google - Printable Word Searches 

2.      Or go to Amazon!     

4. Color by number- Works on Visual Motor skills, Saccades, improves their                  number recognition skills as they identify and match each number with its corresponding color using a number. 
1. Search Google - Printable Color by Number
2.  Or go to Amazon!
5. Dot-to-Dot: Improves Visual Closure Skills and Visual Motor skills.

1.      Search Google - Printable Dot-to-Dot

2.      Or go to Amazon!

6.      Play "I Spy" with your children - Improves Figure Ground skills. 

7.      Mazes: Improves Pursuits, Figure Ground, Spatial Relations skills.

1.      Search Google- Printable Mazes

2.      Or go to Amazon! 

As you can see, there are many fun ways to do Vision Therapy on the road. These are all easy things to do with your children, and it doesn't cost a lot of money. Make the games fun and I promise these games are the way to go! You can do therapy wherever your holiday plans take you. 

VII: Visual Closure

We have come to the end of our seven-part Perceptual Skill blog series. This post focuses (a little Vision Therapy humor) on Visual Closure, which is the ability to visualize a complete whole when given incomplete information or a partial picture. 

Why is this important? It is the foundation skill for fluency and speed in reading and writing. This skill helps children read and comprehend quickly; their eyes don't have to individually process every letter in every word for them to quickly recognize the word by sight. This skill can also help children recognize inferences and predict outcomes that they experience through their daily lives. 

Children with poor visual closure may have difficulty completing a thought. They may also confuse similar objects or words, especially words with close beginning or endings.

These activities aim to help a child organize and integrate what they see to create a recognizable visual image:

  1. Jigsaws

  2. Dot to dot

  3. Coloring in

  4. Word searches

  5. Writing or drawing in sand or foam

  6. Incomplete sentences. Fill in the missing letters or words

  7. Matching complete and incomplete shapes

  8. Construction games

  9. Scrabble

10. Stencils

11. Model making

12. Building 3D models. E.g. K'nex

13. Partially covering a picture and asking the child to identify the whole.

There you have it! This was a great series to learn more about how we perceive things. I hope this was a great learning experience for you. I have a some great blog entries coming up for this upcoming holiday season. Looking forward to all that is to come!

Here is the complete series of Perceptual Skills:

I.Visual Discrimination

II. Visual Memory

III.Spatial Relations

IV. Form Constancy

V. Sequential Memory

VI. Figure Ground

Part VI: Figure Ground

Happy November! We are almost coming to the end of our series about the perceptual skills.

Today we are going to discuss Figure-Ground. This skill helps us learn to visually isolate one object from a group of objects. For example, has your child asked, "Mom, I can't find my shoes?!" Of course, those shoes are right under your child's nose. Besides inattention, it could be the result of your child having difficulty distinguishing the “figure” (shoes) from the background (the other shoes in the closet), the “background.” Note where this skill gets its name. Makes sense, right?

Let's break this down. First, perception is what goes on in our internal mental world: how we organize and give meaning to raw data which we receive from the outside world through our senses.

There are two types of Figure Ground perceptions (just like Sequential Memory):

· Auditory figure-ground perception: is the ability to hear the voice of one speaker over the   background noises (music, other conversations, road noises).

· Visual figure-ground perception: is an inborn tendency which allows us to distinguish objects from a background.

Can you image how it might affect your child if he has a figure-ground weakness? Some examples of a child having figure-ground weakness may find difficulties in:

· Keeping their place when reading and scanning from one word to the next.

· Finding a word in a dictionary.

· Copying from a book or board, because they are prone to losing their place or omitting sections of work.

· Understanding pictures because they struggle to differentiate the outlines from the background.  

· Paying attention because it is hard to focus on one object while ignoring or blocking out the background. 

Practical ideas to improve figure-ground perception:

· When reading, use a book marker below the sentence that is being read.

· Play “I spy” games.

· Carry out specific instructions that involve looking for and fetching specific things (find the red pencil in the box; look for a picture of a flower on this page; design a treasure hunt).

