Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Experience with Vision Therapy

I'm thrilled to report that DS9 graduated from OT (for SPD/dysgraphia)!!! That now frees me up to pursue vision testing and vision therapy, if needed. It has been recommended that we look into this since the beginning of this 2e journey, but we have not been able to fit it in. I am wondering if anyone has had any experience with vision therapy...good or bad.

VT is not easy. The process of going through vision therapy was tedious and painful -- lots of repetitive exercises and fights to get them done. My DD finished her weekly visits in about 8 months and continued other exercises for about 3-4 months. She was supposed to continue them periodically but this got harder and harder once we no longer saw the therapist.

Was it worth it? For us, yes. an independent optometrist evaluated DD and showed that her ability to focus improved over 200 per cent from baseline. DD's tracking ability improved to the point where she no longer needs to read with an index card to help her keep her place. DD says that the words no longer "move" or "run off the page." We saw a significant decrease in headaches and fatigue. A year and half later she has not regressed.

I second the idea that VT is tedious and not easy. My son participated in 6 months of weekly therapy and during that time, 20-30 minutes of home exercises each evening. His tracking improved slightly after therapy, but his visual motor skills did not improve appreciably. He continued OT during the therapy - handwriting never improved and we gave up after third grade.

When he was tested in 7th grade, his tracking and visual motor had regressed. Although the neuropsychologist suggested resuming the therapy, we chose not to.

I have heard that VT helps some people, but we found the improvement minimal and not sustainable.

What should make you think that VT is something to tests for? There seems to be a lot of optometrists around here who try to enroll all the kids they test into a full course of treatment (at around $5,000) so I have been leery of trying it.

OTOH DS7 is still reading weirdly (gets lost and reverses direction in the middle of long words, reads words out of order, mistakes b for d and p for q, skips words and lines entirely) and I have a gut feel that something is wrong, even though he currently reads 2 years above grade level.

My husband says he is the same as he was, his brain just runs too fast, and my husband is the only person I know who reads faster than I do (and I have been tested at ~900wpm with >85% comprehension rate).

SiaSL- DS9 writes everything starting in the middle of the page and holds the paper way over to his right when he writes. Even when his tutor places a dot on the left margin and says "start here" he still starts writing well to the right of the left margin. If forced to write with his paper at midline, he gets dizzy. He copies things incorrectly a lot. He does the reversals and skips words, too...but we attribute this to his dyslexia. I, too, am leery of trying it because of the possibility of a false diagnosis for someone's monetary gain.

My younger dd particpated for about 8 months. This was how we discovered that she was having absence seizures. We opted to d/c vision therapy while we explored what medications, etc would work best for her seizures.

DD is dysgraphic and dyslexic.

We started out with one Optometrist who was an absolute quack! He used scare tactics to get us to enroll her in therapy with him and then wanted $2000.00 up front to get started..well we ran fast from his office!! We found another Optometrist to evaluate her and there was a very precise testing, with less than half of the diagnosis that the first guy gave us. It was expensive, hard work, and sometimes frustrating.

In general, it is not covered by insurance and must be paid at time of service regardless... you have to submit to your insurance for reimbursement. Is it worth the cost? For us, yes. You may consider getting the evaluation and doing the remediation yourself...there are lots of resources out there..

My DS6 had 2 years of vision therapy, but he was born with a physical issue that caused the visual processing problems and head tilting. My son was born with visual perceptual deficits and since he is a visual spatial thinker this caused all sorts of problems and delays until he had vision therapy. He had 4 years of pt/ot before we started VT too.

Was it worth it? Without a doubt. But as others have pointed out, it is not for the faint at heart. It's very expensive. VT isn't covered by insurance. The exercises were laborious at times and my son resisted them many times, but then we had to work doubly hard to re-wire his brain and avoid surgery. It takes a lot of patience and effort to pursue vision therapy.

I know vision therapy can vary tremendously by who the behavioral optometrist is. Any behavioral optometrist worth their salt should examine the whole child and assess their hand-eye coordination, motor planning, fine and gross motor skills, speech, sensory issues, and any other existing problems (i.e. head tilting). They should design a program specifically for your child with glasses and daily exercises.

Here's a book on vision therapy that you may find useful. It's a bit technical though.
http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Through-New-Eyes-Developmental/dp/1843108003

In our case, my son definitely benefitted tremendously from vision therapy. He started vision therapy at 4.5 years old and within a year drawing, reading, and writing and doing math. The developments were staggering, but then my son is possibly eg/pg so the developments started to come fast and thick once the vision therapy kicked in. So yes, vt can make a very big difference.