While on a car ride, seven-year-old Keira Halliday tried to read a stop sign. “It’s blurry,” she said to her mother, Amy.

Ask any teacher -- it’s a lot to expect a young child to sit and be attentive in school, especially in preschool or kindergarten.  Kids are distracted. Kids want to play.  

But Titus was different.

Why does a gifted reader spend 3 hours a night struggling with homework?

And why was this same seventh grader suddenly unable to read anything more challenging than a comic book?

Kelly Gozdziewski will never forget the words spoken by her son, Lucas, after he received new prism glasses. Lucas had been putting the glasses on and then taking them off, when he stopped and looked at his mother.

It’s common for us to see adult patients like Barbara Federlin, who have suffered through a lifetime of vision problems and are at wit’s end. Her story, and her success, is an inspiring message to all that it’s never too late to overcome a functional vision problem.

There’s a reason why functional vision problems are called “the hidden disability.” It’s because so many parents, physicians and educators aren’t aware of them. In this case, a reading specialist discovered her daughter had a vision problem, and the subsequent treatment was an eye-opening experience.

It was three years ago that Kay Saemann took a bad fall off a horse. The fall was followed by three years of vertigo, dizziness and nearly losing her job. But Kay has recovered, thanks to vision therapy.

Wendy Rosen’s book, The Hidden Link Between Vision and Learning, is more than a book.  It’s part of a relentless quest to educate and ultimately open eyes to an issue with far-reaching societal implications.

What do you do when eye patching for amblyopia doesn’t work?  For Lydia and her family, the solution was vision therapy.  By retraining her eyes to work together, Lydia overcame amblyopia and a number of other functional vision issues.

Dealing with a child’s functional vision problem and how it affects their school and play is difficult enough. It’s twice as stressful when you have two children with a problem. The Kugler family showed us they could do it, questioning an initial ADD diagnosis and using vision therapy to overcome their sons’ difficulties in school.