so excited about DD's progress with vision therapy

[lucysmom]

Hello -- just wanted to report back that my gifted almost 6 year old DD, who has struggled to read due to amblyopia and tracking/convergence problems (as well as a more unusual problem called eccentric fixation) has made excellent progress in the past 4 months in vision therapy. She has a long ways still to go, but she's made more progress on acuity in her amblyopic eye in the past 4 months of perhaps 20-30 minutes of homework exercises every other day, than she had in two years of eye patching for 3-4 hours daily.

She is about to start 1st grade and is starting to be much more willing to read. Thank you to the posters on this board (LauraLoo and LaundryCrisis especially) who suggested about 6 months ago that I explore developmental optometry and vision therapy! I cannot tell you how much heartache you have saved my daughter -- neither she nor I really understood why she was not reading, and I can only imagine how she would have felt to be placed in some "low" or "average" reading group when the issue was both physical and correctable (at least significantly).

Yay!!

[no5no5]

[Casha'sMommy]

me too
CONGRATS!

[dessismama]

CONGRATS!! Oldest DD (14) has completed 2 rounds of vision therapy with great results. She has the exact same issues as your child. We saw great cognitive strides after completing each round. The second time around DD learned how to cross her eyes and use them together about 30% of the time.

[joensally]

That is so, so great!

[LauraLoo]

What a great update! Glad things are going so well!

[proudmamanow]

thanks for this update! We are considering some vision testing for our dd who has been (relatively) slow to read. So glad to hear it all worked out well!

[lucysmom]

Originally Posted by proudmamanow

thanks for this update! We are considering some vision testing for our dd who has been (relatively) slow to read. So glad to hear it all worked out well!

Proudmamanow, good luck with your daughter. Wanted just to comment that my DD was identified as having amblyopia at 3.5, but was under the sole guidance of a pediatric opthamologist. She (opthamologist) was very highly regarded. She recommended patching which we did for 2 years. DD made some improvement in her weak eye, but sort of plateaued and was not making much further progress. Opthamologist wanted more patching hours per day. Meanwhile, it began to really trouble me that she was making so little progress with reading. She is super smart, super verbal, super capable of figuring out other codes, loves stories ... but she avoided reading. When I asked opthamologist about this, her response was just a blithe "oh, she's really young still, I wouldn't worry about it yet."

Opthamologist was not looking at all at how the eyes work together -- just testing the acuity in each eye on its own. I had done research after the amblyopia diagnosis & learned about vision therapy (eye exercises, basically) but opthamologist basically said that is done by crank optometrists, so I did not pursue it. I eventually posted here looking for ideas about what might be wrong, and was urged by several posters to take DD to a developmental optometrist to have her vision checked for tracking & convergence issues (how the eyes work together). Sure enough, there are huge issues, and working on them with vision therapy has proved quite successful so far.

There are excellent links in the responses to my earlier post, which is called "why can't my kid read?" or something like that, about 6 months ago.

Good luck!!

[ellemenope]

Originally Posted by lucysmom

Proudmamanow, good luck with your daughter. Wanted just to comment that my DD was identified as having amblyopia at 3.5, but was under the sole guidance of a pediatric opthamologist. She (opthamologist) was very highly regarded. She recommended patching...

We are right here with DD (25 months) (Patched for 4 months now). We have not seen much improvement, although as far as I know DD has not been diagnosed with amblyopia, just a slight exotropic strabismus in the left eye. No matter how well we patch it "comes out" when she is tired.

Thank you for your update. I am storing it in my head with the stuff that might prove useful in the near future.

[KatieBonita]

lucysmom, congratulations! It's the best feeling to SEE the progress.

Patching does have it's place, and will help with amblyopia/strabismus (either or both) but it's not the be all and end all. It's really only the start. What it is really good at is helping or at least holding things still until the LO is developmentally ready to do some of the exercises.
ellemenope - it's not surprising to me that her eye still turns when she's tired. 4 months in patching land is not especially long. As her brain develops and she starts to have more depth/3D information it'll be easier for her eye to stay straight. You want to aim to have the depth information sorted by age 6 because the brain starts to hard wire around depth at that age - but at 25 months, you have time.

Sorry for the thread hijack. This is my thing.

[lucysmom]

It's not a hijacking, don't worry! That is the topic. BTW I did not mean to imply that patching had no value -- clearly it helped to "turn on" DD's left eye (meaning that the brain started to pay attention to the information it was receiving from the left eye, which had been almost completely suppressed before patching).

