We are on Pinterest!

Hello readers! I wanted to let everyone know that we now have a Nashville Vision Therapy Pinterest! Pinterest is a fun and interactive way to collect ideas for projects and interests.  On our Pinterest page you will find some helpful information about Vision Therapy as well as different pins about different vision therapy exercises like tracking and convergence exercises. 

Our Pinterest Page is fairly new so we are still busy adding helpful pins to our boards for you to explore! So if you have a Pinterest Page be sure to follow us so you can stay connected with the Vision Therapy world!  

Here is the link to our Pinterest Page:  www.pinterest.com/opmt

3 Myths about Vision Therapy

Myth: If you have 20/20 eyesight, you have perfect vision.

Fact: When your child does a school screening and passes with visual acuities of 20/20, it does NOT mean they have good vision. The visual acuities have nothing to with how well the eyes function together and how they interpret or process what they see. The eye chart does not measure peripheral vision, depth perception, color perception or eye-hand coordination which is all part of vision. Eyesight and vision are different.

Myth: Vision Therapy is for kids.

Fact: No, vision therapy is for children and adults. Vision therapy is actually more effective for adults because they are usually highly motivated to improve their visual abilities. For adults, it is common to have visual problems with activities up close like reading, using the computer, or writing.  If an adult performs these activities daily and their eyes do not work well together for long periods of time, then it is not uncommon for them to experience eye strain or eye fatigue. 

Myth: If a child has a short attention span and behavior problems, then they most likely have ADD/ADHD.

Fact: Sometimes when a child exhibits behavior such as impulsivity, hyperactivity and distractibility they are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, but they might actually only have a learning difficulty because their eyes might not be working together and it is hard for them to focus and learn. A child might have a short attention span due to the fact they have a hard time focusing on their work because of a vision problem. According to the website covd.org, “A recent study by researchers at the Children's Eye Center, University of San Diego, uncovered a relationship between a common vision disorder, convergence insufficiency, and ADHD. The study "showed that children with convergence insufficiency are three times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children without the disorder." Before an ADD/ADHD diagnosis is made, please consider getting your child a comprehensive eye exam. 

What other myths have you heard about Vision Therapy? Let us know and we will give you some more facts. 

It is Vision and Learning Month!

August is Vision and Learning Month! Since our children are starting to head back to school, it is important to educate parents and teachers about the link between vision and learning. Some children may struggle with reading or learning and it could be associated with vision problems, but that is often overlooked.

When a parent says, “My child has 20/20 vision, he can not have a vision problem.” That is not true.  The vision screenings that are done at school do not always test for eye coordination and eye movement disorders. With that being said, vision problems are often overlooked because these possible problems could be mistaken for behavior or attention problems.

If a child has a vision problem that goes undetected he or she may struggle with reading and doing their school work.  Some signs that the child may be struggling could be fidgeting, fatigue, headaches, and frustrations in the classroom.

As mentioned above, it is not about just having 20/20 vision. Many other factors go into vision and learning.  Please be aware of this if you notice your child struggling to read and learn. Early diagnosis and treatment is beneficial to help our children succeed. When scheduling your child's back-to-school eye exam choose a doctor that is a developmental optometrist. 

More on blogs that we have done in relation to Vision & Learning here:

Is there correlation between ADD/ADHD and vision problems?

How are Vision and Learning linked?

'My child gets vision screenings at school, isn't that good enough?' 

Teacher Resources

Learning Disabilities Awareness Month 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Howard- How does he do it?

Tim Howard: goalie for the U.S. Men’s World Cup Soccer Team. In this week's game, he made the most recorded saves in a World Cup Match.

How does he do this? In order for someone like a goalie to block a ball from going into the net, the goalie’s eyes need to work together to converge and focus on one object (the ball).  Having our eyes work together to see a single image is very important especially for learning and everyday life.   You use your eyes everyday to read, throw/hit a ball or look at an object nearby.

If you notice that your child has trouble focusing their eyes, there are simple everyday activities that you and your child could do to improve eye focus and it doesn’t even feel like work! Tossing an object at a target is one of the best training procedures for developing hand/eye coordination and the ability to locate objects in space.

·         Roll a ball back and forth.

·         Throw a ball or bean bags back and forth.

·         Throw a ball into a target like a bucket.

Notice that all these activities are hands on and do not involve technology.  It is important to play with actual toys in real space to improve your eye teaming ability.  This is essential for the development in a young child. Who knows, maybe one day your child will end up playing goalie for the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team making more saves than Tim Howard.

Double Vision in Children

In today's blog we are going to talk about double vision. The most common cause of double vision is that the eyes are misaligned, which then causes two different images to be sent to the brain. Typically, the images are either side by side or overlapping.

When I have a student comes into our office for an assessment, one of my first questions is, "do you ever see two of whatever you are looking at?" And when they say "yes", it is almost like they are wondering, "How on earth did this lady know?"

When I am sitting in the room with just the parents discussing the assessment results and I tell them “your child has double vision,” often those parents feel terrible or guilty for not knowing. I have had parents in my office with tears in their eyes saying, "you must think I am the worst mother."