· Sort objects according to shape, size, color, thickness, etc.

· Identify objects in pictures with a lot of detail

· Use tracing paper to trace patterns or complete mazes, do dot-to-dot or spot-the-difference pictures.

· Write a sentence without spacing between the words. Help the child to find the words by placing the spaces correctly.

· Word searches

· Find words in a dictionary.

Next week, is our last perceptual skill: Visual Closure. Have a great weekend! If you are just joining us here is the link to the beginning of our take on Perceptual Skills, Part I.

Part V: Sequential Memory

Hope all is well in the Vision Therapy world!

Last week I was in Fort Worth, Texas, for a COVD seminar. It was a great experience to interact with other therapists. I will expand more on my experience in the next couple of posts.

Today's blog is going to be about Sequential Memory. There are two types of Sequential Memory we work on here: Auditory and Visual Sequencing. Auditory Sequential and Visual Sequential Memory skills are the ability to remember things heard and seen in sequence.  

Students that have trouble with both Sequential Memories experience difficulty copying from the board, learning to read, remembering what they have read, and being able to complete a task in the order they were given.

If there is difficulties with both, can you imagine how hard school can be? As you can imagine saying 91 + 1 or 19 + 1 or spelling “t-a-r” instead of “r-a-t” or reading “dog” instead of “god” could completely change the meaning of a situation.

Sequential Memory is very important perceptual skill in our everyday life. If you would like some steps to help improve both skills, email me at: vt@rdeye.com.  

 

Part IV: Form Constancy

How many activities from last weeks blog did you incorporate into your child's day? I used a lot during my therapy sessions with my patients!

This week is about Form Constancy, which is the ability to mentally turn and rotate objects in our minds and picture what they would look like. This skill helps us distinguish differences in size, shape, and orientation. When a child has poor form-constancy you will notice they frequently reverse letters and numbers.

Some great exercises to improve Form Constancy can be found:

       1. Eye Can Learn - A great website that has games for each perceptual skill. But limit computer use!

       2. Again, from Mrs. Pratt's Classroom, she has listed great activities to improve Form Constancy.

  

And I have some for you too!

Visual Form Constancy Activities

• Cut out various sizes and colors of shapes. Hold up one and have the child point to the ones that are the same.
• Have the child locate a variety of geometrical shapes in a room (clock is a circle).
• Practice sorting, naming, and classifying various shapes and objects.
• Moving into and out of named shapes drawn on the ground with sidewalk chalk.
• Identifying shapes, letters, or pictures, drawn on the back with a finger.
• Recognizing shapes and forms in pictures (magazines, books).
• Filling in or coloring shapes/forms.
• Copying shapes or forms using pegboard, parquetry, or block designs.
• Making shapes with toothpicks, straws, pipe cleaners.

These are all great activities that are easy and fun. My favorites are making shapes with pipe cleaners and locating shapes in a room. Try them out and have fun!

Part III: Spatial Relations

For the last couple weeks we have been talking about Perceptual Skills. I hope you are enjoying them as much as I am. Today we are going to blog about Spatial Relations. I found a great website by Michelle Pratt, who is an Occupational Therapist.  I loved her website because she gave fun activities to improve each Perceptual Skill. Here is her take on Spatial Relations:

Visual Spatial Relations

Visual Spatial perception provides us with information about our environment. The way a child perceives space and their position or orientation within that space can affect their gross motor skills and classroom performance. It is the ability to distinguish differences among similar objects or forms. This skill helps children in understanding relationships and recognizing underlying concepts. This area is closely related to the problem solving and conceptual skills required for higher level science and math.  

Visual Spatial Orientation-- helps us with letter reversals. The most common cause of reversals in older children is a lack of visual spatial development--consistently knowing left from right, either in relationship to their own bodies or in the world around them. Children with poor visual processing have not developed adequate skills in visual perception and spatial orientation, such as laterality and directionality. 

