Children are often placed in remedial reading groups or labeled as having learning problems without a proper visual assessment. I don't mean a routine eye exam where each eye is tested to determine if it is focusing clearly. While that exam is very important, along with making sure the eyes are healthy, equally important is a full binocular vision assessment. Our eyes do not work in isolation. They must focus clearly, maintain that focus, and point to the same location in place, in order to see a clear single image. Then those images get transported to the brain where all that information needs to get processed. Our visual system helps orient us in space, keeps us balanced, provides motion cues and provides us with information to learn, all at the same time. It is such a complex and exquisite system, I am often in awe of how the human binocular visual system evolved.
In today's highly visual world, we often ask children to maintain that focus for long periods of time and process complex information while dealing with a lot of distractions. If a child has to work so hard just to process that visual information, and keep a clear, single focused image, you can see how this would interfere with learning. I can't stress how important a complete binocular vision assessment is in this population of children. No child should be diagnosis with a learning problem until a complete binocular vision assessment is performed by a doctor who understands binocular vision. Treating an underlying binocular vision disorder can make one of the most profound impacts on a child's ability to learn up to their true potential.
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