Opto-mize Ebook: Chapter 2 Behaviour

Chapter 2: Behaviour
Learn more: www.opto-mization.com.
Attention Deficit (ADHD), Frustration at School, Problem Behaviour and more. Learn the role that vision plays in behaviour.
"One day, for no reason that anyone could comprehend, eight-year-old Jared ran off the edge of a concrete platform and landed, unprepared, on his face. He spent a week in hospital and two weeks out of school, recovering from a concussion and some broken bones. He explained that he simply hadn’t seen that the platform was ending.
Then, just seven weeks after that, while playing tag, Jared ran full-speed into a pole and suffered another concussion. He told his parents that he had seen the pole, but that it hadn’t been in front of him, but rather off to one side.
Jared had a long history of vision problems. As a baby he’d had ambly- opia, or “lazy eye” - where one eye doesn’t develop properly so the brain favours the other - and when he was screened in kindergarten, he needed serious correction plus some eye patching. His mother says he was always a clumsy kid, even after he got the glasses and finished the patching. Pretty much every time he tried to go down the stairs, for instance, he’d stumble and have to grab the railing. He’d walk into walls. He couldn’t play sports.
After the two playground accidents, he started to write things backwards, making his already very poor writing skills even worse. So it was recom- mended that he have vision therapy. Early in the assessment, a question about his behaviour came up. His mom was thinking, “You’re an optometrist. Why are you asking about behaviour?” Then she gave the lowdown.
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CHAPTER 2: BEHAVIOUR
CHAPTER 2: BEHAVIOUR
At school and in public, Jared just came across as very shy, or sometimes a little rude. He wouldn’t speak much, not even to kids his age, and he avoided eye contact.
But at home, he was a handful. There were epic meltdowns. The family had by this time given up on homework altogether. They’d tried reading re- covery, Kumon and private tutors. He hated them all - he’d even attacked one tutor, throwing her books at her. He would yell “I’m stupid!” and bang his head against the wall. He’d rip books up and throw things across the room. The little boy had been seen by psychologists and psychiatrists, had been diagnosed with anxiety and given medication for it, and was suspected of having high-functioning autism. But no one had ever connected the dots between his terrible behaviour and his terrible vision.
Poor little Jared couldn’t even get through the testing. I sat him down to check on how his eyes tracked but he couldn’t get through the paragraph I had asked him to read. His eyes were watering like crazy, and anyway, despite being in grade 3, he couldn’t really read yet.
I felt terrible for him. I wondered what his life must be like. From expe- rience, I knew visual problems and behavioural problems can often go hand in hand.
I reminded his mom that when you can’t see properly, the world can be pretty frustrating. I mentioned the broken bike analogy - how Jared was essentially riding around on a bike with a busted wheel, yet was expected to be able to ride like the kids on bikes that were in good nick. The world was basically asking him to do things that he wasn’t able to do. It was no surprise that he felt stupid and angry and fed up. How would any of us act under those circumstances?
In the end, Jared had 18 months of vision therapy. I’m not sure he said more than six words to me that whole time - he’s not a verbal communi- cator - but that was okay. He took Fridays off school so he could have a quiet time in our clinic and not be doing therapy during the after-school meltdown time. His mom did his nightly homework with him, getting buy- in with bribes of candy.
They had come to me looking for help with his vision to improve his read- ing, writing and lack of coordination. As expected, his reading and writing improved - he was at grade level by the end. His clumsiness went away too, now that he had depth perception.
But, to his parents’ astonishment, his behaviour mellowed as well. He came home after school and didn’t go into meltdown. He could do his home- work. He still has the occasional outburst, but nothing like before. Now he was a regular nine-year-old boy.
Quite often people find that when vision improves, it helps with more than just the reading and writing and math. It helps with behaviour too. Chelsea, from the previous chapter on reading, was another example. It hit her mom one day that it had been a very long time since she’d heard her daughter threaten to set her alight. “It’s one of those things you don’t realize it until it’s gone,” Janice says, laughing.
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