Does Vision Therapy Work? | Improve Your Child’s School Performance

What Is Vision Therapy?

Vision therapy is an individualized therapy program for the eyes that shares many similarities with physical therapy. It is primarily used to improve ocular motor and perceptual skills to treat learning disabilities or conditions such as strabismus. Vision therapy is also often considered one of the most controversial topics in optometry. Some doctors strongly support it while others aren’t completely convinced of its effectiveness. So the question “does vision therapy really work,” isn’t as easy to answer as it might seem.

What Can Vision Therapy Correct?

To find out if vision therapy will really work for you take a moment to consider the ocular problems you have. Accent Eye Care’s vision therapy center can correct optical problems such as:

• Lazy Eye – When one eye falls behind we help it catch up.
• Crossed Eyes – Proper muscle control is essential to visual acuity development.
• Eye Misalignment – Subtle eye misalignment may not be noticeable but it can still put strain on your eyes when performing visually demanding tasks such as reading.
• Focusing disorders – Focusing disorders can affect nearsightedness or farsightedness.
• Movement disorders – Research shows that vision therapy can improve eye muscle control.

However, you don’t need to have any of these conditions to be a candidate for VT. Visual therapy still helps children and adults all around the world improve their lives.

Vision Training For Athletes

Most sports are dependent on an athlete’s perception, reflex, and hand to eye coordination. However, over 25% of athletes have some sort of vision problem. This can range from depth to clarity issues. Sports Vision Training handles these issues but not in the same way as visual therapy. Your sports vision optometrist specializes in a particular field allowing them to optimize your training for a specific sport. Baseball players need the precision to strike a 90 mph fastball while soccer players need to process a fields worth of information in moments. Every sport is different so your doctor adjusts to it.

Vision Therapy and Learning Disabilities

Parents with children in school sometimes notice they have a hard time reading the board or focusing in class. This is often a result of vision related problems. In fact, some experts say 50-80% of what we learn comes from vision alone. So it’s not hard to see how even just a slight vision imperfection could affect your child’s grades. Accent Eye Care’s vision therapy experts work with children regularly to target cognitive skills that will have a direct impact on their studies. Kids always love our therapy sessions, just take a look at our testimonials!

Does Vision Therapy Work?

Perhaps one of the most controversial topics in the optometric industry is the efficacy of vision therapy. While it may not be the perfect solution for everyone, those that do benefit from it experience:

• Improved focus when reading or writing
• Reduced symptoms of Dyslexia
• Better control of nearsightedness and farsightedness
• Enhanced hand eye coordination and performance in sports.

These are far from the only benefits vision therapy has to offer. If you want to learn more about the benefits of vision therapy then call us today at 602.547.3255!