Life was incredibly frustrating for 9-year-old Julia Feit and her mother Laura. Julia had been struggling in school, especially with reading, and nothing seemed to help. But as it turned out, Julia didn’t have a learning problem - she had a vision problem.

Laura was desperate for answers. Her daughter was skipping groups of words while reading, in addition to bumping into walls. Moreover, tutoring sessions simply weren’t doing the trick.

Finally, after hearing about vision therapy from a friend, Laura took her daughter for an eye exam at The Vision Therapy Center. The discovery was life-changing.

The Vision Therapy Center diagnosed Julia with “convergence excess,” a condition that severely limited her awareness of peripheral vision and caused her eyes to work inefficiently when anxious. This meant that as soon as she became frustrated with reading, the task became even harder.

In therapy, developmental optometrists engaged Julia in a series of exercises and activities to improve the way her eyes and brain worked together. Essentially, they helped Julia positively change the way she used her vision.

In addition to her weekly one-hour therapy sessions, Julia’s parents helped her complete 25 to 35 minutes of exercises at home each day - an important reinforcement of skills that she was learning at her in-office therapy.

Julia’s mother said that eventually she began to see Julia make progress on a weekly basis.

“It was a huge release just to know that this is what the problem is, and this is how we can fix it and get her to where she needs to be,” Laura said.

If you would like to learn more about Julia’s experience with vision therapy, you can read the full article here.  We have also included several photos depicting Julia’s experience with vision therapy below.