Learning Disabilities Awareness Month

October is Learning Disabilities Awareness month! "While educators may have been taught that vision has nothing to do with learning, COVD is sending the message that vision has everything to do with learning." Check out the article below, you will really enjoy it. Pass it along to your friends and family.

Vision Problems Mistaken for Learning Disabilities: College of Optometrists in Vision Development Observes Learning Disabilities Awareness Month

More articles that I have blogged about that are related to Vision and Learning:

• How are Vision and Learning linked?
• Does your child have bad handwriting?
• My child gets vision screenings at school isn't that good enough?
• Teacher Resources

If you or your child struggles with "top 5 signs" you need to make an appointment with us or your local Optometrist. 

Nashville Vision Therapy
4322 Harding Pike, Suite 214
Nashville, TN 37203
ph. (615) 386-3086

It's a Brain Thing

Coming back from the seminar, I was filled with more knowledge and therapy procedures. I was excited to show my patients some new fun exercises. Today I am going to share some of my notes I  wrote down:

• Eye turn is not the problem- only a symptom.
• Eye turn is not an eye muscle problem- hence why surgery to correct an eye turn is just a cosmetic treatment. 
• Not an eye muscle problem- it is a brain thing
• 3-6 mounts of age is when eye teaming develops
• Eye turn is a binocular vision problem
• Goal in vision therapy is to make the patient a two eyed person
• 83% of the acuity goes back with just passive patching. Passive patching: just putting a patch over "strong eye" to use "weaker eye" for a number of hours without any stimulation. 
• Does your child have a constant head tilt? Head tilt to the left means your right eye is dominant. Head tilt to the right means you are left eye dominant.
• Head tilt compensates for what going on. It helps suppress other eye. 
• The eyes don't tell us what to see. The brain tells your eyes what to look for.
• Sue Barry- does Brock String exercise 5-10 minutes a day. Still!
• With Vision Therapy we try to develop a new neuro-pathway.
• If the visual system is not your child's dominant sense then they touch everything or are easily distracted. Who can relate with this?
• Call the "good/strong eye" the "teaching eye" and the "bad/weaker eye" the "learning eye".   

The is just a tidbit I took away from this past weeks seminar. I defiantly had a lot of "aha" moments. Have you learned anything new recently? Or have any "aha" moments? Share it!  Until next time! Have a great weekend. 

I'm ready to learn!

This weekend I am heading to Detroit for an Advance Vision Therapy Seminar. I will be learning more about Strabismus and Amblyopia. I am hoping to bring back more new VT tools and ideas to help my patients.

Let's talk about what Strabismus! Straight from the COVD website:

Strabismus or crossed eyes, is the inability to point both eyes in the same direction at the same time. One eye may appear to turn in (esotropia), out (exotropia), up (hypertropia), or down (hypotropia). The eye turn may occur constantly or only intermittently. Eye-turning may change from one eye to the other, and may only appear when a person is tired or has done a lot of reading. Strabismus may cause double vision. To avoid seeing double, vision in one eye may be ignored resulting in a lazy eye (amblyopia).


Crossed eyes most often develop in infants and young children, although it can occur in adults. This may also be caused by:

• Inadequate development of eye coordination in childhood
• Excessive farsightedness or differences between the vision in each eye
• Problems with the eye muscles that control eye movement
• Head trauma, stroke, or other general health problems

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To repeat, "to avoid seeing double, vision in one eye may be ignored resulting in a lazy eye (amblyopia)." What does that crazy looking word mean?


When the clarity or alignment of the images from the two eyes is very different, or if the child sees double, the brain may begin to ignore the vision in one eye. This can result in amblyopia. The favored eye compensates for the "lazy eye," so the child with amblyopia may not be aware of the problem until the better eye is covered.

Strabismus and Amblyopia are easily confused. But as you can see, there is a BIG difference between the two. I am excited to build more confidence and learn more fun exercises this weekend. Keep you posted! Have a great weekend, and I hope you do some learning this weekend too.

Vision Therapy Masking Tape Games

Happy September! Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend!

When you walk into our therapy room, you will always notice all the tape on the carpet. Here's another fun Vision Therapy game, with a little help from masking tape. It's easy, cheap, and effective!

Whose child is still reversing their b, d, p, q's? Here is a fun thing you can do:

Have your child stand in the middle and call out the letter you want them to hop to! FUN!

