Fun Home Exercises! Continued....

  

Did anyone try those tracking exercises? If so, which ones did you try? Anything that is new and fun always makes children excited, so I hope you were able to incorporate them into your home exercise regiment. Today we are going to talk about convergence and fun exercises to do at home or on the go.

First, what does convergence mean? It is when the eyes aim inward at the same spot in order to fixate on print. Can you imagine what happens when the eyes do not converge together? It tells us there is a lack of proper eye teaming. This leads to double vision, poor depth perception, exhaustion and headaches when reading, writing, or doing other near tasks for extended periods of time. A lot of children having the above problems have convergence insufficiency (inability to converge eyes together). Through different exercise we can get the eye to work together as a team - our main goal in Vision Therapy!

Fun! Fun! Fun! Convergence Home Exercises:

On the go and want to do Vision Therapy Exercise? Try these:

• 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.
• In the morning when your child is brushing their teeth in the bathroom have them doing convergence exercises. First, put a sticker on the mirror, have them stare at the sticker, then have your child look at themselves through the mirror, then back to the sticker again. Brushing your teeth becomes more fun!

More Fun:

• Push Ups: Use a fun toy that lights up or interests your child. Place the toy about 10-12 inches from your child's nose and gradually bring toward the tip of their nose with your child converging to avoid diplopia (double vision). Just before there is a break in fusion, your child holds fixation on the target for 10 seconds. This push-up is repeated 10 times. 
• Brock String: Who loves the Brock String?! I know all of you do. Make it fun by having your child use their imagination and pretend there is a bug at the end of the string. Have them slowly watch the bug come toward their nose. No beads to look at, just a bug! 
• Magic Eye Books: Have your child pick one of their interest.
• Stringing Beads or Shapes at a near point. 
• Eye Can Learn website: Great eye teaming exercises. 
• Use accommodated flippers while reading a story of your child's interest. These flippers help with the motion of convergence and divergence. You flip the lenses with every paragraph. These flippers can be purchased through Nashville Vision Therapy.

Incorporate some of these exercises into your schedule. Next week we will talk about Balance and Coordination.  Happy converging!

How to Make Vision Therapy Home Exercises Fun!

–

A big part of our Vision Therapy program is home exercises. In Vision Therapy, newly acquired visual skills are reinforced and made automatic through repetition and by integration with motor and cognitive skills. The key word I like to focus on is repetition. Seeing our Vision Therapist once a week is great and recommended, but the work still has to continue at home. Home exercises should be done at least 4-6 times a week for best results, and it is through repetition of these exercises the visual system will be greatly improved. 

A big question we get asked is: "How can I make these home exercises fun?" Great question! In today’s blog we are going to go over some great tracking exercises. 

First, why do we do tracking exercises? Most of our patients have Ocular Motor Dysfunction (OMD), in easier terms a "Tracking Problem." That means the eyes are unable to follow a moving object smoothly. This diagnosis does not mean there is a physical problem with the eyes, but it is disconnect between the eyes and the brain. As most of you know when doing the tracking exercise that is prescribed, you will see your child's eyes jerk, lose focus, or have jumps and quivers. This is because of the OMD. Some symptoms your child might experience when having OMD is losing place when reading, eyes easily fatigue, and often get headaches with near activities.  Through different tracking exercises, we will teach the eyes to track better, which creates a better pathway of communication to the brain. 

Here, we give the usual tracking exercise where you follow a pencil top going vertical, horizontal, and circular motions. This is a great simple exercise but can get boring for your child. Let’s change it up and make tracking exercises more fun! For these fun exercises, you will need an eye patch, lots of reminders to keep the head still, and exercises that involve a moving target for them to focus on. Make sure each eye gets equal time with the patch, and do same exercise with patch off for the eyes to have time to work together. 

Ways to make more fun:

• Use a light up toy with lots of colors to track with.
• Use a lollipop to track with. Then they can eat it after!
• Soccer and other ball sports
• Search and Find Games: Where's Waldo, I-Spy, Hidden  Pictures
• Marsden Ball: First, attach a ball on a long string. Then hang it from a high place. Make it about 3-4 feet above the floor. Now you're ready! Have the child lie on the floor looking up with patch on left eye, and move the ball in wide circles, and in horizontal lines while the child is following the object with just their eye (no head movements!). Repeat with right eye patched and then no patch. Switch up the ball with more objects to make new and exciting.
• Eye Can Learn website has some great tracking exercises.
• Mazes: Print off the computer and use bright colors to find your way out. 

Try one of these this week! Let us know how it goes. Next week we will blog about Convergence exercises. We have a lot to look forward too! Happy Tracking!

Vestibular System and Visual System. How do they work together?

A big part of the NORA conference was about the vestibular system and why it's important to vision. Too often we look at the vestibular system and visual system as two separate entities. After this conference, it helped us understand how these two systems work together. The purpose of the vestibular system is to sense changes in motion. It is connected to many parts of the body including digestive tract, language center of the brain, the limbic system and to the muscles of the eyes. Basically, it is the "balance system", that is located in the inner ear.

When the vestibular system is functioning at its highest, it will contribute to healthy digestion, the emergence of receptive and expressive communication, emotional bonding, and visual focus. So why is the vestibular system so important to vision? The vestibular system works in conjunction with the visual system to detect head and body motion as well as eye movement. This interaction is called the opto-kinetic system, which serves as the body’s motion detection system, and allows us to make two types of eye movements. Slow, steady, smooth eye movements called “pursuits,” and large eye jumps that occur without blur in between points A and B called “saccades,” take place effortlessly when the visual/vestibular interaction is intact.

What conferences have you gone to and did you have any light bulb moments? I would love to know.