I used to work for OD optmetrists and MD ophthalmologists, as a JCAHPO certified and also degreed ophthalmic technician. At one point, I qualified for a dispensing opticians license and fit contacts and glasses under an MD and ODs supervision. I did home visits for the elderly in a geriatric vision clinic, etc.
I was the senior clinic assistant to the head of Pediatric Vision Services at OSU, and later was a practice manager for an OD, MA, PHD optometrist and an OD, who later became an MD.
There is a great deal that visual training, aka VT, or OT (aka orthoptic therapy), can do---and a great deal it cannot.
It does not cure amblyopia, dyslexia or learning disabilities and it cannot make a 20/400 kid into a 20/20 kid, or even a 20/60 kid into a 20/20 kid. It cannot make your kid smarter, or a better reader.
It can help improve visual perceptual speed/processing, making them a faster reader though, mainly thru improving their visual tracking speed/skills.
It can help adapt to new tasks (but not permanently strengthen or realign) the internal eye muscles after surgery; it can help an amblyopia patient improve accommodative flexibility and focus, meaning that with proper eyewear correction, their focus can be sharper/better.
If no significant learning or brain disability exists, visual therapy can be very helpful in some circumstances; if either exists or either are significant, it may do little to nothing.
It can help athletes gain better eye-hand coordination, and help airplane pilots and competitive target-shooters advance their skill sets---mainly thru repetition of and focus on specific, targeted tasks geared to their sport or needs.
Vision therapy does have a scientifc basis, it has been clinically tested, it is taught in physiology/optics courses at major universities, and peer-reviewed medical and optical journal articles do conclude that used properly, it has demonstrable efficacy and merit.
But it is not a miracle cure. And at the very minimum, the OD (optometrist) or MD (opthalmologist), offering visual therapy services to their patients, should state the above before taking one dime from them, or from their concerned and possibly desperate parents.
Signing up for an indefinite # of vision therapy (VT) sessions or buying packages which costs hundreds, if not thousands of dollars (to include the progress checks with the doctor, the therapist's time and the rental of home-use equipment) should not be something anyone does without really checking into it first.
Just my 2 cents on that. We found it very helpful with our own DS, whose amblyopia was discovered by me when he was 3. He had to be patched for it for quite some time, and we did the VT in an ofice, and at home. It greatly helped in our situation--but I also once worked (albeit briefly) for an OD who sold it as a kind of holistic, spiritual cure-all, and promised that VT would make kids better readers, and therefore, possibly, smarter----and it certainly can't do any of that.
