Who is reading this blog?

The Nashville Vision Therapy blog has been a great tool for a lot of my patients. My ideas for each blog usually comes from a conversation with one of my students parents. Yes, I always am listening! My hope is that my readers enjoy what I write and your questions are answered. But then I ask, who is reading this blog?

I am able to look at various statistics about our blog's performance. I see the blog post views, and what days people viewed it. But the most fascinating thing to me is people who view our blog are from the not only here in America, but Hong Kong, Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore, Ukraine, South Africa, Belgium, Canada, and India. We are reaching people all across the world. That is just cool to me!

I would love more interaction on my blog which means more comments!

Might I ask: Who are you?  What has brought you to this blog?  What are you most interested in reading about? Do you have any questions? Tell me!

Please use the comments and tell us where you are from and what has brought you to this blog. Thank you Internet  for creating a Vision Therapy community that expands all over the world!

Family Game Night!

Decades ago, families often spent more quality time together. Nowadays I feel like there are significantly more distractions. At our fingertips, we have 300+ channels on television, iPhones, personal computers, and video games. It seems like family time often takes a back seat to the distractions. One way to bring back that quality time is to start a dedicated family game night each week. 

Family game night is important in so many levels. First and foremost, it's quality time with your family. It can also be a learning opportunity. During games your children learn about good sportsmanship, following directions, good communication skills, coordination skills, and perceptual skills. Which brings me to my next point: we can incorporate Vision Therapy into our family game night! Here are some board games you can incorporate:


1. Rory's Story Cubes- This game can develop visual thinking including visualization, visual memory, form perception, pattern recognition, and sequencing.

2. Make 'N' Break- This game can develop spatial and logical skills.

3. Rush Hour/ Rush Hour Jr.- The game can develop memory skills, spatial skills, and problem solving.

4. Scrabble- (One of my all time favorites) This game develops memory and visualization skills. Most definitely builds your vocabulary!

5. Boggle- Another great word game. Improves speed and recognition, and visual memory.

6. Matching Card Games- There are so many great matching card games. This will help develop visual memory skills.

7. Puzzles- Helps children understand that a whole is made of parts, developes hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, builds visual-perception skills. Also develops attention, concentration and thinking skills such as recognizing, remembering, matching, sorting and problem solving. We love puzzles!

8. Connect Four- Helps develop eye-hand coordination skills, visual-perceptual skills, and fine motor skills.

9.  Labyrinth- Helps develop motor skills, concentration, perception, reasoning, and most of all, patience!

10. Jenga - This game helps develop depth perception and eye-hand coordination.

There are TEN great board games to play on family game night. As you can see there are many benefits to setting aside a night each week as family game night. 

If you forget what visual-perception skills are here is the complete series:

I.Visual Discrimination

II. Visual Memory

III.Spatial Relations

IV. Form Constancy

V. Sequential Memory

VI. Figure Ground

2013 is here!

Welcome to 2013! When I was in elementary school, we were asked to draw a picture of what we thought the 2000's were going to look like. I drew a picture of robots on a moving sidewalk with floating cars all around. Maybe I was thinking we would be like The Jetsons... Nonetheless, I feel like 2013 is going to be a great year filled with so many great and positive things, even George Jetson would be impressed.

To start the New Year we always set resolutions. These resolutions are goals we set to better ourselves. So today I am going to ask you to set three New Years Resolutions to improve your eye sight.

No. 1 - Set up your yearly visit with your optometrist. A comprehensive eye exam can serve as an early detector of serious health problems before other symptoms occur. Make your appointment for your annual comprehensive eye exam today! And please remind your friends and family too!
 
No. 2 - Get yourself and the family (yes, even your children) a new pair of sunglasses. Your sunglasses need to be polarized and non glare Ultraviolet (UV) protection. It is a must. Research has shown that exposure to small amounts of UV-B radiation over a period of many years contributes to the development of cataracts, pterygium (tissue growth on the surface of the eye), and can cause macular degeneration (damage to the retina). Stop by Optometric Physicians of Middle Tennessee and get the family and yourself a good pair of sunglasses. 
 
No. 3 - If you are a parent, a teacher, an aunt or uncle, a sister or brother and you know someone that has any of the following symptoms:

• Lazy eye, crossed-eyes, or wandering eyes
• Turn or tilts head to see
• Squinting or covering one eye to see
• Excessive blinking
• Short attention span (diagnosed with ADHD or ADD)
• Daydreaming
• Poor handwriting
• Poor visual/motor skills (hand-eye coordination)
• Frequently drops things or bumps into things
• Omits words while reading
• Reverses words or numbers
• Frequently looses place while reading
• Uses finger to keep place while reading
• Complains of headaches, eyestrain, dizziness or nausea while reading
• Complains of double vision
• Birth injury
• Brain trauma

Please spread the word and help them schedule a Comprehensive Eye Exam. There is a solution to these symptoms! 
 
Making these three vision related New Years resolutions not only changes your life, but you are helping others too. Spread the word and make these three resolutions your top priority.You can schedule your appointments here at Optometric Physicians of Middle Tennessee: 615-386-3036. We would love to serve you! Happy New Year!
 

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.