But patching alone only increased the input from the left eye -- it did not teach the brain how to integrate that information from what it was receiving from the right eye. When I finally asked DD (after reading the suggestions from posters here about tracking/convergence problems) what she saw when she tried to read, she said immediately that the lines would cross and wiggle. So work specifically directed to tracking & convergence issues is really needed, for my DD.

A side note -- I cringe to think how often this is not diagnosed, and kids are told they are not strong readers, etc., when there is a physical/biological explanation for the problem and it likely is treatable.

[deminc]

Lucysmum,

congrats!! and may I just add that I'm jealous! We're having some difficulties finding an experienced vision therapy and are resorting to DIY at home.

May I ask if you had to buy any computer software for at-home supplement? Our vision therapist wanted us to buy a few hundred dollars software, and I'm a little wary about replacing actual exercises with just some jumping dots on the screen for tracking and eye-hand coordination - absolutely no exercises given for visual closure or orientation.

And I'm absolutely with you on how often this is overlooked by conventional opthamologists! We went through so many checks before it was detected in ds1's case.

[lucysmom]

deminc -- our optometrist recommended, and we just purchased, software called the Amblyopia iNet Program, which is shortened as AmbP iNet. It is used with an eye patch on the amblyopic eye. It is just one of the exercises we're using, but yes, the therapist we're using (whom we are very impressed with) does suggest this program.

Good luck finding a therapist. I read recently that there are only 400 certified optometrists in the U.S. (of course, there are many more therapists working with/under those optometrists) and I was thinking of how many communities that leaves completely unserved.

[proudmamanow]

Thanks again for posting this and all your helpful info, lucysmom. We have an appointment for dd with a child-focused optometrist later in September--I will update after our appoinment.

[deminc]

lucysmom,

Thank you for the information! Our optometrist/vision therapist only gave ds1 one exercise to work on for one month, and then told us to purchase the software (HTS) to work on at home. He also told us to go to another therapist for 5 sessions and said that should cover everything. But I felt very uncomfortable because I was going to be billed for EVERYTHING - computer software and private sessions - before the other therapist even had a look at ds1. In fact I was not even told where her office was when I was going to be billed! Furthermore, I was told by DS1's OT that he needs work on visual closure etc, but the software does not seem to cover that, neither was he given any exercises to work on for these additional aspects. Unfortunately he is the only one in our area who is COVD listed - but not FCOVD.

Anyway, I was hopping mad for a while. Rant over.

[crankpotgirls]

I am so glad to have found this thread. My daughter was just diagnosed with Amblyopia this morning in her left eye. She is 6 and she really wants to read but is having a hard time and I have to wonder if this is the reason for her delay. I am so glad we found out fairly early. The only suggestion the optometrist made was that we get her glasses. From reading this thread, it looks like there is more that we can be doing? I wonder if we even have a developmental optometrist here. Thanks for all this great info!

[lucysmom]

Here is the link to the College of Optometrists In Vision Development (COVD) "Choosing a Doctor" discussion. I believe you want a COVD Fellow to be supervising vision therapy if at all possible. Even those who are generally skeptical of vision therapy acknowledge the benefit of orthoptics or vision therapy to treat amblyopia, convergence & tracking issues.

Another very useful resource, that I would recommend to anyone whose kid has a diagnosis of amblyopia &/or strabismus, is Susan Barry's book Fixing My Gaze. She's a scientist who discovered the benefits of vision therapy for herself as an adult and was able to achieve binocular (stereo) vision for the first time after a period of vision therapy. She has a good list of references (groups, resources) at the end of the book, and also inventories the history of how opthamology came to disapprove of vision therapy, and why that's wrong.

[crankpotgirls]

Thank you! I see that my library has that book and I have requested it. I was able to find one optometrist in my town that is on the COVD list. She is not part of our HMO but I have requested a referral through our PCP to see her. Do you think it would be best to have a thorough exam by an opthomologist first? I know I can get a referral approved for sure to see an opthomologist but am unsure if the request to see the COVD optometrist will be approved. We cannot afford much out of pocket at this point, as my daughter is also deaf and we have just plain run out of money taking care of her. I called the COVD optometrist's office and was told that it would be $190 for the initial screening appointment. That is sadly out of the question for us at this time. Anyway, I very much appreciate you sharing your experience. It has been so helpful.