I tell everyone I can think of that would benefit from vision therapy as I have seen firsthand how effective it can be.
My son, Zachary, has Sensory Processing Disorder and his Occupational Therapist alerted us that he needed to be seen by a developmental optometrist. I had no clue at the time that there was a difference between an optometrist and a developmental optometrist. So, we took Zachary to a regular optometrist and he did the routine tests and it showed Zach had 20/20 vision. I reported this back to the OT and she explained the difference. We didn’t live close to any OD’s so we ended up traveling to Bend since I happened to know Dr. Gabby Marshall. I trusted her and she helped educate us in why VT is valuable and what it could help with. We signed Zach up. I learned a lot during this process and it explained a lot of the struggles that Zachary had with his coordination, writing, and reading.
I knew Zachary had problems with his senses, but I never thought he had vision issues; it just wasn’t obvious. Zachary did not know how to skip, for example, and he was in first grade. The simple explanation is that his rights and lefts were confused which caused a whole host of problems and affected all sorts of issues and he had also not outgrown basic reflexes. He never could jump rope and in Tae Kwon Do, he would literally fall on his face every time he jumped. No matter what the instructor did, he couldn’t teach Zach to jump rope and we were all stumped by this. He couldn’t catch a ball, because he had tracking issues. The list goes on. I was concerned about his reading, writing and behavior. He loved being read too, but did not like to read and would not look at books in the car although he never got car sick. He would move letters from the end of the word to the front of the word and if there were a few sentences on the page, he would shut down.
We did go to several appointments in Bend over the course of a few months, but then we had an upcoming move which put everything on hold. We moved to Southern Oregon and I asked Gabby for a referral and she recommended Dr. Joanna Carter who she had mentored. We finally did restart vision therapy when Zachary was in second grade and he finished while in third grade. It was a process, it required a lot of hard work and home work, which we had trouble with, but although we took longer than was ideal to get through the program it still worked wonders for him.
Dr. Carter was always so upbeat, caring and really worked hard to connect with Zachary and incorporate ideas that would work well with his sensory issues. She had to be creative and figure out how to motivate him when this was not a pleasant task for him. Eventually, Nate also helped out and he was also really great with Zachary.
I didn’t see the changes overnight, usually, except with skipping, but I could tell he was making gains. When Zachary finally graduated it was such a huge relief, but it also showed me how far he had come. He was given Minecraft books as a graduation gift and Zachary went home and read the whole book. I was so excited that he could read a whole book by himself and that he had the desire to do so. This would not have happened without VT. His writing improved and he can tell his right from left now. He can skip, catch a ball, read books and will look at them in the car now. It improved his hand eye coordination and school skills. It was a success in my book. I tell everyone I can think of that would benefit from vision therapy as I have seen firsthand how effective it can be.
Zachary’s parents
Sensory Processing Disorder
TestimonialsChristy Kiltz2021-04-13T21:14:11-07:00
I tell everyone I can think of that would benefit from vision therapy as I have seen firsthand how effective it can be.