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. 

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!

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!

Peripheral Stability

Since Autism Awareness month was in April, I have been doing more research on how vision is affected by the diagnosis. As you might remember in this blog,"The goals of treatment may be to help the autistic patient organize visual space and gain peripheral stability so that he or she can better attend to and appreciate central vision and gain more efficient eye coordination and visual information processing."

The main phrase that stood out to me was "peripheral stability." I emailed some fellow Vision Therapist on ways I can incorporate more fun peripheral vision exercises into our treatment.  From there I looked for articles about peripheral vision and found an article by Dr. Gallop, titled "The Peripheral Visual Awareness: The Central Issue". The article had so much great information that I thought I would share a few tidbits that helped me a lot.

"Peripheral vision is the lion’s share of vision and, is also a big part of life. It is involved with detecting and understanding the big picture – the context and changes in our environment. At least visually speaking, it helps to keep us in touch with our relationship to everything with which we share visual space. Peripheral vision is at the heart of awareness of, and response to, the total space volume of our visual environment and all its inhabitants. Without the involvement and guidance of peripheral awareness the fovea would, for the most part, be “lost in space,” not knowing where to turn."

"This may also contribute to attention problems because without sufficient peripheral awareness, the context of visual space is lost and it becomes difficult to distinguish figure from ground. The environment becomes a series of unconnected, unrelated details to be dealt with one at a time – the background is practically non-existent."

"It is important to note that the real importance of peripheral awareness is not in the receiving of information as much as is it is in the response to that information. Knowing what is in our surroundings is important in the context of action for survival. While it is certainly important to know what is going on out there, it is equally important to know what needs to be done and how to go about doing it in response to what is going on out there. Peripheral vision provides an early warning system and is what guides our movements in response."

"Peripheral vision supplies us with information about our relationship to our surroundings. It tells us where we are in relation to people, places and things in our immediate vicinity. It can provide significant information about who they are, what they are doing, and how that may affect us at that moment and in the near future. When functioning comfortably and effectively it can provide accurate information regarding size, shape, direction of movement, and even intent."

"Just as improvements achieved through vision training often transfer into improvements in areas such as problem solving, concentration and self-esteem, improvements in peripheral processing may transfer into more so-called peripheral aspects of our lives."

Our peripheral vision is not something to mess around with. It is an important for our survival! Loved this article! Next week I will gather up some great peripheral vision awareness exercises that you can do at home.