Vision Therapy - effective?

Our dd received VT privately, and we paid out of pocket. As parents of a dyslexic student, we found it to be very valuable and worth the money in terms of the improvement in her ability to read effectively. But it is definitely a commitment, and she will need to do the exercises everyday for it to be effective. It was a stretch for us too, the costs of help for LD kids is a whole other conversation. We did not do it at UC (though she was also seen there), but rather through Dr. Susan Kim @ Visualeyes Optometry in Dublin, who we highly recommend.

I sadly do not have any input but just reaching out that you are not alone and I am eagerly awaiting any responses, we are in the same boat. :(

We did also see a pediatric optholmologist which complicates things further in that they disagree with the recommendation of vision therapy (recommended by a functional optometrist) but cannot order an explanation of why my 7 year old daughter is seeing double. The therapy is very expensive and as you said not generally covered by insurance, our pediatrician cautioned us as there is not much evidence and I’ve heard both very positive and negative feedback about therapy from other families I have talked with. I don’t know the issues you are struggling with but we have found a slant board and a reading guide have helped some. 

Wishing your family all the best.

Hi there. My daughter just started vision therapy there. It was recommended to help with an underdeveloped focusing, teaming (vergance), and tracking system -- not sure if these are considered visual processing issues? She is performing at grade level academically and has no behavior challenges. She was having trouble focusing on reading after about 20 minutes, was getting headaches and blurred vision. We also got her glasses that have helped with the tired eyes. The doctor still recommended vision therapy because her teaming skills are so low and as school requires more and more reading, her issues will compound in time.

So, short answer, I don't yet know if it will make a difference. But I hope to know in a few weeks time after she's had a few sessions. If you send me a private message, I would be happy to share feedback at that time. It is an investment for sure!

Hi, you did not say how old is your daughter. We did about half of the recommended visual therapy sessions (12) when our son was finishing first grade. He went to Rising Star optometry in San Rafael. It was expensive and not covered by our insurance. We diligently did all the exercises at home, including the very old fashioned computer games from the disk the office gave us. Ultimately, I came to conclusion that even though our son did loose the place where he was reading and had some “tracking” issues his main challenges were due to inability to decode anything, and not due to the eye strain. In his case, only 2 summers of very intense Lindamood-Bell training of 4 hours a day 5 days a week for about 6 weeks each finally enabled him to memorize enough sound patterns and about 800 most common sight words to begin to really read by age 10!!! Wishing you and your daughter the best of luck

We did this for my daughter through UC when she was in third grade.  She had tracking problems and very slow processing (learning disability),.  She had fatigue after school, and a very hard time reading, because she couldn't move her eye smoothly to the next word.   So she literally couldn't see the words.  It helped.  It did not speed up her processing speed that I could tell.  She did become a better reader and less fatigued and improved her self image.