What is the link between vision and learning?

To honor National Vision and Learning Month, we're discussing the importance of getting a comprehensive eye exam for children before the start of the school year, like the one we offer, which targets many areas and skills that your family eye doctor usually does not cover. These are necessary for academic and sports success, including depth perception, coordination of both eyes, and visual processing skills.

We also discuss the impact of screen time on visual development and offer tips for parents to help improve their child's visual skills.
Don't forget to schedule an eye exam with us before school starts to ensure your kids are prepared for the new school year.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

(01:49) The uniqueness of our eye exam: child’s academic and sports development on sight.
(04:45) If kids eyes aren’t flexible and strong enough, why can they look at a screen for such a long time?
(07:18) The Processing Piece:  making sense of the visual information. Dyslexia isn’t always the answer.
(11:38) Advanced Tracking Exercises.

- "80% of learning is vision" https://www.covd.org/page/learning
- "Dyslexia is a temporal lobe processing difficulty" https://search.iczhiku.com/paper/TZdxGJUnUDlVygHr.pdf

Check out our Digital Programs

• 4d Built to Read Digital Program
• Concussion Recovery
• Built to Drive

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Transcript

Dr. Juanita Collier: Welcome to the It Could Be Your Eyes podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juanita Collier. Through my decades of work in the field of vision, I have met thousands of patients, parents, educators, therapists, and doctors searching for solutions to the seemingly unsolvable. Challenging traditional medicine's new normal?

We'll uncover that the root cause isn't necessarily what you thought it might be. It could be your eyes.

Dr. Juanita Collier: Hi and welcome back to It Could Be Your Eyes. I'm your host Dr. Juanita Collier and I have my co host Jessica Liedke with me and today we are talking in honor of National Vision and Learning Month. 

Jessica Liedke: The Vision and Learning connection is pretty strong because It's documented that up to 80% of a child's learning in school is through their vision.

So when we think about kids and going back to school and all the things on those checklists that you got to get off, you know, you've got to get the school supply list, you've got to get them a haircut, you've got to make sure they have comfortable shoes. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: That they still fit. That they still fit.

My kids have grown exponentially over the summer apparently. 

Jessica Liedke: Super fun. And so then, you know, you also start thinking about, we, we get a lot of calls around this time of year. Maybe it's time for our eye exam. A lot of us just go to our family eye doctor and look for our distance vision 2020. Okay, good. Let's move on. But we see things a little differently. So how is our exam different? 

Dr. Juanita Collier: Yeah, so for our exam, we look at essentially every area of vision that's necessary for academic success. That starts with how a patient is taking in their visual information, how they're processing it, and how that, those two things kind of affect their performance.

And that starts with really looking at how the child is using both eyes together. When you're thinking about a normal eye exam, I think we can all remember, you know, like covering one eye and covering the other. And... When you're actually reading, you have both of your eyes open. And so we want to see how well the two eyes are coordinated to work together, because any slight lack of coordination in how those eyes are working together can cause a lot of difficulty for a kiddo, and they might not even realize that it's something that's abnormal, so they won't necessarily complain about it.

And so we look at depth perception because we want to see how well the child is using the two eyes together. We want to see how well they can navigate through space. And also if your child is playing sports, like my son is being signed up for soccer right now, and I hope that he participates at every session because, you know, he.

He's working on losing gracefully, so you know, it's a work in progress. So he's signing up for soccer and so making sure that he has the depth perception to be able to kick the ball appropriately and is powerfully set up to perform well. And so when we're looking at the binocular system, so those eyes working together, we're really looking to see, do they have the ability to use the two eyes together?

Do they have the strength? To use the two eyes for an extended period of time. Do they have the endurance to be able to keep it up for a long time? Exactly. While also learning what they're reading. Because yes, you might be able to, you know, cross your eyes to your nose, but that doesn't mean that when you're looking at a piece of paper, your eyes are going to work together because those are two different skills.

And then we also want to see if they're flexible because as an adult you can understand, you know, all of those skills kind of working together when you're on the computer for an extended period of time. A lot of adults experience fatigue when they're on the computer. Their eyes start to hurt. They feel like they might need to move closer or farther away because their visual system's not strong enough to do what you're asking it to do.