Definition

Is the ability to understand and interpret relationships:

a. Between oneself and other people. E.g. Stand behind Mommy

b. Between oneself and other objects. E.g. put the chair beside Daddy

c. Objects in relation to other objects. E.g. put the brick in the box.

A child with visual spatial problems may have difficulty with:

1. Interpreting instructions. E.g. write your name at the top of the page.

2. Dressing. Putting garments on up side down or being unable to turn them the right way round.

3. Correctly positioning equipment, such as utensils at meal times.

4. Moving themselves in space. In PE games or when doing gymnastics or obstacle courses.

5. Tracking mazes.

6. Copying patterns or Lego models.

7. Producing 3D drawings E.g. Houses, boxes or cubes.

8. Setting out work on a page, particularly mathematical problems or diagrams.

9. Labeling diagrams.

Activities to help

Activities for yourself and one other person or a group1. Simon Says
2. Leapfrog
3. Crawl under someone's legs
4. Stand beside the tallest person
5. Cat and mouse games
6. Arrange people to make shapes
7. Obstacle courses
8. Hopscotch
9. Games with hoops, beanbags and boxes.
10. Setting a table
11. Board games e.g. Othello, chess, etc.
12 Craft activities e.g. collage, origami
13. Construction games e.g. Lego, building a railway track or fort.

Copying Activities

Activities requiring copying 3D to 3D

1. Construction toys e.g. Lego
2. Multi link
3. Peg patterns

4. Patterns with objects using different shapes, sizes and colors.

Activities requiring copying 2D to 3D

In these the child makes the model from copying a card, picture or photograph.

1. Block or peg patterns
2. Model making from pictorial instructions e.g. Lego, K'nex
3. Following a recipe when cooking
4. Origami, copying diagrams in a book.

Activities requiring copying 2D to 2D

1. Copying a picture

2. Copying from the whiteboard

3. Constructing a drawing.

The above activities are great in more ways than one. We all know I love hands on activities more than electronics! Give some of these activities a try and next week we will talk about Form Constancy! Have a great weekend!

Perceptual Skills, Part II: Visual Memory

Today we'll continue our series on Perceptual Skills and discuss Visual Memory. Previously, we have touched on the importance of visualization. We talked about how it can affect different subjects in school. Let's do an updated review on Visual Memory.

So what is Visual Memory? Visual Memory helps us recall what we've seen. Obtaining maximum visual information in the shortest possible time provides for optimal academic and athletic performance. The ability to retain this information over an adequate period of time is essential for proficiency in reading comprehension and spelling.

The Visual Memory sub-test on the Perceptual Motor Evaluation (PME) measures the ability to remember a single form. If there are dysfunctions in visual memory, it may cause students to have difficulty recognizing the same word on the next page and reduce reading comprehension. It will also result in prolonged time copying assignments and difficulties transferring information from one place to another. 

Does your child have challenges with remembering a word they just read? If so, there is a solution! Through Vision Therapy we can develop good Visual Memory skills. Stay tuned next time because we will review Spatial Relations!

Perceptual Skills, Part I

Last week Dr. Durocher and I were chatting about perceptual skills and what each meant. Before starting Vision Therapy, we evaluate every child through a Perceptual Motor Evaluation (PME). It is about 1.5 hours of testing and we examine each perceptual skill. Each of the seven sets can cause an array of problems so over the next couple of weeks we will go into details about the seven perceptual skills.

Here are the seven perceptual skills:

• Visual Discrimination
• Visual Memory
• Spatial Relations
• Form Constancy
• Sequential Memory
• Figure Ground
• Visual Closure

In today's blog, let's discuss visual discrimination.

Visual discrimination lets us see differences between objects that are similar. For example, when we read, it's visual discrimination that let's us see that the words "was" and "saw" are different, even though they have the same letters.

