Vision Therapy

My son was having some trouble with reading and vision was one area I needed to rule out. Our peditrician suggested going to UC Berkeley School of Opthamology. For about $140, they do a whole series of tests relating to vision and eye tracking. They give you a full written report and suggestions. For me it was an independent party, rather than someone who would "make money" on the diagnosis. It takes about 3 months to get an appointment. The appointment will involve 2 - 2 hour visits, one week apart. At the end of the second visit, they give you a report and review the results with you. Good luck.

1 mom found this helpful

Hi K.,

I can personally vouch for the vision therapy evaluation @ U.C. Berkeley. I am currently a 3rd year optometry student there and have had the pleasure to participate in several evaluations. The exam is done by two student clinicians and an attending doctor. We definitely do a thorough exam, going beyond "just glasses." We check how the eyes work together as a team and how well they can focus on things up close. We also check the health of the eyes. Based on the evaluation results, we can recommend vision therapy, eyeglasses, or further testing to see how well the brain interprets visual images. The vision therapy sessions can be pricey, but we have several modes to best suit the patient's and the family's needs. We have in-house VT, computer based VT, or a combination of the two.

Also, you may want to check with your vision insurance if they will cover the initial exam. I know VSP will cover the initial evaluation, but not the vision therapy sessions.

Hope this helps!
J. T

1 mom found this helpful

Hi K.,
I would like to know myself. We took our grandson to a eye Doctor that does this therapy. It was about 1800 and up.
There are pros and cons to this. I have a friend that is using this process. I will call her.
The money is not the issue. It is if it works.
Good luck and I am looking to the responses.

Thanks for asking this question.

K

K.,
I am a retired Home School teacher. I specialized in children who were not able to perform in the classroom with similar problems. What we used that was extremely effective was a program called the Barton Reading System. Some charter schools offer this as a service or it can be done individually. Google Susan Barton out of the Bay or South Bay Area to contact them directly.
For instance, a friend of mine came to me on advice like this (already had done vision therapy) her daughter was continuing to fall behind. She started this system and in a matter of weeks and a few months started seeing her improve dramatically.
It's a phenomenal program.
Good luck.

Check out the UC School of Optometry in Berkeley. They do binocular vision evaluations after they do a thorough regular eye exam. They also have recommendations for educational implications and strategies. Cost is much less. S.Morgan

My 8 yo son just completed vision therapy, after 14 months. When he would read he would skip words and sometimes even skip lines. He said the words didn't stay still on the page. He would even cover one eye while he was reading. His teacher was useless and when I insisted he be evaluated the school nurse said he had some difficulty but not enough to be considered a problem. Same as your boy. My husbands eye doctor does vision therapy so DH wanted Dr. C to look at him and do an evaluation. I was a little dubious because he is also the guy selling the therapy session. But his evaluation sounded right on, he diagnosed convergence difficiency, so we went with it. It was very expensive ($600 month) but by the time he entered third grade, eight months into the program, his new teacher had no idea he had ever had a problem. He is now reading at the top of his class. I can't recomend it enough to someone who might need it. I think this is a problem which is under diagnosed. Kids are labeled as poor readers or slow learners when actually there is a physical problem keeping them from reading.

When looking for an assessment, be sure to seek out a Developmental opthamologist. They specialize in the developing child's vision and needs. My niece receives therapy as she is not able to scan from left to right and move down from line to line. The therapy is tremendously helpful. It took my sister-in-law a lot of pushing to get the school to provide the services, but she is getting it. If I were you, I would find the specialist, have the eval., and submit the results to the school district immediately if therapy is recommended. Be sure to submit with a written dated request for a meeting, as the school has a time line to follow. Also be sure that the specialist includes how the findings will impact the child on a daily basis in the school setting. Very important that be included.

Best wishes.

My 8 yr old son was tested by the school - he did test low in certain areas which are indicative of dyslexia, which is a language processing disability. But his school performance was not 2 grade levels behind so he did not qualify for special education under IDEA. We paid to have him tested by a dyslexic specialist – it appears that they do not test correctly for this in schools. He is moderately to severely dyslexic and dysgraphic.

He receives specialized tutoring 2 x types a week - we pay for it. From what I've seen, the schools will let kids fall behind before they do something - because they finally have to do something. I would not let that happen and that is why we pay out of pocket to get our son the help he needs. Note about 20% of kids are dyslexic.

We had our son tested for vision problems also outside the District at the Berkeley Binocular Institute. We were especially concerned about tracking issues. He did not have vision problems. Our insurance paid for the testing.

Check out http://www.dys-add.com/. Susan Barton is giving a free talk this Thursday in Walnut Creek on dyslexia. She developed the Barton system, an Orton-Gillingham based tutoring system that my son is currently using.

Also, I think you have the right also to ask for independent testing outside the school District.

You can email me if you have any questions. ____@____.com

My girlfriend's son was having major problems in school and vision therapy really turned things around for him. They tested his little sister, who was a real hard worker in school, found out she had similar problems, and she is now also benefitting from therapy.

Go back to the school with the results of his vision evaluation. Whether or not he qualifies for special services, he may qualify for some accomodations in the class room. I'd say it would be a wise investment.