Or you might need to take breaks after a certain period of time because you don't have that endurance. Or you might even see that when you look up from the computer, the clock across the hall is blurry now, and that's your flexibility. So all of those things that as an adult we can say, hey, this isn't right, a child might just think it's normal because that's how they've always seen.

Jessica Liedke: Exactly. And you know, I, I have so many conversations with parents. I had no idea. She already said that she didn't like reading, but I never really understood why she's a bright kid or she never complained about her eyes. But it is exactly that. Kids aren't going to report what they don't know isn't normal. It's just how it is. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: And then another question that we get all the time is, well, if If their eyes don't have the strength or the endurance or the flexibility, then how is it possible that they can stare at a screen for hours at a time or play video games for hours at a time? 

Jessica Liedke: It's a very good question. Sometimes I want to ask my son that too. I think for one thing, dopamine is a powerful drug, and when you really want to be in to something, you can make it work. And screens, you know, it's been shown that they will give you, your brain, that serotonin boost, that big dopamine hit, that like, ooh, ooh, ooh, I want more, I want more. But also, it is, then we end up overcompensating or compensating for what we don't have. So it's like, they may be just using one eye instead of having to do both. The brain will ignore one eye, it'll kind of make it work, make it make sense. They'll work through the blur, they'll just keep on going because it's fun.

Dr. Juanita Collier: And also it's considered, technically it's considered a sensory seeking behavior. So a lot of times, kiddos whose visual systems don't work appropriately on black and white texts. When they look in front of a screen, all of that backlighting kind of causes those muscles to function kind of without their, them really being in control of it.

So then those muscles are working semi appropriately when they're on that backlit screen, but then when they go to paper, they have even less skills than they did before because now they need that external stimulation. to get those muscles working. And so that's kind of the screen time issue, which is why we definitely limit screen time in our house and we chose a school that limits screen time as well, because of all of the research that has gone into it. And so obviously most school systems are using screens quite a bit. So then you just want to kind of decrease how much you're doing at home to compensate and get an idea from the teachers, you know, how much screen time they're having.

Jessica Liedke: And just make sure that their visual systems are shored up enough to be able to handle what screen time they do need. It's kind of a unavoidable in a lot of places and a lot of schools. And so you want to be able to know that your child has the visual skills necessary to be able to endure screen hours at school.

And, uh, you know, even if you limit it at home, you still want to make sure everything is good when they're not under your watchful eye. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: Exactly. And so then the other thing that we're looking at with the exam is the processing piece. 

Jessica Liedke: So, being able to take in the visual information, make sense of it, and then be able to output it, be able to perform academically, is a really huge piece of the puzzle, right?

Because even if they're seeing 20 20, but their brain cannot make sense of that visual information, they're going to be spending a lot more energy, a lot more effort trying to perform. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: So, some of the skills that we're looking for with that are visual memory, and so we'll do standardized tests. to see how the patient is able to retain what they've seen.

Obviously, that's going to be very important academically. We're looking to see how they do with laterality. So really knowing their left and right directionality, understanding which way things are facing, because we have a lot of kiddos who come in with letter reversals. A lot of times that's kind of a red flag in people's minds thinking like dyslexia and that's not necessarily dyslexia.

So dyslexia is technically a temporal lobe processing disorder. That's a specific area of the brain that has difficulty processing information appropriately. Laterality and directionality. don't necessarily correlate to a dyslexia diagnosis because a lot of times those things just need to be pointed out and repeated and really kind of solidified.

And so, one tip that we give to a lot of our parents who have kiddos who have difficulties with left and right is to speak to them in left and right. You know, like my kids, like when we're walking down the street or we're driving on the highway, we're always talking about if we're going left and right and what we're going to pass on our left and what we're going to pass on our right because it's just so important to have that information ingrained in them.

A lot of parents don't use that information, those words, and then kind of expect things to, to click and that won't just click for everybody. 

