All kids learn and develop at a different rate, but when your child is lagging behind in school, you probably want to investigate every possible source of the trouble. One of the most frequently overlooked causes of slow reading development is visual impairment, which can hinder your child's efforts in a number of ways that may not be caught by a basic school eye test. Vision therapy works with your child to improve the way he or she perceives letters on the page and can help your child's reading in the following four ways.
Identifying the Problem
Children are often screened for myopia and hyperopia in school, but one study found that, despite their accuracy, they miss as much as 80 percent of students who lack the visual skills necessary for reading. A visual therapist can give your child the time and attention needed to identify deficiencies in sight development and create an individualized treatment plan. This could involve working on all areas of your child's perception, or it could focus on a single weak area.
Strengthening Focus
Your eyes are constantly adjusting to see objects at different depths clearly. When your child looks down from the whiteboard to a book, his or her eyes must shift and then hold that focus long enough to take in all of the information on a page. For children whose eyes cannot focus properly, this inability to remain focused on the page may be misinterpreted as an issue with paying attention, instead. By strengthening the muscles responsible for ocular focus, vision therapy can keep your child's eyes on the words, where they belong.
Practicing Visual Fixation
Even if your child can focus successfully, he or she may have difficulty tracking along a sentence due to poor visual fixation. Fixation requires fine muscle control and directs the eye to both find and follow objects, such as scanning words across a page. When your child can't successfully piece words together visually, books can seem like nothing but a jumbled mess. Constructive exercises paired with the use of optical lenses and equipment can be all it takes to correct this trouble.
Improving Binocular Fusion
A lack of proper binocular fusion is like walking around with only one contact or glasses lens in place. Your child's eyes are both working well, but they can't communicate with each other effectively to create a single coherent image. If left untreated, poor binocular fusion can lead to the deterioration of one eye or even the development of a lazy eye, meaning you should seek the opinion of an expert optometrist as soon as you suspect this condition. Working with the weaker eye can restore equal vision to both and allow your child to read words clearly for the first time. Visit http://www.absolutevisioncare.com for more information.
Share11 March 2015
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