Of course, these parents aren’t awful at all! Let's break it down; a child is not aware that what they are seeing is abnormal. Therefore, they are unable to communicate their double vision to their parents--children think everyone sees the world as they do. It is not uncommon for parents to be unaware of their child's double vision.

If you suspect your child may have double vision, here are some signs to look out for:

• Reading problems
• Skipping or repeating words
• Overlapping letters when writing 
• Lots of headaches
• Poor depth perception

The good news is, we can treat double vision through vision therapy and/or prism lenses. Since the problem is that the eyes are misaligned we can help alleviate the issue by getting to work on eye teaming exercises.

While hearing your child having double vision is alarming, there are solutions!

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month

In honor of Brain Injury Awareness Month here are all the blogs we have posted about this subject:
Concussions
Concussions Continued
Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation 

Here are two of our success stories:
My name is Adam. In 1994, when I was three years old I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That same year I had my initial surgery, where the doctors were able to remove about 60% of the tumor. A month before the surgery a shunt was put in due to hydrocephalus (fluid buildup inside the skull) and spinal tap was performed to assess the tumor. Eight months after the first surgery, the tumor grew back twice the original size. The doctors were able to remove about 90% of the tumor at the time, the remaining 10% of the tumor had latched onto my brain.

As long as I can remember my left eye had given me trouble. It would veer out and would get worse when I was tired. This caused me to have double vision all the time.
With the double vision, I would get tired easily because of the difficulties with trying to concentrate.  I even got surgery on my left eye to try to correct the double vision, but unfortunately my double vision got worse as time went on.

This past year I was enrolled in the Traumatic Brain Injury program at Tennessee Rehabilitation Center. They referred me to Optometric Physicians of Middle Tennessee. I saw Dr. Durocher; he ran a series of tests to see what he could do to help my eyes work together. He fitted me for glasses with prisms and gave me home Vision Therapy exercises. This made my double vision go away!
Since the double vision went away I am now able to work. I am currently employed at TJ Maxx in Brentwood and I am doing very well at work. I will continue to see Dr. Durocher and his team whenever I need help with my eyes. The staff treated me so well at Dr. Durocher's office. I had a wonderful time working with Dr. Durocher. I am very thankful to Dr. Durocher and his staff for helping me. They cured one of my biggest problems, and are a great group of people.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

My name is Esmeralda. I was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia. To treat it I had a surgery called Microvascular Decompression (MVD). It is a surgical procedure that relieves abnormal compression of a cranial nerve. There was a complication with my surgery and I had a brain hemorrhage. After the brain hemorrhage I lost mobility in my right eye, had blurred vision in both eyes, and double vision.
I then started rehab and then they referred me to Dr. Durocher. He examined my eyes, he then prescribed me prism lenses and recommended I do aggressive Neuro-Optometric therapy. I started therapy with Mrs. Kate, she gave me home therapy and I started to see her weekly. She began to work hard on my eyes. After a few weeks I started using my eyes together, and didn’t see any double vision! I thank God and the help of the medical staff at Optometric Physicians. I believe that therapy is critical to recovery, and I want to thank them for all the help with my eyes. May God bless you and give you wisdom to continue to help, to those who need it most.
------------------------------------------------------------------
It has been an honor to have had the pleasure to work with Adam and Esmeralda. It motivates me to continue to help spread the word about Vision Therapy and Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation. If you know someone who has had a Brain Injury refer them to your local optometrist.

Home Therapy Tips

In my last blog post, I referenced the most popular blogs. All were connected on how to make therapy more fun. They are popular because doing therapy the recommended 6 times a week can be challenging and by making it more fun it becomes easier.

I have stated the importance of therapy in a blog post titled "Home Therapy". "Your visual system is working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With vision therapy we are looking to change the behavior of your visual system and to do that it is all about repetition. That is the key to being successful. Our goal is to make the visual system automated (which means working on it's own without you having to think about it), and the best way to do that is through repetition."

Recently, I read this blog and I want everyone of my parents to read it: Tips for Scheduling Your Child's At-Home Vision Therapy Activities.

What are your thoughts? How can you make Vision Therapy priority?

Happy 2014

Duke is happy it is the New Year too!

Happy New Year!

I would like to start the first blog of the New Year by taking the time and share the top 5 most popular blog posts in 2013.

1. Workin' the Vestibular System
2. Wii Fit
3. Family Game Night
4. Work That Peripheral Vision
5. Treatment Tools

I really enjoyed those blogs, they were very interactive. I'm looking forward to doing more blogs like that this year.

All these blogs have one main thing in common: they involve a lot of hands on activities. If you know me, I am all about hands-on activities! We are becoming a generation where our children's "hands-on" activities are on an iPad.

When children are very young, their visual systems are still developing. Developing children need to interact with objects in real space. It’s how they develop depth perception, eye teaming, tracking and other visual skills.

I am going to say it again- developing children need to interact with objects in real space! Not on a flat screen. Here is an article I found this past December, have been wanting to share. The article is called, "Generation of iPad children who cannot hold a pencil:Playing with touch-screen devices means youngsters are struggling to learn basic motor skills."

I want this generation to be the best, and we as parents need to do whatever we can to keep our children active and creative. Interact with the world! I promise there is a lot to learn.