Jessica Liedke: Yeah, especially if you have eye teaming or, you know, visual issues, it's it can be even harder to really cement that understanding. So what we do a lot in therapy and what we do in our 40 built to read program is we even take it a step further and don't just use the words left and right, but we have the Children move and understand it in their body kinesthetically.

So we are doing exercises where we're moving the left side of the body and labeling it as left, and then putting a visual symbol to it. So like a D has a bubble on the left, or a B has a bubble on the right next to the stick. So if you think of D's and B's lowercase, you know, they're like sticks and bubbles.

So, We use exercises where the child actually moves and understands it in their body and how it feels to experience the different sides, and then it's easier to translate it into a visual format. 

If you could make a positive change in your child's reading ability and confidence with reading in just 20 minutes a day, you would jump at the opportunity, right? Of course you would.
The 4D Built to Read program trains you, the parent, to become a junior vision therapist and provides you with tools, activities, and support you need to give your child a strong visual foundation so they can read, play, and take on whatever challenges they face. 
If your child is too bright to be struggling and getting low grades, or you've been told that in-office vision therapy would help, but you just can't find the time to commit, the 4D Built to read program may be just what you're looking for at a fraction of the cost.

Visit 4D built to read.com or check out the show notes for a link to learn more. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: Then we also look at skills like figure ground discrimination. So that's kind of like the, where's Waldo, I spy type of skills. And so, when you're reading a passage in a book, for example, and then you have multiple choice questions on what you've read, you kind of know what you're looking for when you go back to that passage.

And for a lot of kiddos, that's really hard, to know what you're looking for and have it like pop out at you, like that's a really difficult skill for some kiddos. And so that's something that we definitely want to make sure that we're helping them identify. Also, when it comes to math and word problems, that's another skill that you're going to use there.

Jessica Liedke: So in the therapy room, we're doing a lot of exercises like you mentioned, you know, where's Waldo, I spy, stuff like that. But then as we get a little more advanced, We're also doing exercises where we ask a child to track, and we build in some tracking appropriately, you know, from left to right. But let's say they're tracking through paragraphs of nonsense words, and they have to find the alphabet in order from A to C.

So they find a first A, and then a B, and then a C, all left to right, and they're picking out that important detail out of a crazy mess of busyness. 

Dr. Juanita Collier: So all of the skills that we are looking for are skills that they will use daily in the classroom and that won't be looked for at a primary care eye exam. At a primary care eye exam, they're looking to see what's your distance vision and are your eyes healthy and those things are obviously very important.

And, for school, there are a slew of other skills that are important as well. So, with this being Vision and Learning Month, we wanted to make sure that you schedule your back to school eye exam. I know that for a lot of our patients, They kind of missed the boat on the August September booking and then when progress reports come out in October, then we get very slammed.

But this is something that, you know, as a parent you can get ahead of. You don't want to be wait listed for your exam. So get your exam before school starts so that your kiddos are all set for the new school year. If not, you can wait until after progress reports come out, but that's usually the time when everyone kind of sees what's happening based on your child's performance.

So it's just better to not have them kind of feel like they're not doing as well as they could if we can get ahead of it. Because as parents, that's what we're always trying to do, right? 

Jessica Liedke: Always. And you know, you think about like when progress reports come out, then you know, you've got soccer practice and you've got dancing.

Recitals are not even recitals, just dance class and holidays are coming. Holidays are coming and you're just like trying to juggle so much. We juggle so much through the school year. So now while we're still kind of just like getting into a new routine, now's a good time to make sure we check this off of the list.

Dr. Juanita Collier: That sounds great. Let's make those kiddos nice and prepared for their new school year. And so with that book your eye exam or purchase your built to read program so you can get your kiddos the foundation they need for academic success and talk to you soon. 

Jessica Liedke: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the It Could Be Your Eyes Podcast.To schedule an appointment with Dr. Collier, visit us@4dvisiongym.com. To train your vision at home, visit us at 4D vision therapy@home.com. Rate and review our podcast and email a screenshot to receive 10% off a new evaluation or any of our digital programs. Subscribe to join us for more eye-opening episodes as we dive deep into all the ways that it could be your eyes.