In the beginning of our autism journey I read a lot of books about treatments and therapies for autism. And one of the books that really stood out to me was about vision therapy. I learned about the difference between vision and eyesight. I knew that Aiden could see (eyesight) but what I didn’t know was how his brain processed what his eyes saw (vision). Many people with autism have difficulty processing and responding to information from their senses - sensory issues. I knew Aiden did. And vision therapy is suppose to be able to help with these sensory issues because it “retrains” the brain. Since the visual system relates to motor, cognitive, speech, and perceptual abilities, these areas can also be affected when the visual processing is interrupted. The goals of the treatment program are to help the individual organize visual space and gain efficient visual information processing. Sounds great! Sign him up! That’s what I thought and that’s what we did. But like our trial with music therapy (although this was way more expensive), we were unsuccessful. Aiden was very young, very nonverbal, and very all over the place. He just absolutely could not keep his body still enough to focus on anything with instruction. And this was not something that we just tried for 2 weeks then gave up. We did this for probably close to a year and looking back now all I can say is that he just wasn’t ready, or these therapies needed dramatically more time and money than we had to give. Aiden is way better suited now to try this out but unfortunately it is very expensive and just not something we’re able to do right now. Maybe one day.
