See, so both the places I have gone make pretty clear that VT doesn't treat dyslexia. I feel pretty lucky, I must be goign to pretty decent/upfront places.
Our VT dr was also very up front about this, as well as our regular eye dr. However I think it's worth noting that I've "met" several parents online who's children are dyslexic and who have benefited from vision therapy; I think that what happens is that it's not unusual for some children to be dyslexic and also have visual challenges - so VT isn't curing the dyslexia, but it is helping the children with another area of challenge. It's been quite a few months since I read Dyslexic Advantage, but I think that the Eides mention that issues with visual tracking are common among people who are dyslexic.
I personally wouldn't feel comfortable with a business that tried to claim VT will solve *everything* but for instance, our VT office will tell you this: They tell you that VT does not cure ADHD, but it can eliminate behaviors that *look* like ADHD, and this was true for our dd - before VT she never sat still in a chair, she had to eat standing up and she was always on the move. Her pediatrician was convinced she had ADHD because she literally bounced off the walls at her yearly dr appointments, when really she wasn't "bouncing around" due to ADHD, she was bouncing around because she couldn't focus her *eyes*.
I can understand your (Cricket's) dh's concern that anyone who goes in for an eval might come out being told they have convergence issues, but that's not going to happen with a reputable dr. And it's probably going to be hard to find someone who's been for an eval and found not to have an issue simply because most people don't go for this type of eval unless they have had some other professional refer them or had some reason for a parent to be concerned that there was an issue - i.e., the people who are going in for evals are likely to have something waiting to be found. If your dh is really concerned about it, and it's only a $10 co-pay, I'd seriously consider having another family member who you're *not* concerned about also go in for an eval
Re cost, our dd's VT (2 years ago) cost $3000 for 6 months of once-per-week office sessions (1 hour length). It was our choice to do once-per-week, we could have paid the same amount for 3 months of twice-per-week office sessions and the end result was supposed to be the same.
Someone above mentioned VT doesn't last - and we're finding that to be true for our dd - she's starting to have vision issues again, but my gut feeling is if we could get her to do her exercises she'd not have the loss of muscle tone and wouldn't be dealing with regression in vision. While it's true that the exercises are work and have to be done daily (our dd had to do them twice daily for quite a while) - they aren't *that* horribly terrible and some of them were even fun for a child.
polarbear
