Three of my children have completed a ten week session of vision therapy in the past. Each child worked one on one with a different therapist, for a one hour session twice a week. Prior to beginning therapy each child had a complete eye exam. Each child was given “homework” which consisted of memorization and tracking exercises. The memorization was learning all the presidents of the United States by looking at a rather unique; cartoon type drawing that fit them all onto one page. The home tracking exercises consisted of a string connected to a pencil with a bead or paperclip to move back and forth so the eyes could follow it as it moved, and following dot mazes.

The work at the office including jumping on a trampoline while catching a ball, tracking on a computer, visual exercises which involved covering one eye, tracking with the string and pencil, and memorization. Periodic testing was done to check on each student’s progress.

The first child enrolled because he had a lazy eye. Though he was nine years old the doctor felt that he would benefit from vision therapy. He happened to be playing on a baseball team that summer. His coaches actually remarked that he was the most improved player on their team. They didn’t know he was taking vision therapy. His vision in his lazy eye did improve that summer and showed increased vision the following year as well. He also has dyslexia and ADHD and showed some improvement in his reading skills and his reversals after completing therapy.

We were so pleased with the results that we enrolled two more of our children in the program the next summer. These two younger children took vision therapy at the same time but each had his/her own therapist. One is learning disabled. While we saw marked improvement in the reading skills and memorization skills of the regular education student, we saw no dramatic changes in the learning disabled student. We recognize that LD students do tend to loose some ground over the summer though and during this summer she didn’t loose any ground. We didn’t do any other summer learning activities with her.

“Vision therapy -- a type of physical therapy for the eyes and brain -- is a highly effective non-surgical treatment for many common visual problems such as lazy eye, crossed eyes, double vision, convergence insufficiency and some reading and learning disabilities. Many patients who have been told, "it's too late," or "you'll have to learn to live with it" have benefited from vision therapy.

In the case of learning disabilities, vision therapy is specifically directed toward resolving visual problems which interfere with reading, learning and educational instruction. Optometrists do not claim that vision therapy is a direct treatment for learning disabilities. “