Vision Therapy Attacked As a Treatment For Children With Learning Disabilities

Once again mainstream medical specialists have launched their “once a decade” attack on Vision Therapy and Behavioral Optometry. They are using the internet news sites to lead an assault on a scientifically supported and well established treatment option for children with learning disabilities, claiming it has no science behind it at all, and this has been propagated across learning blogs as if it were gospel truth.

The fact is, as many parents and children with learning disabilities can attest, the right vision therapy can and does work for many children with learning disabilities! For the forth time in four decades, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, and American Association of Certified Orthopedists have combined their efforts to publish this notion in the guise of public interest.

Their view is limited, slanted and offers little hope to the parents of children with learning disabilities other then “keep pounding away at reading!”. The fact is, they are re-hashing a previous argument in the guise that it is a break through statement. This obviously biased joint statement has been rebutted, point by point, by The American Optometric Association and the American Academy of Optometry. A point-by-point rebuttal of the misleading information intended to discredit optometric vision therapy was published by the American Optometric Association in its journal, Optometry. (Bowan MD, 2002).

Could it be that groups trumpeting the use of powerful drugs and psychotherapy are threatened by a small group of practitioners who are getting results using a non-invasive, non-drug, relatively cheap alternative?
Now, please do not read this incorrectly. I am not saying that vision therapy can cure every ill known to man, or every case of dyslexia in the world, but this I can tell you, having worked for so long in the field…
There are a significant number of children with learning disabilities who have underdeveloped visual skills. I am not saying sight, because they all see. I am taking about how the eyes work together, and how the brains interprets and understands visual information that comes in through the eyes.

Most conservative medical practitioners look at ONLY these areas:

1.Can the child see? (Their visual acuity, as represented by figures like 20/20)
2.Is there any disease present? In children, almost always there is none.
3.Is the child long sighted, short sighted or astigmatic, in an amount that we judge to be over the required level of significance? Often there is a significant amount of long sight in children with learning disabilities, but we argue about what is actually significant! My experience is that arbitrary figures are exactly that: arbitrary. So, one child will handle a large amount of long sight, while another will fail to cope with a far smaller amount. We are human, after all, not robots!
4.Can the child converge? Can they turn their eyes in to keep the print single, and most of them can.
Where I differ is that, in addition to the above measures, I like to go beyond these to examine exactly HOW children with learning disabilities process information and use it, in real ways and in real situations.

So, in addition to the above, we also look at

1. Eye movements- which help children flow in their reading and stops them misreading words or skipping lines, and it also helps in ball sports.
2. Focus and Eye Coordination- which helps children concentrate and apply themselves to their school work.
3. Visualization and Recall- which helps children to effectively remember sight words and spelling, giving them a large vocabulary to help them to read.
4. Directionality- which helps children with learning disabilities overcome reversals, writing letters back to front.
5. Cross Patterning- which allows children to use both sides of their brain efficiently.
6. Other developmental areas, including coding, sequencing, fine and gross motor, etc.
These are not innate abilities, and they are not refractive errors. These are skills, and the need to be learned in order for children to learn to read, write and spell effectively.
And, they can be trained, altered and enhanced in simple, non-surgery, non-drug, non-colored lens ways. I have spend years developing a series of therapies that actually work, and instead of the hundreds and thousands of dollars most learning disability treatments charge, these will cost just over $ 6 a week, for 6-8 months of therapy.

But is it rubbish? Am I profiteering from the unfortunate parents of children with learning disabilities. Hundreds of changed children who have conquered their learning disabilities with my specially designed Vision Therapy say I am not, as do their satisfied parents.

But this is not a scientific rebuttal of this vicious attack on my profession. I simply cannot be bothered, and I’m too busy treating real children with learning disabilities. However, I can direct you to a place that can give you real science, if that is what you are into.

