Hi,
I'm new to the forum and replied to this last night, but since it hasn't shown up, perhaps I hit the wrong key...
Of all the OT, social skills groups, and other interventions, Vision Therapy has had the biggest impact for my son. He did VT for about a year, starting at about 6. At that time, he couldn't ride a bike, catch a ball, look straight at a camera to take a picture, or read a line of words across a page despite know what all the words were. The optometrist prescribed "prism glasses", which we soon began calling "magic glasses" because within two weeks he could do all of the above. He also had been involved with some other kinds of testing during this time and his assessments before and after the VT were different enough that the professionals came to us and wanted to know what could explain the difference. Our OT person led the spinning-table-top-to-music exercises and we did some other exercises at home. He also became less wiggly in his seat and stopped making funny facial expressions that apparently were related to a concerted effort by his brain to move the eyes.
His reading had caught up to grade level by age 9, but was still below what was expected for him and he was skipping words and still getting lost on the page. We visited the behavioral optometrist again and discovered that he had developed double vision, and that his brain was beginning to ignore it. We had a new prescription for glasses, and a series of weekly exercises that again helped a lot. No more skipping words--unless he's just plain trying to read too fast. And he can now put together a puzzle and jump rope! I don't really give a hoot about puzzles or rope jumping, but someday I would like him to be able to assemble a bookshelf and drive a car. These smaller tasks are representative of the skills he will need to do those bigger things down the road. Most of these are things that most of us take for granted because our brain just does them. My son's brain was working so hard to do basic tasks that it created fatigue and pulled energy away from other basic tasks. He needed extra stimulation for his brain to make those paths.
I was also originally skeptical about this process based on reading differing opinions online. In our first visit with the optometrist, she asked my son to close his eyes and then touch a bell that she rang. He couldn't find the bell. I thought, of course he couldn't find it with his eyes closed. But I could find the bell with my eyes closed no problem. When the doctor put prism glasses on my son, he could find the bell with his eyes closed. When she put the prism glasses on me, I distinctly heard the bell ringing directly in front of me, but couldn't find it. I opened my eyes and saw it was to the right. The doctor explained that even with our eyes closed, our brains perceive bits of light, which are matched up with other sensory input. Since my brain wiring is normal on this front, the prism glasses interfered with my perceptions. For my son, however, they bent the light so that the sensory input from his eyes matched up with the sensory input from his ears. Once the brain practiced making those circuits, he wouldn't need those glasses anymore. The whole experience was truly surreal because a) I couldn't trust my senses about where the bell was and b) I realized that my son couldn't trust his senses all day, every day.
I would recommend calling the center to see if they can recommend someplace closer to you. Or could you limit the office visits to 1x a month, etc. What they originally suggested is probably the "ideal" clinical plan, but there is likely something in between the ideal and nothing that might work for you and your son. Good luck.
