80-90% of classroom learning comes through the visual system. Children must have excellent visual skills in order to thrive in a classroom learning environment. Vision therapy can aid children without the appropriate visual skills to learn in the classroom, read better, spend less time on homework, and mentally visualize what is taken in through the eyes to aid in visual memory.
Many children who are struggling or underperforming in school without a diagnosed learning disability often have visual issues. In fact, in some studies, up to 25% of all children have a vision problem that is significant enough to affect school performance. With deficient visual skills, a child’s ability to learn and comprehend knowledge will be compromised.
These are common indicators that children are having visual issues:
- Not performing up to potential
- Avoids reading and/or homework
- Enjoys being read to, but cannot or chooses not to read independently
- Takes longer to complete assignments than understanding of a topic or intelligence would suggest
Vision problems tend to become apparent while children are learning to read. These tendencies may indicate that children have visual issues:
- Skipping or rereading words or lines of text
- Poor reading comprehension skills
- Letter reversals
- Shorter attention span while reading
- Develops headaches while reading
Vision therapy can help children develop these essential visual skills, and improve overall school performance. With the proper diagnosis and remediation of functional vision issues, children should experience the following benefits:
- Easier time learning and retaining information
- Read faster, and eventually, at higher levels than they were previously able to
- Complete homework faster
- Be more comfortable and confident in their visual capabilities
- Improve coordination, athletic abilities, and memory
- Process and analyze information at a faster rate
Attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are conditions in which children cannot concentrate on particular tasks. However, these conditions have high correlation with convergence insufficiency, a functional visual issue in which children cannot focus on a particular object or person.
15 of the 18 symptoms used to diagnose ADD and ADHD are also symptoms of vision related learning problems. In fact, children with any vision problem can exhibit the same signs as ADD/ADHD.
In many cases, receiving vision therapy will improve a child’s ability to focus, and can lessen or eliminate several or all ADD/ADHD symptoms.