Preschool Vision

22 August 2010

Those of us involved with Vision Therapy are faced with a dilemma when working with children who are in preschool and kindergarten. If a child in this age group is found to have a vision problem that could be helped with Vision Therapy we'd like to offer them the help that they need. However, there is often a problem with a child this age engaging in the actual therapy. So, the dilemma is that early intervention matters, but it's hard to develop activities to engage a young child. The younger the person the more neuroplastic they are. We'd like to take advantage of a child's neuroplasticity and push forward a child's visual development, yet the last thing we want to do is to spin our wheels in therapy because the therapy is not at the level of a 4 or 5 year old and therefore they can't engage in it.

In practice, I often found myself telling parents that we have to pick our shots. That is, we have to find the sweet spot-the place where the child is able to engage meaningfully in Vision Therapy. This might mean waiting a couple of years to do in office therapy. In the meantime, I would offer limited home activities to help develop vision. I found this incredibly frustrating. Particularly because vision skills in large part represent readiness skills. In other words, visual skills are the neurological infrastructure that allow effective reading and learning to occur. I felt I needed to do something about this dilemma so.......

I developed the Integrative Vision Skills Learning Readiness Program. This program is specifically geared to the pre school-1st grade age range. The program is made up of activities that involve meaningful movement to develop visual skills. I think that appropriate visual development is a critical piece that is often missing from school programs. The Learning Readiness Program is an opportunity to help children develop their vision both at home and in school. You can learn more about the program here.