Optometry Vision Therapy Center
 

Developmental vision therapy

Building the Foundational Skills for Learning and Life.

 
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Beyond 20/20: The Physical Skills of Seeing

You've been told your child has "perfect 20/20 vision," yet they still struggle with reading, get tired quickly with homework, or seem clumsy in sports. Why? Because seeing clearly is only one part of vision.

Vision is a learned process. Just like a child learns to coordinate their arms and legs to walk, their eyes must learn to work together as a coordinated, efficient system. Developmental Vision Therapy is a program focused on improving these foundational visual skills needed for learning, reading, and other developmental milestones.

The Three Pillars of Foundational Vision

Our Developmental Vision Therapy programs are designed to assess and strengthen the three core physical skills that form the foundation of healthy, functional vision.

Eye Teaming (Binocularity)

What It Is: This is the ability for both eyes to work together as a synchronized team to create a single, clear, three-dimensional image. It is the foundation for proper depth perception.
Signs of a Weakness:
  • Covering or closing one eye, especially when reading
  • Skipping lines or losing their place while reading
  • Complaints of occasional double vision
  • Clumsiness or difficulty with sports involving catching or hitting a ball

Eye Focusing (Accommodation)

What It Is: This is the ability to maintain clear vision and change focus quickly and accurately between objects at different distances?for example, looking from the whiteboard at the front of the classroom to the notebook on the desk.
Signs of a Weakness:
  • Vision becoming blurry after short periods of reading or computer work
  • Holding books or tablets unusually close or far away
  • Experiencing headaches or eye fatigue with near work
  • Avoiding reading, drawing, or other close-up tasks

Eye Tracking (Ocular Motility)

What It Is: This is the ability to move the eyes smoothly, accurately, and efficiently to follow a moving object or scan across a line of text.
Signs of a Weakness:
  • Frequent loss of place while reading
  • Using a finger or placeholder to keep track of words
  • Showing poor reading fluency and comprehension
  • Exhibiting excessive head movement while reading

How We Build a Stronger Visual Foundation

These foundational visual skills are physical abilities that can be significantly improved with targeted practice. Our doctor-prescribed therapy programs work like a "gym for the eyes," using a series of personalized activities, therapeutic lenses, and specialized equipment.

In a fun and engaging environment, we guide your child through exercises designed to strengthen specific eye muscles and build stronger, more efficient connections between their eyes and brain. This helps make these essential visual skills more accurate and automatic.

The Impact on Your Child's Learning and Development

By strengthening these three pillars of vision, children often experience profound improvements in their daily lives. The goal is to reduce the strain and effort required just to see, so they can dedicate more mental energy to understanding and learning.

Benefits often include:

  • Easier and more fluent reading with better comprehension.
  • Reduced eye strain, fatigue, and vision-related headaches.
  • Improved handwriting and coordination in sports.
  • A significant boost in confidence and a more positive attitude toward schoolwork.

The Visual Motor Hierarchy

The visual motor hierarchy describes the development of visual skills in a step-by-step process, proceeding from foundational abilities like gross motor to find motor skills, and integrating with developing visual skills, including eye movement, eye aiming and focusing skills. This provides a strong foundation to develop more complex skills like pattern recognition and visual cognition. The hierarchy starts with basic visual processing and moves to higher-level cognitive functions needed to coordinate a physical or mental action. Skipped developmental stages can go undetected initially but can become apparent if a child starts to falter when given higher level tasks. Revisiting and strengthening missing foundational skills allows the child to rebuild age-appropriate visual performance.

Foundational Skills

Visual acuity and visual fields: The ability to see clearly and to see full visual field are the most basic building blocks.

Oculomotor control: This involves the eye movements necessary for vision, such as fixation (staring at an object) and saccades (rapid eye movements).

Intermediate skills

Visual attention and scanning: The ability to focus on and move your eyes to find specific visual information.

Pattern recognition: Identifying and making sense of visual patterns and forms, which relies on memory and is crucial for tasks like reading.

Advanced skills

Visual memory: The ability to remember and recall visual information, which is essential for developing other skills.

Visual cognition: This is the highest level, where vision is used for functional purposes. It includes skills like:.

  • Discrimination (distinguishing objects)
  • Spatial relations (understanding where objects are in relation to each other)
  • Sequential memory (recalling events in order)
  • Figure-ground (separating an object from its background)

Adaptation through vision: The final stage where an individual adapts their behavior and actions based on what they see and perceive to perform complex cognitive or physical tasks.

Give Your Child the Foundation to Succeed

If your child shows signs of struggling with any of these foundational visual skills, a comprehensive evaluation can provide clarity and a path forward. Let us help you give your child the tools they need to thrive.

Schedule a Developmental Vision Evaluation