In the mean time, let the academics slug it out and let’s get on with the business of helping these children who struggle with learning disabilities. And if you are the parent of a child with learning disabilities, and you are not sure who to believe, why not take a $ 6 a week chance on a guaranteed Vision Therapy program you can do in your own home and check out our site for more information. I believe, after all the arguments are over, that your child is worth it.

To discover positive, holistic and effective solutions for learning disabilities you can start using right now, and for FREE Gifts that can help you and your child, visit Darin Browne’s Website Children Learning Disabilities

Vision Therapy – Can This Help Develop Children in Preschool

I recently read an article on a blog where a mother, an educator herself, had a child with learning disabilities and was struggling to find treatment that had a significant impact on her child’s learning ability.

A Mom’s Journey

She writes, “Dr. Manniko estimates that 20% of students in K-12 are learning disabled and of that group, 80% of these children experience visual problems that cause their learning issues. The diagnoses go beyond the 20/20 visual acuity, uncovering issues like amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (crossed eyes), general binocular problems (eyes failing to work together), etc. He measures reading speed, next line identification, eye movement efficiency, backward movement and a number of other factors involved in reading.

According to Dr. Manniko, “Individuals who are learning disabled generally make significantly more eye movements and spend greater time focusing on each word, while getting less information than a strong reader. A common pattern among learning disabled individuals is that their eyes do not function together, hindering their reading comprehension.”

Following treatment for the presenting vision difficulty, this mom found that her child improved significantly, and is now an advocate for vision therapy as a treatment technique for children with learning disabilities.

A Practitioner’s Journey

As a Behavioral Optometrist, I know of the power of these techniques because I see them work every day with children in my office. I previously practiced regular Optometry, but became frustrated when I found I could not help child after child who were suffering from learning disabilities of various sorts.

I began to study, to learn, to change my fundamental philosophy and to try and establish a new approach to treating these needy children. Two decades later and I am more intrigued and more committed to helping these kids than ever! In fact, I am so committed to helping children with learning disabilities that I have now published an entire, based-at-home vision therapy program, using EXACTLY the same therapies and exercises I use in my office, so I know that these activities are absolutely guaranteed to work, usually to a greater degree.

A Preschooler’s Journey

A question many young mom’s ask me is, “Do we have to wait until grade school (and my child having a significant learning disability) before we start to help them?”

This question challenged me, because it showed that most parent’s of preschool or kindergarten children care enough for their kids that they want to be proactive rather than reactive in helping their learning. As one mom told me, “Even if my son is a normal learner, couldn’t your therapies take him from being an average or above average learner to becoming a top student?”

The answer is, “Yes!” However, many of the therapies we apply to older children who have learning disabilities are difficult to apply to younger kids. In fact, when treating preschool and kindergarten children you need to slant the therapies towards whole body and gross motor activities, while still retaining the vision therapy aimed at focus, eye coordination, visualization for spelling, fine motor for writing, sequencing and coding.

So, with a lot of deep thought, a bit of research and a couple of misspent weekends, I prepared the first internet based home vision therapy program designed especially for preschoolers. I have kept it inexpensive, easy to understand and simple to apply.

If you are concerned about your preschool child and their development, visual or otherwise, please contact me for more information. These mom’s are right: we should be proactive not reactive, and we should give our kids every chance to perform to their very best in preschool, school and beyond into life!

To learn How You Can Accelerate Your Preschool Child’s Learning And Development, Check Out Darin Browne’s Online Therapy Site, Preschool Vision Development

Children Learning Disabilities And Vision Therapy

Vision Therapy could be a very effective instrument for treating children with learning disabilities, and it remains one of the vital practical and easy to implement therapies obtainable to help learning disabilities worldwide.

Helping children with learning disabilities is a controversial and sometimes complicated activity as a result of professionals working in the discipline don’t usually agree on the perfect mode of treatment. As the academics and intellectuals posture and argue, it is the baby and the mother or father s who stay confused and overwhelmed by the process. On this article I wish to explore the ability of vision therapy to help children with learning disabilities and try to understand why mother and father ought to think about this remedy, and the way it can probably help their youngster as they struggle to learn and learn.

