Vision Therapy Exercises At Home,
How Doing VT Homework Improves
and Sustains Your Results
Vision Therapy exercises at home are a crucial part of your Optometric Vision Therapy treatment program. Read details of our homework contest below.
Why Do I Need To Do Vision Therapy Exercises At Home?
You should do your Vision Therapy exercises at home, coupled with regular in-office sessions, because you will experience more lasting and profound changes when you do regular home practice and activities, as prescribed by your Behavioral Optometrist.
We differentiate Vision Therapy (VT) from “eye exercises.” With VT, patients gain insight from their Behavioral Optometrist or Vision Therapist into their current visual skills and how they may be able to improve those visual skills.
Patients are typically asked to do their eye exercises at home on the days they don’t come in for sessions. Optimum results are achieved with regular, short homework sessions coupled with in-office sessions. Patients who don’t do their homework tend to move through the vision therapy program more slowly and have fewer gains during the treatment period.
Your in-office sessions expose you to a controlled environment where you perform a specific action several times in a few minutes. Success with vision therapy takes homework and several, frequent visits to be effective.
Your progress will be monitored by the behavioral optometrist and vision therapispt during your in-office sessions, and your individualized program may be adjusted based on the improvements you make.
Do I Need A Behavioral Optometrist To Prescribe Vision Therapy Exercises At Home?
Some people may think they can do Vision Therapy exercises on their own without ever seeing a Behavioral Optometrist or Vision Therapist.
You should definitely consult your behavioral optometrist prior to starting eye exercises at home to ensure that you are doing the right exercises for your needs. Your behavioral optometrist can use hundreds of exercises depending on your needs and your visual issues and skills.
As a word of caution, please take it slowly with any self-prescribed exercises because some exercises can cause exhaustion, headaches, irritability and nausea if done improperly. It is important to work your way up to longer spans of time gradually.
Also, your Behavioral Optometrist or Vision Therapist will make sure that you are doing the exercises properly. The exercises would be useless, otherwise. Again with VT, the patient gains insight into his or her current visual skills and how they may be able to improve those visual skills.
You will likely make rapid improvement initially, and your performance will continue to improve when you follow up with home training sessions between in-office sessions. After an intense period of huge success and change, you are likely to experience a plateau where you will maintain your new visual skills. This is normal. Even if you think the homework is boring, keep doing your Vision Therapy homework. Just think of it as a lifestyle change.
By supporting your treatment program with Vision Therapy exercises at home, you can experience huge changes in your visual skills that last.
Winners of Our Homework Practice Contest Went to Mystic Aquarium!
4D had a “Ziggy Star” contest for members who did the most homework practice over several weeks which began on March 31 through May 31. A member won each week, and winning members won a ticket for themselves and one parent to join the 4D Team at Mystic Aquarium to see Ziggy Star.
Here’s a picture of the 4D team and 4D members at Mystic Aquarium where all had a great time!
Ziggy is a Northern fur seal that was brought to Mystic from the Marine Mammal Center in California. She suffers from a visual processing impairment that affects her coordination and ability to process images. She is otherwise healthy, but can’t survive in the wild and will need human care for the rest of her life.
At the time of our visit, she was still in rehab.
Here Are Our Homework Contest Winners!
Winners for the first 4 weeks are: Catelynn (3/31 – 4/6), Molly (4/7 – 4/13), Ankita (4/14 – 4/20) and Cooper (4/21 to 4/27).
Congratulations to additional “Ziggy Star” Homework Contest Winners!
Our newest homework contest winners are: Lukas (4/28 – 5/4), Drake (5/5 – 5/11), Hazel (5/12 – 5/18), and Peter (5/19 – 5/25).
Our final winner was Brendan (5/26 – 5/31).
Congratulations to all our “Ziggy Star” Homework Contest Winners! We are proud of you!
Learn more about Vision Therapy Activities
Please note: In-office therapy under the direction of a Behavioral Optometrist using prisms, filters and lenses, as used with our patients, is far more effective than home-based therapy alone.