Vision Therapy can be a very successful tool for helping children with learning disabilities, and it remains one of the most sensible and simple to put into practice therapies available to help learning difficulties worldwide.
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Treating children with learning disabilities is a contentious and often task since professionals working in the field do not often have the same opinion on the suitable style of treatment. As the academics and intellectuals posture and squabble, it is the child and the parents who continue confused and overwhelmed by the process. In this article I want to delve into the capacity of vision therapy to help children with learning disabilities and endeavor to understand why parents should contemplate this therapy, and how it can maybe help their child as they labor to read, develop and learn.
Children with learning disabilities are increasing worldwide irrespective of our obvious advances in teaching techniques and information expertise, and this may be due in part to the improved ability we have in testing and detecting learning disabilities. Years ago children with learning disabilities were pushed to the back of the class and ignored, but now concerned parents are seeking help for their children in any way that they can, including learning disabilities online help.
The central problem concerning the parents of children with learning disabilities is this: does my child have a brain difficulty, or is there something sensible we can do to really pick up their learning ability? Dyslexia is a widespread diagnosis these days, yet there are very few legitimate treatment alternatives for a true dyslexic, where the child's brain is unable to interpret and process information effectively. For such a child the usefulness of treatments such as vision therapy is unquestionably reduced, and parents often find themselves looking at drugs or psychotherapy in an attempt to help their children with learning disabilities.
The good news is that lots of children with learning disabilities do not have a essential brain dysfunction, and so we can look at easier to treat, practical methods for helping them, such as vision therapy.
Children with learning disabilities frequently labor with the development of skills which are fundamental to their reading ability. If they have not concentrated well for quite a few years, the odds are that they have not developed the skills other children have developed at a similar age, and thus lag behind in their reading, writing and spelling. This lag increases through the years, and vision therapy is a very successful tool to help them pick up these basic skills.
As someone who has worked widely with vision therapy for children with learning disabilities over many years, I see vision therapy as a speedy and efficient means of developing underlying visual skills in these children. I liken it to playing football or learning an instrument: if you take time out to practice the skills, you will most surely progress the person's ability to do the task. Learning scales is not actually playing the piano, but if you learn this skill and get very good at it, you will be a better piano player. It's the same with reading! Learn the skills and increase the ability.
Vision therapy is an attempt to instruct the skills a child requires to read. They want to move their eyes accurately and confidently: vision therapy can instruct this. They require to remember symbols, letters or words: vision therapy can instruct this too. So many of the skills that children can and must advance naturally as they grow, fall behind in children with learning disabilities, and these can most certainly be helped using the right vision therapy techniques. Up until recently anxious parents were paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars to get these therapies from a locally based Behavioral Optometrist, but I have starting now I have changed the rules with regards vision therapy.
I have just launched a brand new vision therapy program that you can download anywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost that other therapies charge. This is an all-inclusive, ground breaking program you can do at home with your child and it guarantees successful and positive results for your child.
Preschool is a time of tremendous development for children, both intellectually, socially and in their physical development. One area which is often improve vision overlooked is preschool visual development, yet this area can be critical in a child's learning and school performance for many years to come.
Normal Preschool Development.
Normal preschool development is usually charted by what are called milestones, that is specific developmental points which should be reached in a specific time frame. This process is easy to see in a child who has physical developmental challenges, but it is much harder to see when it comes to the visual system.
Most often parents, teachers and even Optometrists have a very simple and often useless view of visual milestones, thinking that if the child can see properly (say to the 20/20 line), if they do not have a huge prescription and if their eyes are straight then they must be OK, but as someone who has worked in this field for over two decades, I want to challenge that idea and suggest something which may change a child's life forever.
Preschool Vision Development: A Higher Standard!
Having tested the eyes of thousands of kids with identifiable learning disabilities, I can attest that the vast majority of them have visual problems, yet almost always they pass the doctor's eye test. This is because just seeing, not having a big script and having your eyes mostly straight is a very low standard for vision development. It's the base level, yet there is so much more to learning than just seeing!
As a preschooler grows they need to develop skills. Nearly all of them see, nearly all of them have straight eyes, yet not all of them develop the skills necessary for learning in future years. That's where vision therapy can come in and make a huge difference!
Vision Therapy Can Develop Preschool Vision Skills
Certain vision skills are necessary for your Preschooler's development, and these include eye coordination and focus, eye movements, coding, sequencing, gross and fine motor, balance, visual memory and a whole host of other skills. Think about it: just because a child can see, does not mean they can catch a ball, stay on the same line when reading, remember spelling words or stop writing letters in reverse!
The great and exciting news is that we can train these skills. There's no magic pill, no magic glasses, but just a bit of hard work in the right areas can yield amazing results in your child, even if they seem to be keeping up with other children! That's right, if you do the right therapies, you can super charge your child's learning ability because you are giving them the skills they need to learn earlier than they would have otherwise developed them!