Children with learning disabilities are growing worldwide despite our apparent advances in teaching techniques and knowledge technology, and this can be due in part to the increased capability we have in testing and detecting learning disabilities. Years in the past children with learning disabilities had been pushed to the back of the category and ignored, but now involved parents are seeking help for their children in any way that they can, together with learning disabilities online help.

The central question concerning the parents of children with learning disabilities is this: does my baby have a mind problem, or is there one thing sensible we will do to really enhance their performance? Dyslexia is a typical diagnosis these days, but there are very few legitimate treatment options for a real dyslexic, the place the childs mind is unable to interpret and course of info effectively. For such a toddler the effectiveness of therapies comparable to vision therapy is definitely reduced, and fogeys often discover themselves looking at drugs or psychotherapy in an attempt to assist their children with learning disabilities.

The excellent news is that many children with learning disabilities do not need a big mind dysfunction, and so we can take a look at easier to deal with, sensible strategies for helping them, comparable to vision therapy.

Children with learning disabilities often struggle with the development of expertise which are important to their studying ability. If they haven’t concentrated well for a number of years, the possibilities are that they have not developed the skills different children have developed at a comparable age, and due to this fact lag behind in their studying, writing and spelling. This lag will increase by the years, and vision therapy is a very effective device to help them develop these important skills.

As someone who has worked extensively with vision therapy for children with learning disabilities over a few years, I see vision therapy as a fast and environment friendly technique of creating important visible abilities in these children. I liken it to taking part in soccer or learning an instrument: for those who take day trip to observe the talents, you’ll most assuredly improve the individuals capability to do the task. Learning scales shouldn’t be truly playing the piano, however in the event you study this skill and get very good at it, you’ll be a better piano player. Its the same with studying!

Vision therapy is an attempt to coach the skills a child must read. They should move their eyes precisely and confidently: vision therapy can practice this. They need to remember symbols, letters or words: vision therapy can prepare this too. So most of the expertise that children can and should develop naturally as they grow, fall behind in children with learning disabilities, and these can most undoubtedly be helped utilizing the proper vision therapy techniques. Up until not too long ago concerned mother and father were paying lots of and even thousands of dollars to get these therapies from a regionally based mostly Behavioral Optometrist, but I’ve just changed the principles with regards vision therapy.

I have simply launched a model new vision therapy program known as Learning @ Lightspeed, and you’ll download this wherever on this planet for a fraction of the fee that other therapies charge. It is a complete, ground breaking program you can do at home along with your little one and it ensures efficient and positive outcomes on your child.

So finally efficient vision therapy is out there for children with learning disabilities that is low-cost, simple to understand and apply and really works. If you’re desirous about helping your youngster, and even if you are unsure if this might actually work, try our site for more data, free giveaway therapies and a mini ecourse which may provide the answers to will let you assist children with learning disabilities using vision therapy.

Darin is a Behavioral Optometrist who has recently designed an amazing Home Based Vision Therapy Course, which exercises which train visual skills and see spectacular improvement in reading, writing and spelling. Check out Children Learning Disabilities

More Vision Therapy Exercises Articles

Improve Vision Naturally – How the Bates Method of Improving Vision Can Help Children Learn Better

It has been clinically proven time and time again that the worst thing for your eyes is excess eye strain. When you take on more than our normal workload, the added stress can adversely affect our vision and cause irreversible damage to our eyes. Typically, excessive eye strain problems start developing in childhood, notably of grade school age. Once these habits and initial damage is brought into our older age, the eyes gradually become damaged. It has therefore been found that many of the more common vision problems we suffer today can be traced to bad habits and excessive strain on the eyes.

