NFC West Champion, Larry Fitzgerald, Answers: Does Your Child Need Vision Therapy?
July 28th, 2009 by Pat Wyman
When my daughter, Erin, a Pediatrician and co-founder of this RaisingSmarerChildren.com blog, was in the first grade, her teacher called me in and said she wanted her to repeat the first grade due to reading problems.
I was horrified as you can imagine, because Erin could read at age 4, and I am a reading specialist. What was I missing?
Fortunately, and I believe there are no coincidences, the mother of a child I was coaching in faster learning strategies, told me her son was taking vision therapy. She said her son had visual perceptual problems that weren’t picked up in the school vision exam on the distance eye chart, and she discovered he didn’t see the printed page the way he should.
Just today, I read a story on Fox Business News about the NFC West champion wide receiver for the Arizona cardinals, Larry Fitzgerald, who credits vision therapy for his success.
He says, like I have been saying, teaching and writing about for just over twenty years now, “that most people don’t know that there are over 15 visual skills that every person needs to succeed in reading, learning, sports and life. Reading at 20/20 distance eyesight is just one of those skills”.
My daughter, Erin, who had vision therapy in the first grade, was more than just lucky. When she was finished the therapy, she read well above grade level. She too, credits her much of her dream of becoming a medical doctor to the vision therapy she received as a child. Had her visual perceptual problems not been solved right then, she may have struggled with reading all the way through school. Read the rest of this entry »
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Part 1 of our series on visual strategies for test taking success, excerpted from