This is the story about a girl who came to me with a very bad out-drift (divergent strabismus) of her left eye. At the first visit she was wearing prescription glasses that were making her eye drift out even more. She was not seeing well and she was facing really serious learning difficulties. She was already visiting an occupational and speech and language therapist.
Now, six month into therapy, when I look at her she is the same girl but yet she seems so different, beyond recognition. Her eyes are straight most of the time, she has no glasses and her visual acuity/eye-sight is close to perfect.
The mother was thrilled to share the feedback from the speech and language therapist: “The girl progressed tremendously, there is no need for further sessions”. After hearing the story I look at her and see so much confidence and self esteem - traits that just 6 months ago were only there in traces.
How was that possible, the mother asked? Well, if we look at the entire sensory system, it is a part of a larger receptive-expressive system. We can’t look at the 'outcome' without knowing what has been 'put in'.
In other words, how do we perceive information and process it? Is it orderly and in sequence? Because how it 'goes in' impacts greatly our way to express ourselves: Think of yourself at times when you were stressed or very excited. Were you capable of expressing yourself clearly during those times? Having your thoughts in order is a precondition for being able to express them clearly.
With the Integrated Vision Therapy at Orthovision we place a huge importance on synchronizing all elements of the sensory system - which in turn positively influences receptive language and therefore creates favourable preconditions for the expressive language.
So for this girl, all the 'input' before the Integrated Vision Therapy was not well structured. The therapy helped her to process information differently and hence she can now produce 'output' easier, more structured and comprehensible. What a gift!
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