There are many different stages to visual discrimination:

1. Difficulty with vowels in words; ex. went and want, ride or rode, horse and house, confused and confessed.
2. Difficulty with consonants in words; ex. then and when, would and could, ever and even, and presents and prevents.
3. Reversals are displayed; ex. was and saw, big and dig, spot and stop, conserve and conversed.
4. But the most common problem for our students is they do not focus on individual letters of a word; ex. when as then, then as when. They often skip over the initial letter sound.

Does your child confuse similar words? If so, there is a solution! Through Vision Therapy we can develop good visual discrimination skills. We can teach students to establish consistent left-right eye movements and how to focus on the differences in similar words. Stay tuned next time because we will review Visual Memory!

Teacher Resources

School is back in session!

In a previous post, I have blogged about how our vision can affect our learning abilities. With school starting back up, our office is seeing children with common symptoms like skipping lines when reading, poor penmanship, and loss of focus. Who are the most likely to notice these symptoms? The teachers!

It's up to all of us to educate teachers about the benefits of Vision Therapy, which can help make those symptoms subside.

Every child that is in school and a patient here, we are in contact with their teachers. We want every teacher to be aware of the benefits of VT. But it can't stop there - parents we need your help!

Here are some ways to help:

• Print the following Vision Quiz and give to your child's teacher, have them fill out one for each of their students. Sounds time consuming, right? Yes, but how many children could we help if teachers were more educated about how vision affects learning? And for them to know there is a solution.

Take the Vision Quiz

A first step toward assessing if you, your child, your student has a vision problem. Write in number that best describes how often each symptom occurs:
0=Never, 1=Seldom, 2=Occasionally, 3=Frequently, 4=Always

 
A score of 20 or more points indicates the need for a comprehensive vision exam.

• Or email the teacher the COVD (College of Optometrist in Vision Development) Symptom Checklist. That way if the teacher notices any of the symptoms they can refer patient to get a comprehensive vision exam.
• Tell the teachers about your success with Vision Therapy.
• Meet with the principle at your child's school and tell them about the benefits of Vision Therapy and how you believe more children could benefit.
• Send your child's teachers to our blog: http://nashvillevisiontherapy.blogspot.com/
• Next time you are in our office ask for a stack of Vision Therapy pamphlets and pass to the teachers, guidance counselors, and/or principal.

I have had several parents email me asking me to send more information to teachers. Which I love to do, but it takes more that just me, we need you. Help us help others!

To the teachers that believe in Vision Therapy and the benefits, thank you! Thanks to your awareness and concern, children are getting the help they need.

Healthy Eyes

Let's talk about food! We have all heard "you are what you eat," right? That could not ring more true. What we put into our bodies truly affects us and how we function.

Today we are going to talk about some foods that keep our EYES healthy! We can do Vision Therapy exercises everyday to keep our eyes moving together...but how do we keep them healthy?

Here at our office, during an exam we like to educate our patients about nutrition for the eyes.  I hope this encourages you to start incorporating good eating habits into your families.

Let's start! There are many antioxidants and other nutrients that can reduce your risk of cataracts, macular degeneration, and alleviate symptoms of dry eye disease. Check out the following:

• Vitamin A is an antioxidant that is essential for proper functioning of the retina. It may protect against night blindness and dry eyes. Good sources for Vitamin A are beef or chicken liver, cod liver oil, eggs, milk, carrots, spinach, mangoes, papayas, peaches and apricots.
• Vitamin C may reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration in addition to keeping your immune system in good shape. You can get your daily allowance of Vitamin C by eating not only oranges and other citrus fruits, but also from red or green sweet peppers, strawberries, kale and broccoli.
• Vitamin E has been associated with the prevention of cataracts and the delaying of cataract growth. When combined with carotenoids and Vitamin C it may reduce the risk of advanced macular degeneration. Food sources for Vitamin E are almonds, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, and green leafy vegetables.
• Omega-3 fatty acids are a great defense against dry eyes and macular degeneration. The following foods have a great source of Omega-3: salmon, mackerel, herring, flax seed, fish oil or walnuts.

