Hi! My name is Amy. My son Hayden is a patient in the Vision Improvement program. Jamie was his therapist. And I want to tell you a little bit about what Vision Therapy did for my son and for our lives. When we first started exploring what was going on with my son, we noticed that we saw some things that we thought maybe Vision Therapy could or could not help with. We have been through several years of Physical therapy and Occupational therapy, and we weren’t seeing the results that we wanted to, and the things that he was learning those skills were not sticking. So, we went to see Jamie for an evaluation and we noted some things. My son was clumsy, bumping into walls, tripping pretty much over nothing, stairs were a major challenge for him. He couldn’t tie his shoes, ride a bike, he had trouble pouring anything without spilling it all over. When he would read, he would tire very quickly. His eyes would become kind of watery and red, and he would rub them, he would squint when he was watching certain things. When he was reading, we would notice he was also skipping sentences and small words like I or as. He would sometimes reverse words, so the word was would become saw or vice versa. He would also sometimes repeat sentences thinking that he hadn’t read it yet. He couldn’t ride a bike. His movements were not very well coordinated and he could not tell his left from his right. He had a lot of reversals when he was writing. He had Bs, Ds, Ps, and Qs that were reversed on a regular basis. It was quite concerning, we would take him to the playground and he would prefer to sit and play with the wood ships because the playground equipment was intimidating to him. He didn’t have the visual skills to master that. So, he was just uncomfortable when his friends are playing, he would sit aside.
So, one of the first things we noticed was that Hayden started to have fewer accidents. He would not trip as much, he would not bump into walls, and just about maybe 3-4 weeks in he started saying that things were popping out at him which we figured out meant his stereoscopic vision was starting to come in to place for him. He was able to see things in 3D. And that seem to be the start of his improvements in terms of skills. So, he started to learn how to tie his shoes which he can now do without a problem. He also started to actually want to pour things, so he was able to start learning how to pour milk in cereal, basic things to help with self-care. He even started to be able to brush his teeth better and figure out how to floss his own teeth. His movements started to gradually get better and better.
Hayden gained the skills he needed to be able to navigate stairs much more easily so, he could actually walk up and down them without going very very slow, and without the fear that he had before. He had the visual skills to now recognize the movements he needed to make to get up and down those stairs without the fear. One of the things with Hayden and Vision Therapy was that Hayden has what’s called a fourth nerve palsy in his right eye which means it’s very difficult for his eye to turn in and down on the right side. So, going into Vision Therapy we knew there was a risk that it may not be as successful for him but we actually were successfully able to expand the angle in which his able to successfully turn his eye and have the eyes team together, and work together appropriately. That was a huge deal because one of the things I always feared was there’s going to have a time when his getting into a car and I didn’t want him to have visual issues with driving. So, that’s been a huge improvement, his eyes now seem to stay together at all times. Usually when he’s sick or tired, we might able to see a little bit of the misalignment come back in a play but in general they look great!
Hayden’s reading also took off with Vision Therapy and he started to read books for enjoyment. When he was little, he wasn’t an early reader but he loved to read. As the letters got smaller and closer together, reading became a struggle and his love of reading seemed to diminish. With Vision Therapy, he started to enjoy reading again, he would pick up books, and he started to read chapter books. He would read for longer and longer periods of time and his eyes didn’t tire as quickly as before. His wasn’t rubbing his eyes, nor were they red and glossy, and reading actually became an enjoyable activity for Hayden again.
Hayden used to make a lot of little errors when he would read. He would skip sentences or repeat sentences or he would reverse a word. We saw these things diminish with Vision Therapy. Hayden was able to keep track of where he was reading in the text; he was no longer reading the same sentence again or skipping and trying to figure out what he had just read because he had skipped an entire section. He reversed words less and less as well...
When Hayden finished Vision Therapy, we felt that his visual skills were cemented in and we felt it was a good time to try Occupational Therapy. And with that, we noticed that right away there were great skills that were sticking with him this time, and one of the things that he learned to do was ride a bike without training wheels so, he can do that now. We also noticed that the skills he was taught at OT this time stayed with him because he was able to use his visual processing correctly and he was able to learn how to climb, and do other things that before had been a challenge for him.
Prior to Vision Therapy, Hayden struggled immensely with catching and throwing a ball. It was something that I think he noticed and thought was kind of funny because he realized that he would constantly miss the ball. Now that he’s been through Vision Therapy, he is able to throw and catch a ball without problems. This is a great skill that he really enjoys. With the help of VT, Hayden now also likes to play on the playground with his friends; he climbs up and slides down, and he’s no longer the kid sitting off to the side playing with the wood chips.
I also want to share that as a child, I have a muscle imbalance in my eyes and at 2 years old my parents chose to have a surgery for me and although they corrected my eyes from a cosmetic perspective, my eyes don’t work together very well and as my son was going through Vision Therapy, it was very difficult for me to do the exercises that he quickly became able to do. So, as a prior patient of a surgery to correct a visual misalignment, I highly recommend Vision Therapy both before and after if in fact surgery is needed because it would be a great service to have those eyes trained to work together before the surgery so that after the surgery, a little more of Vision Therapy can get them working together instead of just looking like they’re straight.