Naturally, children are always learning and have a tendency to be curious about more than one thing at a time. Ask any youngster whether or not they are excited for school to start, and they almost always enthusiastically answer yes. Pose the same question to a teenager or college student, and you are bound to get a drastically different answer. Why is there such a big divide between the two answers? The main reason is because school children are put under strict discipline, and it is mandatory for them to memorize and learn many different subjects which may not be of interest to them. When a subject is of less interest to a young child, this causes the need for added concentration and excessive eye strain is ultimate result. While it is true that interests are different from one child to the other, it is a proven fact that all children are forced to learn about things they are not remotely interested in.

Take, for instance, the boss who hands out sales numbers to all of his employees. Many of the employees will chalk this up to another useless meeting or handout – they are uninterested in statistical information. In the same way, not all school children are interested in math, the sciences, literature, etc. A higher standard in education should always be a goal to achieve; however, it may be necessary to change the way children learn. When they see better, they remember better, and this has been proven in many scientific studies. Eye strain is caused by more concentration, and more concentration is caused by lack of interest or enthusiasm in a particular subject.

The Bates Method was the creation of Dr. William Bates, a famous ophthalmologist from New York. With this method, Dr. Bates created a poster which consisted of common geometrical shapes and letters, all of which are easily recognizable by school-aged children. Dr. Bates put this poster up near the front of the classroom, in order to give the children something to glance at when ever they had feelings of being overworked or had feelings of fatigue. Dr. Bates created this poster because the shapes and letters on it would reduce eye strain and give the eyes a break – this would ultimately reduce vision damage. Seeing something unfamiliar naturally puts more strain on your eyes, but every day things that we see cause your eyes to rest at ease.

By training children to abstain from putting excessive strain on their eyes, their vision will undoubtedly not have half of the problems that doctors currently see and encounter on a daily basis.

The issues discussed in this article are fully detailed in the Bates Method for Improving Vision Naturally.

How To Improve Your Children Sight With Eye Exercise

If your teenager has eyesight disorder or just plain poor vision, it does not have to be an issue you should feel desperate about. Lately there is increasingly proof that simple eye exercise can have a lot of impact on sight improvement with adults, but with teens as well. . Eye exercise for natural vision improvement is a technique originally discovered by dr. Bates, and although this theory of eye exercise by dr. Bates has been questioned by his colleagues at a certain point, lately this method has become progressively comprehended as a natural hypothesis for eyesight improvement.
Dr. Bates philosophy lays on the presumption that a human eye reacts to exercise exactly as any other muscular tissue in our body – the eye muscular tissue becomes stronger with time. Most of eyesight problems are the result of lack of muscle purpose of the eye, so by nature, as the muscular tissue function improves, eyesight improves likewise.
This hypothesis of Dr. Bates has been put into question in his time largely because of his claims that traditional, conventional poor eyesight treatment does not do any good and in fact makes the sight even worse. Dr. Bates concluded that optical aids such as contact lenses and glasses usually prescribed for vision problems, does not take care of the main problem, which is lack of eye muscle purpose, but merely work out the issue of bad eyesight. This way the status of the eye does not improve, but in fact gets worse and finally the patient solely requires a new and larger prescription each year.
Dr. Bates recommended to his patients, as a result of his testing is to conduct a series of different eye exercises witch he has developed and proven to have effective results on different eye diseases and vision disorders. This eye exercise should be done on a steady basis and according to his instructions and first results can be noticed after solely 3-5 days of treatment.
More and more people each day start a eye exercise treatement by dr. Bates and most of them notice large eyesight improvement.This theory is applicable to adults, but to kids with vision problems likewise, so if your child has been diagnosed to have some type of sight disorder, you can try to combine conventional treatment recommended by your optician with series of eye exercises by dr. Bates.
At the end you do not have to be worried, because eye exercises are a completely safe and natural method that cannot make the vision problem worse in any way, but can significantly make the eye muscle stronger which will final result with sight improvement.

Find out how eye exercise work.