Vision Therapy?

[Dave]

My son who will be seven or Sept. 22, 2001 has some eye issues. My question is would vision therapy help him? He has one especially lazy eyes and goes "googly" eyed quite often. I wish I could describe it better, but it's just not "normal". I often wonder how this affects his vision and perception. I have been hesitant to take him for an eye exam because of he does not communicate outside of leading and a few hand signs.

[Tashia]

My own son (mild-moderate autism, diag 3 yr old) now 13 went through vision therapy and I believe it helped a lot. He had a lot of visual self-stims, poor eye contact, short visual attention span, etc.

Since my own mother and aunt are legally blind, and my aunt is also a special ed teacher, I had some people with background to ask. My aunt suggested we contact a unversity based optometry school in Memphis for initial screening and referral from their university based clinic. We did so and were referred back to a therapist very near home, who I was quite impressed with. I thought they'd never be able to test him as he was nonverbal and had so many self-stims, hyperactive, uncooperative, etc., but they have techniques to do so that I would never have imagined were even available.

The key is finding someone who SPECIALIZES in Vision Therapy. He gave us some exercises to do every day that were very much like games and over time we definitely did see improvement. I would like to add that during that time we also had Auditory Integration Therapy done for his hyperacusis and subsequently saw a dramatic improvement in his vision skills. When I spoke to the optometrist about this he indicated that the two sensory centers lay very close to one another in the brain and that an improvement in one area might well produce a like improvement in another.

During the process of performing the therapy, I found that he could have a greater attention span to flash cards, etc. when jumping on the mini trampoline or swinging. It gave us another tool to use in teaching him.

Go for it!