With the above foods, lets not fry, over cook or put tons of cheese on top. To get the better source of nutrients try to keep the vegetables or fruits closer to the raw state. Also there are great vitamin supplements with the above nutrients.  

Let's start eating better today! Try to incorporate these foods into you and your families lives.

Vision Therapy Resources

With the cool air coming into Nashville, it lets us know that summer has almost come to an end. Not only that but with the sight of school buses and crossing guards, we know school is back in session! I hope the start of school has been great.

 
Today's blog I would like to share some great resources: 

• On the COVD website they have a great resource center for parents. Check it out: Parent Resource Center.
• In previous blogs we blogged about; "Is there correlation between ADD/ADHD and vision problems?"  As you read, a lot of ADD symptoms go hand-in-hand with vision problems. Yes, Vision Therapy can rid ADD symptoms. Here is a great book to check out for more information: Without Ritalin: A Natural Approach to ADD. Berne, Samuel, O.D., FCOVD.
• A couple months ago I blogged about Pinterest. This one is for all the moms that love Pinterst, check out all the Vision Therapy things people are pinning: Vision Therapy Pins.
• Before we start investing our time on anything, what is the first thing you want to do before you start? We find out if it works or we look for reviews, right? Check out our success stories.
• For more great books, check this out: Book List. There are books titled "Helping Hyperactive Kids - A Sensory Integration Approach" to "How to Improve Your Child's Eyesight Naturally" to "The Mislabeled Child." Great resources parents!

There are so many great resources out there about Vision Therapy. Not only that but how to improve our child's life naturally. I hope you take advantage of some of these great resources. Until next week, I encourage you to do something new and creative with your child this week!

Sports Vision

The past couple of weeks, we have had exciting things happening in the sports world--and I'm not just talking about the Olympics! There are many perks that come with my job, and the best is seeing my patients excited about their success. Last week, after several weeks of vision therapy, one of my patients caught a pop fly and hit a home run. A couple weeks before that, one of the children in our therapy program caught a football turning into a touchdown. To see the excitement in their eyes as they were telling me makes what we do worth it.  It is so gratifying to see our patients succeed.

While we are talking about sports, did you know that Vision Therapy improves sports performance? Does your child always seem to be just a few steps away from the soccer ball?  Having trouble catching a baseball during a game? 

Vision, just like speed and strength, is an important component in how well you play your sport. There is much more to vision than just seeing clearly.  Your vision is comprised of many interrelated skills that can affect how well you play.  And, just as exercise and practice can increase your speed and strength, it can also improve your visual fitness and accuracy.

Because all sports have different visual demands, our doctors assess your unique visual system and recommend a vision therapy program to maximize your visual skills.

Sports Benefits include:

• Passing/shooting aim (depth perception and eye/hand coordination)
• Improved defensive and offensive awareness (peripheral vision)
• Enhanced reaction time (eye/hand coordination)
• Improved hitting in baseball (tracking and depth perception)
• Improved fielding (tracking and depth perception)

If you feel like Sports Vision Therapy could benefit you or your child please call us: 615-386-3036.

We're growing, and our patients are graduating!

Many exciting things are in the works here at Optometric Physicians and Nashville Vision Therapy. I am excited to announce in the next few weeks we will show off our new website! After tireless work, we can not wait to launch. We also just received this new device for our Vision Therapy room: Sanet Vision Integrator. We're looking forward to assembling it and learning all the new programs. We are growing! We have been busy with great new changes and loving every second.

Not only are exciting things happening here at the office, but exciting things have happened to our patients. I have graduated many patients the last month from our Vision Therapy program. To see our patients meet their goals and beyond, is a great honor to be apart of. It is also an honor to be apart of their journey! I have one of the coolest jobs!

In the next post, I am going to talk about sports and vision. Just a tid bit of what to look forward to: Vision, just like speed and strength is an important component in how well you play your sport.

Thank you to all our followers and readers! It is my pleasure to share what it is that we love to do!