If you remember I blogged about balance and I used masking tape for the balance beam. Check it out here: Workin' the Vestibular System

For more ideas, visit What to Expect with a blog post titled "Indoor Family Activities- Just Add Masking Tape." These games work on a perceptual skills, balance, peripheral vision, and eye-hand coordination. That sounds like fun Vision Therapy to me!

Try these games out! I promise it will bring you lots of fun and it's easy clean up! Enjoy!

New School Year is Not the Only Thing New Around Here

I don't know about you, but this year is flying by. A month has passed since Duke has graced this blog!

What have we been up too? A new doctor - Dr. Dale Martin - has joined our team, we opened a new office in Hendersonville, and a lot more. Busy busy busy!

Yes! You heard me, we have a new office in Hendersonville! Though that office isn't offering vision therapy, we provide: Comprehensive Eye Exams, Contact Lenses, Advanced Dry Eye Treatment, and Pediatric Vision Care.

School is also back in session. With the new school year started that means new teachers. Do they know your child is/was in a Vision Therapy program? Do they know about classroom accommodations? Email me, if you need help with communicating with teachers: VT@rdeyes.com.

Keep me posted if you need any assistance with therapy at home and communication with teachers.

Treatment Tools

Meet Duke, an American Pit Bull Terrier. He is going to help us model each treatment lens we use here at Nashville Vision Therapy. Thanks, Duke!

To start us off, Duke is demonstrating his focusing abilities and anticipating a tracking exercises. He gets a little bored of just focusing and following a eyeball, so he decided to show us some fancy treatment tools our office uses during Vision Therapy.


Here we go...

Why is Duke wearing 4 lenses? Great question! These are called accommodative flippers. These lenses are used to improve the flexibility and strength of a patient’s focusing system. We use these with the Hart (letter) Chart, when reading, and when we use a tool called Aperture Rule. There are minus lenses on one side, and plus lenses on the other. The word "flipper" comes in handy because you flip the lenses back and forth while doing certain exercises to improve the focusing system.

Harry Potter is that you? No, it's just Duke wearing prisms! I could go on and on about prisms. We use them all the time, kids think they are so fun!  

"Prisms create total "eye-mind-body” changes and improved perception of depth and space.  Prism produces changes in orientation with corresponding shifts in both eye movement and pelvic positions. They are a valuable tool in breaking down patterns that have developed over time that enable the patient to cope with their visual condition." 

Here is a great article about prisms, which includes examples on how to use prisms in Vision Therapy exercises. Take a look: http://www.oepf.org/sites/default/files/22-5-FOX.pdf.


Duke circa 1970. These red/green (or can use red/blue lenses) lenses help us use both eyes together. Using these red/green lenses, allows us to see if a patient is suppressing the visual input from one eye.

When using these lenses we use a transparent film with red/ green stripes. We place this film over reading materials, hidden pictures, mazes, or letter charts. When doing the exercises you have to use both eyes enable to see the whole image. If you are not using both eyes, parts of the picture will be missing.


Each one of these tools helps the visual system work more efficiently. What do you think? Which lens have you used during therapy, and with what exercises? Have questions? Email us at VT@rdeyes.com.

Work that Peripheral Vision

Hello, readers. Happy Friday! If you remember, last week we talked about peripheral stability. As promised, here are some fun peripheral awareness exercises for home!
 
A couple of weeks ago I discussed building up the vestibular system. One of the exercises I mentioned was reading a letter chart while tossing a beanbag from your right to left hand and back again. This exercise is also great for your peripheral vision! Because you’re reading the letter chart, your central vision will be fixed straight ahead. This means that you will have to rely on your peripheral vision to get the beanbag back and forth. You can also use scarves (or a balloon) in place of beanbags to start, since the beanbags fall faster and will be more difficult.

Thanks to a fellow vision therapist, I have been doing a lot peripheral taps lately! They are a great easy home exercise. They note:

"Peripheral Taps
1.      Place your finger tips near your body facing the student
2.      Without taking their eyes off of you (I put a stick on my nose for children to focus on), have the student tap your fingers with his/her finger tips.
3.      Alternate hands and places around the face.”

Another awesome activity (that works on tracking AND peripheral vision) that I found is described in the following video. This activity would be easy to create at home, and is fun and engaging! Using regular flashlight is just fine.

As Dr. Julie mentioned when children or adults block out peripheral vision which then creates a tunnel vision effect it can cause loss of concentration and/or difficulty driving.

These are fun, easy home exercises to do at home that will greatly improve your peripheral vision. Try them out and let us know how it goes!