K.,
Well the good news at least is that the teacher is not saying that your son is ADD, and trying to get you to pump him full of Riddelin!

It is important to know that traditional schools teach to only two of the three learning styles in which we all learn. Visualy and Audiatory. They don't teach for Kinesthetic learners, in other words, those who learn by hands on experience.

I am a grown adult who went all the way through my Sophmore year in College without being diagnost as dyslexic. Once I was diagnosed and was able to make the changes in the way information was presented to me, I started getting much better grades and was able to pull a very low GPA (1.97 total) up to a 2.99 total GPA within a couple of semesters. You can have your son tested for lack of better phrasing, learning disabilities (all this means is that he processes information differently than others. There is no true disability) at a local community college or by the school that he currently attends and it should be little or no cost to you. I would suggest this before you spend the money on his eye exam unless you see something very wrong with his eye sight. Also because in some cases of dyslexia, words, letters and numbers get jumbled around and knowing whether or not your son has this issue might be helpful to an Optomotrist to help pinpoint any problems with his eyes if there are any. In my case stress has a large effect on how much effect the dyslexia had on me, such as reading infront of the class, timed tests (having extended time allowed me to relax and I found that I would often finish the exam in the normal alotted time without trouble), or giving speeches in front of my peers.

The way I started to over come these stresses was by forcing myself to do it more often... I don't recommend this at his age, at least not right away. First focus on getting what ever the issue is undercontrol, then slowly focus on over coming the stress that triggers the symptoms.

Please remember that the most important thing is this, no matter what, whether it is his eyes or the way he learns, it will be up to you and the rest of the family to make sure he knows that he is not less of a person or dumb. He maybe different, but he not "disabled" unless he allows himself to become disabled.

On a final note, even with my differences in learning and processing information, I am now a college graduate, and a successful busiess owner with a beautiful wife and a one year old son who brings so much joy to my life! I know that I have been blessed, and more so than some so called "normal" people.

Best regards,

Al A.

K.,

We did vision eye therapy for our son when he was in 2nd grade. It worked well for him. I don't know if you have had your evaluation already or not and if so where you might be going, but I really liked the place that we took our son to. We have seen great improvement in him. I think we did the therapy when he was 8 and he's now 10 and all of his eye problems are gone. It did take us longer than the actually in office therapy time to get his eyes functioning better, but the vision therapy place that we went to authorized more time on our at home therapy program and were always willing to advise us on which programs he should do at home, even though his therapy was official over. We have seen a huge improvement in his reading abilities. He was reading about a grade level below his actual level and now he is reading a little bit above his grade level.

One thing I would say is trust your instinct, I sure am glad that as a parent I did.

Good luck!

Dylexia is when a child writes their letters backwards. My boys are behind academically, slow learning is genetic so it was passed on to my boys. As for vision, if he has trouble seeing things, maybe he needs to see an eye dr. There is no cure for dylexia that I know of, but kids eventually grow out of it.

I just posted something similar. My daughter has been having trouble with reading since 1st grade and we found out she needed glasses. She did fine in 2nd grade and started to slip in 3rd and they put her in a reading intervention program that they said was helping, she was getting an S+ and now all of a sudden she is getting an N and they say she is dyslexic and want to hold her back. Our school district will do the testing, but somehow I feel they may be biased. Like another poster said, they wait until the end of the year, why do they wait? It's good to hear about UC Berkeley, I may have to look into that. I never heard vision therapy, doesn't your insurance pay for it?
Good Luck.

All I can say is that I have read about this. About how a lot of learning disorders are misdiagnosed and it is actually a vision problem. I say go ahead and pay for it. If it works great - it not the money will be worth knowing that you tried everything possible that it could be. Otherwise you'll always wonder and your child may always struggle. Good luck!

Hello. This site is supposed to be locally oriented so I'm hoping you live in the Berkeley area. My son also had some issues with early reading and we took him for a very low cost and extremely thorough examination to the eye clinic at UC Berkeley. Because there is a hereditary element to dyslexia, they even tested me as part of my son's exam. They also explained that there are many different kinds of issues,or dysfunctions, that are lumped together under the name dyslexia. If you're near UC Berkeley, or even if you're not near, I would highly recommend making an appointment with them. They'll give you a full written evaluation that you can take to your school and have them give your son some extra help. BTW, when my son started 6th grade, they told me he was reading at a 12th grade level. He hasn't outgrown his eye movement issues (one form of dyslexia) but he certainly learned to cope with them. I hope this will give you hope. Good luck

K.,
When my son was 9, his teacher labeled him as having ADD. This came out of the blue, at the END of the school year, Thus throwing us into mayhem!
I also tried vision therapy, well my son did, only to find he was just more of an auditory learner than visual and was color blind. To boot, his teacher was diagnosed with ADD, so was her entire family, so she labeled my son due to having a messy desk a hyper-focusing on their Crawdad unit..LoL
I agree with the other post. Before spending the huge amounts on this, please try an Optometry place geared for children.
I'm not saying that all places are the same, but the Visual Therapy we tried seemed to be more of a joke than anything.
Good Luck!