Vision is Much More than Seeing 20/20
Even if your child or you can see 20/20 on the eye chart and is told that his or her eyes are fine by optometrist and/or Ophthalmologist, your child or you may still struggle with undiagnosed binocular vision problems.
These problems cause symptoms like headache, dry eye, tired eye, skip line when reading and poor comprehension. In some case, these vision problems don’t seem to cause obvious eye related symptoms but are reducing comfort, productivity and /or stamina even anxiety. The binocular vision problems are only diagnosed in in-depth functional vision assessments. Behavioral optometrists are optometrist who are extensively trained to understand the development and function of the vision process besides the eye health.
The reason that these vision problems are not diagnosed is that the annual “comprehensive” routine eye exam doesn’t detect for these problems. With that said, the annual routine eye exam is very important, and it is the first step to the vision care. If your child is struggling in school, or has diagnosis of ADHD or dyslexia, or not reach his or her potential, talk to your eye care providers, and ask for a separate appointment of sensorimotor exam if your provider offer one in the office. If they don’t offer this testing, you may ask for referral
to a behavioral optometrist.
What happen when anyone sees like this when (s)he reads? Especially, children don’t know how to report what they see, and they don’t know what is supposed to see. Even if one reports the word moving on the page sometimes, parents or caregivers often don’t understand what they mean. These complaints often time are often time ignored. Does that sound very frustrated?
- Individuals, who have binocular vision problems, may avoid any near work, they are asked to work hard or be told that they are lazy. Those individuals, who often have tried very hard, feel failure and low self-esteem inside. They may be misdiagnosed with ADHD and put on medication, which may have further side effect on the yet-stressed vision system.
- Some individuals don’t reach their potential no matter how hard they work and get adequate help from tutors and teachers. They may be misdiagnosed with dyslexia.
- Not only do these binocular vision problems impact one academically, but also many individuals, who do not struggle at all academically, yet they struggle socially and emotionally. They are excessive shy or anxiety, some experience panic attack and over-whelmed in sensory-rich environments. We found that those individuals often struggle with constricted functional visual field. The constricted function field is also known as tunnel vision. Tunnel vision makes them trouble with detecting and making sense of what is in their peripheral vision. Most of these individuals also struggle with a binocular vision disorder characterized by a tendency of the eyes to misalign inwards or outwards when the eyes are fatigue. Some of these individuals are light sensitive and some experience headaches or migraines on a regular basis.
As a behavioral optometrist, we can diagnose even the most subtle visual problem and offer various treatment options to meet your goal. The most common and most clinically proven options for these kinds of binocular problems is vision therapy program of care, which includes stress-relief lenses, optometric light therapy and in office vision therapy. The vision therapy program is to help and to relieve in most of symptoms described above.