Wow Vision Therapy Blog

Over the past several decades, ADD and ADHD have become some of the most common behavioral labels of our children today. In 2011, the CDC reported that approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million in the US) have been diagnosed with ADHD. But how often do we stop and think about the underlining cause of these conditions?

The standard treatment approach is to medicate with stimulants that force the child or adult to focus and engage their attention on tasks like reading and other school work. But is this approach just a bandaid? Are we really helping our children overcome ADD and ADHD with medication alone? What if there was another way?

Let’s face it. We all, at times, have trouble focusing our attention on tasks that are challenging. Learning, by definition, is a challenge for the brain. Learning is also a critical part of living a full life. Our modern culture has made reading ability the prerequisite for efficient learning. All too often, when children struggle with focusing, attention and learning, the problem begins with their basic ability to read.

Our vision and vision efficiency are the most critical human abilities that impact reading speed and comprehension. If our eyes don’t scan words on a page efficiently, work well together as a team, or communicate information with the brain effectively, the most basic reading functions become overwhelmingly challenging tasks. If a child can’t read as efficiently as their classmates, they fall behind. When they fall behind, their teachers and parents become concerned. The child is unhappy, frustrated and acting out. The parent is unhappy and questions whether it’s their fault. The entire family unit falls into chaos because the other children feel neglected.

Vision Therapy is the process of developing more efficient functions of the visual system and the brain’s comprehension and processing abilities of the information we read on the page or computer screen, as well as many other areas of daily living. When a child or adult has difficulty focusing or maintaining attention on a single task, in many cases, a vision dysfunction is a likely cause of attention deficiencies. So rather than treating the symptoms with medication, we treat the cause with noninvasive Vision Therapy. As a result, the patient is able to focus on vision intensive tasks, like reading, with greater ease. Comprehension is improved, which makes learning easier and ultimately the patient feels more competent, confident, productive and in general, happier.