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 visual performance spectrum

A different focus.
A world of possibility.

One visual system. Different needs. Care that brings your individual goals into focus.

Neuro-optometry & vision rehabilitation

Find your visual footing again.

Care focused on visual difficulties after an acquired brain injury or illness, with goals shaped around everyday function.

  • Visual stability
  • Eye coordination
  • Reading comfort
  • Visual orientation
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Developmental vision & visual processing

Bring the visual system together.

For children, the focus is on the visual skills used in reading, learning, and play. An evaluation helps identify which skills need attention.

  • Eye teaming
  • Focusing
  • Eye tracking
  • Visual processing
Your child's visual foundation ↓

Primary care optometry

Make clarity the starting point.

Comprehensive eye care addresses visual clarity and eye health while considering whether additional functional vision care is needed.

  • Eye examinations
  • Glasses & contacts
  • Eye health
  • Medical eyecare
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Sports vision training

See the moment. Meet the demand.

Performance-focused training targets the visual demands of sport, from following moving targets to making timely visual decisions.

  • Visual tracking
  • Peripheral awareness
  • Visual decisions
  • Eye-hand coordination
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Different areas of care, not a required sequence. Your evaluation determines your individual needs.

 

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