At Family Eyecare Centre, we currently have a 10-year-old boy in our Integrated Vision Therapy Program who has completely blossomed from his shell. His boost in confidence has given him the ability to do activities that were previously difficult in many parts of his life, including his social life.
For the sake of this blog, I’ll refer to this boy as Jackson. Jackson came in as a quiet, reserved kid who did not appear very motivated in general, and didn’t enjoy reading. Jackson was having trouble tracking while reading, and he had some difficulty focusing for sustained periods of time. He is very phonetic and was using his auditory sense much more than his visual sense to learn words – which would work if we had a phonetic language, but we do not.
After 12 weeks of vision therapy, Jackson has seen many improvements. Studies show that training his eye movements and binocularity will also improve other areas of functioning, such as visual memory and discrimination, because they are processed in the same area of the brain. Now Jackson is able to visualize words and remember their correct spelling. He’s much more comfortable reading, so much so that he now asks his mom if he can read instead of having her read to him. Jackson’s handwriting and spelling has also improved, as well as overall academics. Even his general eye-hand coordination has improved significantly. These improvements have given him so much confidence that he is noticeably more talkative, is more expressive, and stands taller. Jackson’s mom says he is showing similar changes at school.
In this video you can watch a very similar story to Jackson’s, and see how this boy struggled and then improved with a Vision Therapy program:
By Dr. Nazima Sangha of Family Eyecare Centre
