Vision Therapy for Children
Vision therapy is a type of treatment used to improve visual skills and abilities in children. It involves a series of activities and exercises designed to enhance the way the eyes work together, how they track and focus, and how the brain processes visual information. Vision therapy is often used to treat common vision problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, amblyopia, and strabismus (eye turn). It is a non-invasive and drug-free alternative to traditional eyeglasses and contacts and has been shown to be effective in improving visual function and quality of life in children.
As a child’s eyes establish, it is not uncommon for a number of problems to take place. Beyond blurred vision due to refractive error consisting of nearsightedness (myopia) and farsightedness (hyperopia), kids can develop a number of other visual and perceptual problems that are typically not spotted by a simple visual examination. Even a child with 20/20 vision, can have underlying vision problems!
Some of these issues are functional vision problems pertaining to the real eyes, how they move individually and as a pair, in addition to their ability to focus. Functions such as eye teaming, tracking, focusing, and hand-eye coordination, all impact a child’s success in school, sports, or general performance. Frequently kids that have difficulty with these functions will suffer physical symptoms as well such as headaches, eye tiredness, or short attention spans. With these important visual skills lacking, jobs such as reading and writing can be exceptionally hard and stressful which can result in aggravation and behavioral problems.
Much like we have the ability to train our bodies to build strength, speed, and dexterity, our vision skills can be strengthened. Vision therapy provides a doctor-supervised program to assist children to develop these skills.
What is Vision Therapy?
Vision Therapy is a program of progressive eye workouts embellished for each patient designed to retrain or assist the client develop or surpass particular visual skills or enhancing the processing and analysis of visual information. It is utilized to deal with conditions like strabismus (crossed eyes) and amblyopia (lazy eye) in addition to eye movement, focus, and coordination problems.
Generally, the sessions happen in the eye doctor’s workplace weekly or bi-weekly and utilize a range of tools such as therapeutic lenses or prisms. Frequently the patient will be asked to practice particular workouts or activities in your home also in order to enhance the skills that are being developed.
Through repetition of these jobs, the supreme objective is to enhance the abilities such as focusing, and improving eye motion and positioning, to the point where the eyes and vision are working efficiently and conveniently. The period of therapeutic program normally lasts about 6-9 months.
Vision treatment has actually been clinically proven to enhance functional vision abilities and is authorized by significant optometric bodies such as the American Optometric Association and the Canadian Association of Optometrists. It does not improve refractive mistakes and ought to not be misinterpreted for some of the alternative self-conducted eye exercises out there that claim to enhance your vision.
Vision therapy has likewise been shown to be effective in adults. If you think that vision treatment might be right for your child or yourself, it is beneficial to have an evaluation by an experienced vision therapist to determine whether it could help deal with the vision issues that are present.