How Vision Therapy Can Help Struggling Students

by Mark E. Allen, O.D.

The American Optometric Association estimates that 25% of children have vision problems that can interfere with their ability to read, learn, comprehend and even pay attention.

What is a parent to do? Where are they to turn when every school evening is consumed with the dreaded homework war? Watching a struggling child fall further and further behind and feeling the frustration of being helpless? Asking themselves is she just lazy? Why can’t she get it? What will her future be like if this continues? Feeling guilty for spending so much time with her that there is none left for the other children. And being completely worn out? What is a parent to do?

The American Optometric Association estimates that 25% of children have vision problems that can interfere with their ability to read, learn, comprehend and even pay attention. Children with these vision problems frequently encounter school difficulty by grade 3 or 4, and in some cases, even sooner. Generally speaking, these children are bright but often lag behind their peers when it comes to reading, academic achievement and even sports performance. Learning related vision problems can have a profound impact on a child’s future.

Children who suffer from these learning related vision problems often have perfect 20/20 vision! Or, they may have had a routine eye examination where glasses were prescribed. Yet, they still have problems with reading, learning, comprehension and attention. How can this be?

To have an understanding of how vision relates to learning, parents need to know that normal vision encompasses much more than simply 20/20 eyesight. Children must be able to adequately focus and team their eyes, move them with precision as they read, sustain this effort for an extended period of time and process visual information in their brains so that they can extract meaning from what they are seeing. These children often adapt to their vision problems by becoming auditory learners – if they hear it, they get it. This is a major red flag for a vision problem that is interfering with learning or attention.

Children tend to deal with these vision problems in one of three ways. The first way is by physical changes in their eyes. In other words, they develop nearsightedness or astigmatism. This occurs because of visual stress and is an attempt to alleviate that stress by sacrificing distance eyesight for better near eyesight. Frequently, this is the child who still does well in school but is plagued by a headache at the end of the school day or after doing near work. The second way that children deal with learning related vision problems is by reduced performance in school. This is the bright child who struggles. Often, this plays out at home in the form of the dreaded homework war. This child is capable of A’s and B’s but often falls short of that. The third and final way that children deal with these vision problems is by far the worst way. The middle school to early high school years are typically when this is seen. These children simply give up. They become avoiders. They think they are dumb and they have told themselves that for years. Even though that is not true, they are convinced that it is fact. Homework gets left at school, they become the “class clowns” to deflect attention away from their poor academic performance, and behavior may change in a negative way. Checking out academically puts this young person with a friend group that is often trouble. A study of incarcerated juvenile offenders found that over 90% had vision problems that interfered with their learning.

The good news is that help for these kids is available. If vision is a piece of the puzzle for a child’s learning or attention issues, that can be identified and treated. Once the vision problem has been addressed, teachers, tutors, and dyslexia specialists can be even more effective in helping the child.

So, what is a parent of the struggling child to do? First, have your child’s eyesight and eye health evaluated by your family eye specialist. Sometimes, these children simply need corrective lenses. If this has already been done, and your child continues to struggle, consider contacting Texarkana Vision Therapy at 430-200-0036 about how they test for and treat vision problems that may be playing a role in the underperforming child’s life, causing headaches or contributing to or mimicking learning disabilities, ADD/ADHD or dyslexia.