So I am not sure why a convergence problem would cause reading problems in some kids but not others. That's why I'm skeptical. I'm also skeptical of VT.
blackcat, I *totally* understand your skepticism - I was very *very* skeptical myself. The reasons I considered following through with vision therapy for my dd were these: 1) It was recommended by a neuropsychologist whom I respect - she's the same dr who diagnosed my dyspraxic ds and had been highly recommended by our ped. She's a professional I knew and trusted, and who also wasn't going to benefit financially any which way in recommending vision therapy. We landed at the neurospych to begin with because my dd was struggling with what seemed like cognitive issues - she couldn't follow a multi-step direction if her life depended on it. She was also struggling in school, yet we knew from a pre-K eval that she *shouldn't* be struggling based on IQ. The neuropsych eval found her to be extremely "constant" (same close percentile range) on all but two WISC subtests - both of which relied heavily on vision. 2) at the same time that we were pursuing the neuropsych eval, our dd had been complaining that she couldn't read the board at school (it was the start of a new school year, different teacher, different handwriting, moving into a grade where more was communicated than previously via instructions written on the board. Naturally we took dd to our optometrist when she complained about not being able to read the board, and her eyesight was measured at 20/20... so we thought her vision was a-ok. Again I was skeptical of the whole VT concept in spite of np's recommendation 3) I have a friend with a dd who's ahead of my dd by a few grades in school, who I knew had gone through VT, so I called her up to ask her and she raved about what a tremendous difference it had made for her dd re reading and being able to study for school. Again, I didn't buy it - so I asked our regular optometrist, who I anticipated would say it's hogwash - and she didn't, she actually recommended it, saying that while it's definitely not proven for dyslexia/etc and is sometimes claimed to cure ADHD etc, which it absolutely isn't a cure for.... vision therapy does in fact work well for people who have vision issues related to low muscle tone (which is my dd's issue). I was very confused about why our eye dr wouldn't have already caught an issue during her exam, but she explained that her exam only included looking at the sight in each individual eye - not how the eyes work together. Soo... we decided to take a chance on VT based on our eye dr's recommendation (fwiw, she also knew the developmental optometrist and had other patients who had worked with him successfully.) And there was one last person who clinched it for me - I found out in a round-about manner that our school's librarian had been through VT too, and had benefited from it. She'd thought her near sight was going due to age changes when she hit 40, but her eye dr determined it was instead convergence issues, she went through a course of VT and the VT worked for her.
The thing that *really* convinced us, though, was the initial VT eval. I was there for the eval and was watching when they held a stick out about 4-5 feet in front of dd and asked her how many she saw, and she said 2 with complete confidence like it was the most ordinary thing int he world to see two of everything. Up until that point I'd had *no* idea that she had constant, severe, double-vision. When asked about it, she confirmed it. So that made me realize she needed *something* so we followed through with her vision therapy. FWIW, I also saw tests that illustrated the convergence issues and tests that determined the very limited extent of her peripheral vision.
How do you know that your DD wouldn't have improved anyway or that the VT is what helped? Maybe there was something else going on at that time, like a good teacher, or working with her at home, or simply maturation that caused the improvement.
The things that we saw that helped -
1) almost immediate improvement in things that we didn't realize were tied to vision. For instance, we learned pretty quickly that the reason she couldn't follow multi-step directions was that she spent so much mental effort trying to follow through on the first due to visual challenges that she'd forget about the second/third etc directions. DD confirmed this - if we asked her to pick up a book in the living room, take it to her room, then go to the kitchen, for instance, she would have a tough time picking up the book and would never get to her room. This all changed within the first few weeks of vision therapy, and she told us it was because she would get confused when she was seeing two of everything.
The other thing we noticed almost right away was she was no longer the place-at-the-table with crumbs everywhere, and she was no longer our "family clown" who bumped into everything continually.
Second thing, although she was a capable-enough reader, she wasn't reading at the level her IQ would predict, and she also didn't enjoy reading. At approximately 3 months into VT, she morphed from a kid who really didn't care about books to a kid who literally lives with her nose covered by books 24/7. Her reading speed is phenomenal, and she loves loves loves to read. She didn't undergo a personality change, she simply was finally able to see well enough to discover her love for books.
DD also never sat still before VT - there were many times we thought, and many people who also thought she must certainly have ADHD. Yet once she'd been through a few weeks of vision therapy, she could sit down and read and do school work continuously for more than a nano-second. She also no longer bent her head around in odd ways to look at her schoolwork, and she started maintaining eye contact with us (prior to VT she looked off to the side... after VT she explained the reason she always looked off to the side was to avoid seeing double heads...) The bending around in odd ways while studying was due to her brain shutting down the eyesight in one eye to compensate for double vision. We never see that any more.
Most important change perhaps - she doesn't get tired when she reads and studies anymore. We didn't really realize she was tiring before VT, but it was very obvious in hindsight. I also know quite frankly that VT wasn't a cure-all - dd still has to work to keep her eyes tracking together, but she can make them track now and it's much less work and much tiring than prior to VT.
Could it have been the result of something else - a good teacher? work at home? developmental growth. No way. She didn't have a teacher focusing on helping her learn how to read more efficiently, we were for sure not working on eyesight/reading etc at home *outside* of the exercises she did that were specifically assigned from her vision therapists. I sat in on each of her VT sessions, the therapists explained the goal of each exercise, I saw the measurements they took to evaluate progress. I didn't see any quack science (and I'm a scientist), I just saw caring professionals explain the services they delivered in a way that made sense, and I saw the exercises work over time.
I'm not saying that I'm positive the VT didn't do some good for your DD but when there are no decent controlled trials on a large number of kids, I am skeptical.
I totally get this, and it's also interesting that you bring this up w/re to this one dd of mine - because this same dd has a medical issue that consumed us when she was a young toddler and in early elementary. She's not the only kid on earth with the issue, and during early elementary when she wasn't following the developmental curve with respect to outgrowing the issue that her dr predicted she should, new ideas were coming out re how to approach this issue. I will never forget being lectured by her dr when I asked could we consider one new idea with the "there have been no clinical trials to prove..."... well... by the time clinical trials had been conducted and proved/disproved the theory, my dd would be grown up and her childhood would be over. I hope I don't sound like a soapbox here, but I suppose I approach life a bit more from looking into something and determining if it makes sense.. and then if there are no clinical trials yet, so be it. I wouldn't let that stop me from something that may help and won't hurt (as long as it's affordable). We were lucky there - our insurance covered the VT. Which might be another indication, perhaps, that it has some perception of being a recognized form of treatment for vision issues caused by low muscle tone.
Sorry if I sounded like I was screaming from the top of my soapbox, I'm not. Just wanted to try to explain what we found, for our *one* dd, my only true experience with it. I definitely don't have any professional credentials to back me up
... and I do think that the cause of my dd's convergence issues was very different than your ds' issue.
Best wishes,
polarbear