"Fixing My Gaze"

Has anyone ever heard of Sue Barry? Sue Barry was a women who was born "cross-eyed", and she saw her life in only two dimension. She wrote a book about her experience called Fixing My Gaze. This book describes her astonishing experience of gaining 3D stereovision after a lifetime of seeing in only two dimensions. She did intensive vision therapy which created new neural connections, and with them, a new view of the world.

In this video below she discusses how vision therapy transformed not only her vision, but her beliefs about the neuroplasticity of the adult brain. It is a great story and just shows how beneficial Vision Therapy is at any age.

"For most of my life, the last place I wanted to be was an eye doctor's office. I had been cross-eyed since infancy, and despite three surgeries, remained cross-eyed and stereoblind. Scientific dogma indicated that my visual deficits resulted from changes in brain circuitry that occurred in infancy and could not be reversed in adulthood. So, when I finally consulted a developmental optometrist and began optometric vision therapy at age 48, I took a significant risk. I had to think beyond the conventional wisdom, abandon old visual habits, and master skills that most children acquire within the first six months of life. As I began to straighten my eyes and see in 3D, I learned that the adult brain is indeed capable of significant plasticity. Rewiring in the adult brain requires the presence of novel and behaviorally relevant stimuli, the conscious abandonment of entrenched habits, and the establishment, through intense practice, of new ones."

The Importance of Visualization

Last week, I wrote about Pinterst and how I loved it because it was so visual. I am a very visual person; meaning a person can talk all day long on how to do something, but if they do not perform the task for me to see, I won't be able to comprehend it as well. That leads me to today's blog, "The Importance of Visualization".
  
First, what is visualization? It is the ability to create mental images in your mind. Can you imagine how many things that can affect in your life with the inability to visualize?

The inability to visualize can impact all subjects in school for your child.

• Reading: If your child has vision problems, reading is probably very challenging for them. Your child is spending more time decoding the words individually rather than visualizing and comprehending. You will notice their fluency when reading is very slow, leading to difficulty processing the words. While decoding the words individually, they will not "see" the story when reading. Thus making reading very time consuming which leads to frustration. Reading should be fun!  
• Spelling: With spelling your child has to create a mental image of the words without seeing the word. The visualization skill is crucial in spelling. Creating that mental image will be based on a past visual experience.
• Writing: Visualization is important in handwriting because your child has to create a mental image of each different word while writing it on the page. Multi-tasking at its finest!  
• Math: If your child lacks the visualization skill they usually count on their fingers or silently verbalize the different number sequences. Your child needs to be able to visualize numbers and quantities in able to be successful in math.

Does your child have difficulty in any or all of the above areas? As you can see visualization is crucial in the success of all school subjects. Your child wants to be able to visualize the story when he/she reads, and get As on spelling test. Let Nashville Vision Therapy give them the tools to improve visualization. Your child will see a whole new world when they have the ability to visualize.

Social Networking at its Finest!

Hope everyone has enjoyed making home exercises more fun. In our busy worlds, sometimes it is hard to interrupt a routine and be creative. I hope you got creative this week with home therapy exercises.

During the times without patients, I am constantly looking for new and creative things relating to vision therapy. I think it is safe to say learning new things about what we do, brings more excitement into our lives. Through my search, I have found a lot of great things through social networking sites.

Social networking is a great place to share interests and/or activities. Facebook is the biggest social network (please like us if you haven't). But there is more out there, like Pinterest! Have you heard of Pinterest? "Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests." I don't know about you, but I love Pinterest! I love that it is so visual!  

It's popularity has grown within the past year. I started searching in their search engine "vision therapy." And what do you know, several therapist or parents have started their own Pinterest. Please check some out:

-VT Possibilities

-Vision Therapy

-Vision Therapy Resources

-Just search "Vision Therapy"

Following these can give us more creative ways to do therapy with our children. Being connected can help all of us grow and expand our knowledge of Vision Therapy. It is a great way to share new, interesting, and creative therapy activities. Start pinning, searching and if you have not started an account, request your invite today!