Samantha Completes 6 Months of Vision Therapy

Samantha Completes 6 Months of Vision Therapy

by Donna Olmstead, Contributing Journalist

(Note: This is the sixth in a series of articles following Samantha, who had been being treated for ADD until her Now-I'm-10 Checkup. That's when her pediatrician asked her to cross her eyes, and Sami said it hurt when she tried. When she said she also had problems with nausea and with the words staying in place while she was reading, the pediatrician referred her to the Vision Health and Learning Center. It's estimated that as many as one in four children can see 20/20, but they actually have functional vision problems.)

Samantha, who is now in the fifth grade, recently finished reading her first (of 15) Sunshine State Young Readers Award Books.* When she took the Accelerated Reader test that measures comprehension, she got a test score of 100 percent.

Before Sami started vision therapy exercises to correct her convergence insufficiency (the inability of her eyes to work together to focus), she used to work so hard at reading that she would get stressed and angry. One time she yelled at her mother Sarah, "I read the words. Now you want me to understand it too?"

After 24 weeks of therapy at the Vision Center and doing home vision exercises several times a week, Sami admits that "it's easier to understand." And her headaches aren't as frequent, but Sarah said Sami still is pushing herself, "She will reach as high as the bar is set. But both her comprehension and confidence are much better."

The Vision Center's Dr. Chi said Sami is progressing in some areas, but there are others where she's not progressing. He expressed a concern that there might be some regression, and that's why he gave her tools for maintenance therapy, including green-tinted glasses she's supposed to wear 20 minutes a day to calm her vision and stabilize it.

One of the tests Sami took at the end of the 24 weeks of therapy show that her eyes fail to "pair" (work together) 19 times during a computer reading test, compared to 45 times at the beginning of her vision therapy. A definite improvement.

And both Dr. Chi and Sarah agree that it's detrimental to Sami's eyes if she spends more than an hour a day staring at a computer screen (iPad, laptop, cell phone). She had been spending a great deal of time playing Minecraft on her iPad. According to a New York Post article, "Developmental psychologists understand that children’s healthy development involves social interaction, creative imaginative play and an engagement with the real, natural world. Unfortunately, the immersive and addictive world of screens dampens and stunts those developmental processes."** An article in "Psychology Today" backs up that assertion, claiming that "craving or urges for gaming produces brain changes that are similar to drug cravings...excessive screen time appears to impair brain structure and function."*** For those reasons, Sarah has limited screen time to an hour a day weekends and by necessity during the week.

Sami has another appointment with Dr. Chi in October. Sarah is hoping that she hasn't regressed, adding that at mid-term in the therapy, Sami had made a ton of progress, but by the end of summer, she had lost ground.

* The Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) Program is a statewide reading motivational program for students in grades 3 through 8, sponsored by the Florida Department of Education (DOE) and Florida Association for Media in Education (FAME). The purpose of the SSYRA Program is to encourage students to read independently for pleasure and to read books that are on, above, and below their reading level in order to improve their reading fluency. (http://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html)

**http://nypost.com/2016/08/27/its-digital-heroin-how-screens-turn-kids-into-psychotic-junkies/

***https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain