Is It Really ADHD?
April 18, 2023
Table of Contents
When you suspect your child has a diagnosis because of the more obvious symptoms or they have been given a diagnosis sometimes we need to challenge that first instinct. In this podcast episode, we ask “Is it really ADHD?” or are the symptoms vision related that can be resolved with vision therapy? Many parents might relate to this podcast episode as repeat guest Kelly Meehan, Doctor of Optometry (OD), shares her facepalm moment when she discovered her child had vision problems she felt should have been identified much earlier! Vision therapy is something we haven’t covered before which is why I’m eager to be sharing this interview as recording it was both delightful as it was eye-opening.
So what is vision therapy?
The human visual system is complex and comprises not just the ability to see clearly but also various visual skills, such as eye coordination, tracking, focusing, and perception. Vision problems can affect a child's overall visual performance, reading abilities, sports performance, and even general learning and more.
Kelly walks us through what most people believe covers optometry—such as being able to see from a distance or being able to see up close—and all the other essential components of testing our child’s vision. She also explains how there is so much more to our eyesight than an ideal 20/20 vision that may show up as ADHD-like symptoms, that when addressed the “ADHD” will resolve. These elements come into play, especially during those crucial developmental years as our kids learn to read and learn to understand what they see.
Is it really ADHD or is it something else?
Listen in on the podcast to find out how a number of practitioners actually rule out vision struggles as a probable cause in understanding ADHD symptomologies and what steps you could take to learn what the root cause is.
- Kinds of eye tests tailored to your child’s needs.
- What the child sees vs what the child thinks they see.
- Why vision issues aren’t always correlated to ADHD symptomology.
- Vision therapy for athletes, post-concussion, stroke, or brain injury.
- Questions to ask when seeking an effective vision therapist.
- And much more…
Show Notes for this Podcast
-
- The two gold standards in a vision screening test (3:34)
- The importance of a binocular vision exam: Checking of eye tracking, distances, double vision, and ability of the eyes to focus (4:16)
- Visual processing: The connection of the eye and the brain (6:01)
- Vision issues and ADHD symptomology as two separate (9:20)
- Vision therapy as a tailored process specific to each individual (12:27)
- Vision therapy is not just for kids! (14:09)
- What to look for and what questions to ask when seeking an effective vision therapist (20:51)
Resources and Links
Kelly’s Website: Designed Family Wellness
Kelly’s Email: [email protected]
College of Optometrists in Vision Development
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More about Kelly Meehan
Kelly Meehan is a wife and busy mom of 3. She has a bachelors in Human Nutrition from Arizona State University and a doctorate in optometry from the Illinois College of Optometry. She completed a residency in primary care with an emphasis in Pediatrics at Nova Southeastern University. She most recently became an Integrative Health Practitioner in 2021 and looks forward to helping transform your trajectory towards your best health.
00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified functional nutritional therapy practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit.
Now on with the show.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really pleased to have with me today a repeat guest, Kelly Meehan. She was with me back in last fall to talk about her journey with her child with respect to gluten in particular, but Kelly's background is actually in optometry and her original background. She is now doing more than that as we talked about last fall.
But I asked her if she would come back and talk to us about a little known type of treatment that a lot of people may not have thought about before, which is vision therapy. So we're gonna dive into that in a minute, but just in case you didn't hear her episode back in the fall, Kelly is a wife and a busy mom of three children.
She has a bachelor's in Human Nutrition from Arizona State University and a doctorate in optometry from the Illinois College of Optometry. She completed a residency in primary care with an emphasis in pediatrics at Nova Southeastern University and she most recently became an Integrative Health Practitioner in 2021 and is looking forward to helping transform yours and your family's trajectory towards your best health. So I love that you have this integrative background and a whole different perspective that most optometry-focused practitioners wouldn't necessarily have.
So it's really a pleasure to have you here again today and thank you for sharing your time again.
02:51 Kelly Meehan:
Thank you for having me. So glad to be back.
02:53 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So we're gonna talk, let's, let's talk about most people when they, they think about optometry, they think about vision in terms of can I see that distance over there? Or doing I need reading glasses or, you know, there can be some other things too that the basics of what most people know about optometry have to do with being able to see distance or being able to see close up.
So let's talk about all the things beyond that, which is what are the types of vision problems that can impact things like attention and learning in our kids?
03:33 Kelly Meehan:
So you're exactly right. So whether you go to the optometrist or even at the pediatrician's office where they're, you know, do vision screenings or maybe your child has a vision screening at school, what they're testing for is, you know, can this child see 2020? And a lot of times they're actually only checking for distance, not actually near isn't always tested, particularly in a screening, which is where a lot of things will go missed.
As well as, you know, ocular health is the other thing at the optometrist office that you're, those are the two like gold standards, those will be covered. And even at the optometrist, this is kind of a a bigger question because depending on what type of optometrist you go to, while those two things will be covered, not all of them test beyond that and do what we call a binocular vision exam, which is where a lot of these things might be caught.
So when you have a binocular vision exam, some of the things outside of those two gold standards that are gonna be checked are things like eye tracking, the way that the eyes team or move together. This is particularly with reading, this is looked at, we look at different distances, our eyes have to move together to coordinate so that we don't see double vision. So that's one of the things that's checked. And then also the ability of the eyes to focus. So depending on what distance you are looking at, whether that's distance or near, your eyes have to either strengthen their focus or relax their focus or be able to jump focus.
So if I'm looking at the chalkboard or, well we don't really use chalkboards anymore, but if you're looking at the board at school and then you're looking back at your paper, your eyes have to be able to focus, you know, back and forth. And some children struggle with the ability to do that and so things actually will appear blurry when they're going back and forth actually at the board and on their paper.
So those are some of the things that you're gonna dive into, more tracking. Also, in particular, if you are looking, I always used to say when I'm in the clinical office, if I'm looking at one corner of a room and I look at the other corner of the room, in a perfect world, my eyes would land from one corner to the next corner.
But what actually happens is maybe a child will make 10 small movements to get to where they need to be, or the eyes will overshoot altogether and then come back to where they need to be. And imagine if you're reading, if I'm trying to read the word cat and I see the C and I jump all the way past, you know, beyond the T and come back to the A, that's gonna be very difficult for me to to form that word. So there's some very small technical pieces there.
And then visual processing is a whole another world within vision therapy that really has to do with the connection between the eyes and the brain. So it helps the brain to understand what the eyes are seeing. So sometimes I might have a 2020 vision and I might not actually struggle with any of the things that I mention, just previously mentioned, but I might struggle with visual processing. And that's really where we start walking a road. If you're not seeing the right person, it's just not gonna be assessed and you can be in trouble there.
06:32 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it's amazing how many things, so you, when you start talking about that, you, you, you know, if you have a kid that's coming home and saying, and I'm sure parents have been through this before where they're like, they're trying to look up at the board or whatever it is, and then look down at their paper, especially as they get older and they're progressing through school and they're like, my vision's blurry. And you're like, but I just took you to have your eyes checked. And they said they're fine.
So it's a very confusing thing for most parents and for the kids to say, but they're like, but it's, but it is. So I'm guessing, obviously this is one of the signs, there's lots of different signs and symptoms, but this would be one of them that you want to be thinking about going to find someone who specializes in vision therapy, so if if their, if your child's talking about something like that.
07:22 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. So along what you're saying, so even if someone can see 2020, but a child just says, you know, towards the end of the day, maybe they have an English class or reading or something that's seventh period or, or later there is something that happens with visual fatigue.
So basically the eyes will tire out and that blurry vision won't actually show up towards the end of the day or the headaches won't show up until the end of the day. So if you have them tested at 8:00 AM everything might actually look great. So I usually used to recommend when those symptoms would show up, I want you to schedule an exam for after school, even if we'd done an eight o'clock exam and let's see what our numbers look like after a full day.
You know, working the eyes in the brain and see if things look a little bit different. But also kids who are just visually inattentive. So a lot of, you know, ADHD type symptoms, kids who just dislike reading, there's usually an underlying reason there.
Why do they dislike reading? It's probably because it's difficult on some level. And so we need to dive into that a little bit deeper and see if there are, you know, particular symptoms when it comes to vision and or the processing of vision of what we're reading that need to be addressed a little bit further.
08:35 Tara Hunkin:
So let's talk a bit more about ADHD symptomology specifically. So if you have a child that comes into your practice, which I know that's not what you're doing right now, but, but if they were coming into your practice and their parent said, my child has ADHD or says they are inattentive or you know, they're having having trouble, you know, focusing and staying on task in school or, or and or, or, or, or all the different things or they're having some behavioral issues depending on their age and the symptomology.
Are you taking that ADHD diagnosis at face value if they have it or that symptomology in their or the suspicion or what can you do? Like what can you look at from a vision perspective that might explain some of those symptoms?
09:20 Kelly Meehan:
So there's always root cause you're gonna hear me say it all the time and so no, I don't ever take it at face value and we need to rule out that vision is not a piece of that and or you know, causing that. And so I need to make sure that the child is understanding what they're seeing. So that's always my goal to start.
So they'll, we'll do a binocular vision exam and particularly looking at vergences or the way that the eyes move or team together is one of the things that I need, really need to be sure is working optimally or because 8 to 12{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of the pediatric population actually has something called convergence insufficiency. And that's important to know because convergence insufficiency and ADHD, about eight of the ten symptoms, are almost exactly the same.
So it's really important, it's very huge correlation. So it's really important that we rule that that condition out and you know, some of the things that the child will say is, or that we know that are symptoms of that, of like words moving on the page or they look like they're swimming on the page. Well if words are swimming on a page, that's gonna be really difficult me for me to read and that's gonna lose my, I'm just gonna stop, I'm gonna have inattention to that because it's difficult.
Sometimes a child will report seeing double vision. On a lot of times, another thing that's interesting is a child who has seen double vision their whole life, you'd be surprised how many, even 10, 12, you know, 12 year olds, so you would think would be able to have the feedback to say, I see double if they've seen that way their whole life, they don't even know to report to you, oh wait, everybody doesn't see like that. That's not what double, you know, double vision is.
So sometimes I'll actually take my hands and hold them up and you know, slide my hands back and forth, do you see the words doing this or do you, does it look like this? And they'll be able to give a oh yeah, all the, you know, all the time. And then I've, I have moms with, you know, eyes as big as can be, oh my goodness, they've been seeing double this whole time.
And so it's really important to just be very detailed, but that there's a lot of things that we're looking to roll out, but particularly convergence insufficiency is, is at the top of the list for a child with ADHD or with ADHD symptoms, I should say.
11:30 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, it, it is amazing that, that you, so there's that, that thing of, like you said, if they've been seeing that way all their life but also they, you know, the brain sort of changes to accommodate that for them to some to some degree as well. But it, it's the same as children that that may be having some hearing challenges as well, whether that it's it's caused by ear infections or not and they adapt and the brain adapts to that as well.
So it's, it's a really interesting problem that a relatively simple eye exam can identify as possibly the root cause of what they're, what's going on. So once someone goes through the testing that you do, as with these kids, what does vision therapy look like? What is, what is it? I know it would be different depending on what you learn through that, in terms of your findings through that exam, but what is, what is vision therapy when we, we talk about that?
12:27 Kelly Meehan:
So once someone's identified that they need therapy, they'll be placed in a therapy program that should be bio-individual to their specific needs. So that's one of the great things about vision therapy is can, it's very tailored to them and what's needed. And typically it's a four to six month process.
I say that very loosely. It does depend on what and how many things are going on when we're dealing with visual processing. It's definitely on the, on the longer end, but they'll be coming into the office typically once to twice a week depending on how that office is set up and they're performing activities with the vision therap, with the vision therapist, not typically the doctor, but the doctor has programmed whatever that program looks like and they're going through different exercises and activities to help work on that connection between the eyes and the brain.
So I'll stop here because a lot of people think that we'll explain vision therapy and they'll compare it to physical therapy and in some ways it, it is similar but we're not actually working on the eye muscles, we're not making your eye muscles weaker or stronger and that is confused a lot of the time and we're actually working on that coordination between the eyes and the brain.
And the great thing about that is once we've achieved that, vision therapy isn't something you should have to do over and over and over. You might need a little touch, I always say like touch up, here and there a few years down the road, but you shouldn't have to enroll in a therapy program year after year.
So it's different than just strengthening a muscle because there's plasticity in the brain. So that's awesome. And with that said, the other big misconception is it's actually not just for kids. So I primarily work with kids, but vision therapy can actually be effective for a lot of people. So kids it can be for adults with, especially with like post-concussion or stroke or traumatic brain injury, there's different reasons that we'll work on therapy there and having to do with the plasticity of the brain and trying to get back areas of vision or, or I should say working even with deficits that are there, working around that, just to make things a little bit easier and adapt back to activities of daily living for some and athletes.
So some whether they're pro or high school will come in to work for a hand coordination, different reaction times. So there's different reasons that someone might do therapy. Kids is definitely the largest chunk of that, but basically they're coming in and doing exercises and activities to, to get that wiring per se kind of firing again.
15:02 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, so you've hit on a lot of really important points there.
I mean obviously one of the reasons why I love things like this, it's a type of neuro rehab, it really isn't, as you said, it's not about the muscles of the eyes, it's about training the brain and with that positive neuroplasticity we can really make a difference and and sustain a difference for the kids long term. And then obviously all the other patients that you were talking about.
I think the other thing that's really great about what you just talked about as well, especially with the older kids, if you have a kid that you know could be helped by this but they're resistant because it's another therapy if you can, if they are active in sports or some other thing that they can do that this could help them with their hobby and the thing that they love, it's, it's a great way, you know, and also you can give all sorts of examples of elite athletes and others that do this as part of their regular training. It's a lot easier to get them to be cooperative and actually engage and really thrive in the process as well.
16:05 Kelly Meehan:
Yes, it's a great motivating factor and honestly particularly for teenage boys who may not care a whole lot about doing vision therapy to improve their reading, especially if they really dislike reading or school as it is. So yes, we'll use that tactic a lot. Do you play sports? You know, tell me about what sports you play and also explaining how it can be can be helpful there because therapy, I mean truthfully is only as effective as the patient is motivated.
So it's very, very important and that's, and also they need to be able to give appropriate feedback, you know, are my eyes blurring? Do I see double? So with that said, we do typically have, we usually don't start therapy till about the age of six or so, depending on the child's ability to, to able to give that feedback.
Although you'd be surprised sometimes there is four and five year olds who can, can give appropriate feedback and sometimes they have an eight or nine year old, you know, who can't. So that makes it a little bit difficult in some senses the the child and parent do need to be motivated in order to have a successful therapy program.
17:08 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So do you typically have, you said that they come in typically around a couple times a week. Are there home aspects to a program as well?
17:18 Kelly Meehan:
There are usually, once we know that they understand the activity and can give the appropriate feedback, then there's, so our home activities, we're careful not to call them homework are taken home and worked on throughout the week, but to be honest it's pretty minimal.
Usually say, you know, it's just five to 10 minutes, three or four times a week so it's not like a 30 or 45 minute process and it's just to keep those neurons firing at those times that they're at home and working on those, maybe it's tracking or eye movements or whatever it is just to keep it fresh and going. Just if you go to the gym once a week you're not gonna make a ton of progress but if you did a little bit every day you're gonna be much more successful. So same concept applies here.
17:56 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So with, with all things neuroplasticity, we talk about this all the time too, is that it's frequency, intensity and duration and obviously you're giving direction on on that in terms of how it would benefit them. Is is there is, so with this type of therapy though, that duration aspect, is there a point at which you want them to stop?
Is that that where they're saying it's getting blurry because does it push it past the point of being beneficial and into where you might be sort of tapping into that negative neuroplasticity again?
18:30 Kelly Meehan:
Different activities, you know, sometimes we want them to blur when, especially when I'm talking about working on like strength of focus or being able to relax their focusing ability.
The blur is actually a cue to them that I've either reached or need to back off depending on what we're working on. That's their cue to stop a lot of times, you know, within the, the therapy activity. So yes, I, so I need to un them to understand what that looks like so they can do whatever's appropriate when the cue happens and we of course educate mom or you know, the adult with them on, on all the ins and outs of the exercises and, and what to do and, and how that works.
19:08 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, can can you give me an example of someone obviously anonymously like but that has come in and where they or their family has, you know, where they were when they first came in to where that, what they were able to achieve by going through just from a sort of a symptomology perspective?
19:27 Kelly Meehan:
There's a lot, you know, I I would say the most common scenario is someone who comes in for their eye exam 'cause they're struggling in school, right? That's the usually how someone lands into an eye exam.
And we've discovered, you know, there's either poor reading fluency and is, and typically I'd say the cases that we do have the most success with is, you know, poor tracking or we've, we've figured out some vergence issues or eyes are not moving appropriately when they read. So being able to work on those, and those are typically our three to four month cases I would say. And at the end of that, having a child who, from a symptom perspective, is enjoying reading again, mom will say I don't have the fight at home of getting them to read for for 15 minutes or even perform their homework because a lot of children that even avoid, let's just say math, for example, it may actually be that the, the tracking of the eyes is difficult is just as difficult in a math problem as it is with with reading.
So I hear that a lot. The symptom just symptom decrease as far as the dislike of the activity. And then from a teacher's perspective, they're much more attentive in class, they're willing to read out loud, their reading levels have increased or we're now up to to grade, grade level. So sometimes it's a longer process than that, but a lot of times in three or four months we can make a lot of progress.
20:50 Tara Hunkin:
That's amazing. So what would you recommend in terms of, so parents that are looking for this type of practitioner to work with, what are, what's the type of training background and focus like that they have to have within their practice in order to do vision therapy effectively?
21:07 Kelly Meehan:
So just asking the question, do you perform vision therapy? Because that will rule out, you know, most. And optometrists, I I, it's really funny a lot of times they either love to see pediatrics or it's not generally a large part of their practice.
And so just asking a few questions, you know, do you see pediatrics? Some will say we don't see kids under, you know, under six and a lot of family practices will see kids but they don't perform vision therapy.
So asking, do you perform vision therapy, do you do binocular vision exams and if my child should need it, you know, do you have somewhere you recommend to go to therapy? Some doctors will do those exams and refer, have colleagues that they refer to for the therapy and they go back and forth that way. So just finding out there, you know, is it, is it part of their practice. Outside of that, looking on the College of Visual Development, we'll have a list of practitioners who do this type of optometry.
22:03 Tara Hunkin:
And how accepted is it, is, is vision therapy as a whole in the medical community. So do you find that pediatricians or GPs have knowledge of this as an option for children or is it just something that still hasn't really gained that traction in the traditional medical field?
22:22 Kelly Meehan:
It's hit and miss, it's more and more as more studies and research are coming out, of course there's always traction within that.
There are, you know, even with within ophthalmology it's hit and miss. So there's a lot of now ophthalmologists who are hiring optometrists because they're seeing the benefit of having therapy both pre and post-surgery in some, in some cases if it's needed or will refer for therapy to before surgery to see if we can get to avoid the surgery. That's always the goal of course.
So it's hit, it's hit and miss, it's definitely gaining traction in general, I would say in my experience within a pediatrician's office, it's lowly accepted and that's just because there's just not enough knowledge or education. Unfortunately, optometry has not done a great job on educating on the preventative care like a dentist does. So like you go to the dentist every six months, why?
Because the dentist says that you should go and, and have your teeth cleaned and, and stay up on that preventatively. But unfortunately we have looked at vision not in that way. And you know, when you have pink eye, you land up in the land in the optometrist chair or you've gotten to the point where you need the eye doctor because you can't see or we're having struggle in school.
So my biggest encouragement is to start those eye exams as early as possible. You can have an eye exam as early, early as six months. So your child does not need to be able to respond if your child has special needs, they don't need to be able to respond within an eye exam. Your eye doctor is trained to do an exam without their feedback.
So start it early and keep up and keep up on them. I will willingly admit my own child of, my five-year-old, during COVID, is when I had stopped practicing for a period of time and I had given him an exam and so I didn't for about two years and I noticed he was turning his head when he was looking at things now that he's in preschool and pre-K and I took him in and sure enough he has a very decent prescription in, in one eye.
So I thought, oh, I'm gonna eat it here, you know, but you know, we're all, we all make mistakes but even, you know, with that said, I'm like, if my friends are never gonna let my other colleagues let me hear the end of this, but so keep up on it just because you did it two years ago and always before the start of school.
So preschool, kindergarten, you need that baseline so that should things go awry, you know, in that first, second grade you have a baseline to go back to.
24:48 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting that you say that and, and it, you know, well first of all it's like the, you know, the whole thing about the shoemaker not having shoes, we, we son, we tend to sometimes not look to close to home, but at the same time Covid did do that for everybody.
I think in terms of the regular things that we were doing or we were used to doing and because it happened well seems to take forever, but yet in the blink of eye we lost a couple years and I think everybody kind of feels that way that how did we, you know, what happened to the last two years? It's like we jumped forward, we do need to catch up on these things that, and and obviously a lot of the, the healthcare practitioners were just trying to keep up and catch up with all their patient populations as well.
So it's a great reminder to go and do all of these things that we needed to be doing on a regular basis, especially when the kids are really young and growing. Here in Canada, they recommend every year as you were suggesting for, for children until a certain age and then it's every two years, but it is something that we really need to keep up on. It's amazing how quickly that can sneak up.
And I would imagine, again, touching base with the teachers as they start school to see if they see something that you hadn't noticed because you're around them all the time and sometimes we just, sometimes we don't see these things. Sometimes we we're the best people to be asking. I would imagine that that's a, you know, if something's popping up in the school year that never popped up before, it's a time to, to reach out for help as well.
26:13 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. The teacher is a wonderful resource and so a lot of times we communicate with them directly back and forth, but you know, they're with your child all day and they're the ones who are gonna see, you know, even just talking about jumping from the board back to the paper, you're probably not gonna see that type of scenario at home, but the teacher's gonna see that. And a lot of times a teacher, a child will actually be getting in trouble for social interaction or talking, but a lot of times if they're sitting in the back of the room, they're looking at their friend's paper or talking to see, to figure out that they can't see and then they're trying to get the information from their friends. So that happens a lot sometimes that, you know, will, will come out.
They actually aren't as social as we thought they were just trying to see what was on their friend's paper and they get accused of cheating or whatnot, but they just were trying, trying to see, but the teacher is, is the best resource and they're also the best resource for progress, especially when we're dealing particularly with reading levels and, and working in that regard is they're gonna see that success much faster and easier in a lot of times than a parent will.
27:11 Tara Hunkin:
Well It's been really helpful. I think that, I mean as you know, I talked to a number of functional neurologists here and they often include vision therapy as part of an integrative approach to care as well, but it's really interesting and it's also likely more accessible to most people to go find you, you know, sometimes we can't find someone who can do all the things and it's always nice to have a specialist that that just does that one thing and to go to them and, and start working on it because it is amazing how many things that, how much improvement you can get.
Now that being said, let's sum things up in terms of, as you, I think you've already pointed out. When someone, when your child is presenting with a number of different symptoms, what should their expec expectations be as an outcome from vision therapy as a standalone therapy, and what else may they need to do beyond that?
28:02 Kelly Meehan:
So that's a great question. It's actually what made me for the moment kind of change career change careers. And that has to do so, like I'm, when we're talking strictly about eye movements, vision therapy as a standalone therapy can be very, can be very effective when we're starting to, to dig into more visual processing and the ADHD component, generally, it's a tool to use for the larger piece of the puzzle.
So of course, as we know, going back to the foundations, diving into our building blocks of nutrition and diet, I always say to to patients, you know, when you're on your third or fourth ADHD medication and it's not working, vision therapy's not, you're not gonna come in here and this is just gonna fix it.
This may be very helpful, but we've got a lot more digging to do here behind, you know, behind the scenes. So it's great. I would say, I would say maybe 50{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of the cases, it can be a stand, it can be a standalone and your doctor should be able to educate you based on your individual situation and what's going on, how effective just vision therapy will be as opposed to needing more of those tools.
29:14 Tara Hunkin:
No, and that's, that's, it's really helpful to hear that. And as you and I both know, all the things you can do to support your health while you do these types of therapies, they're gonna be even more effective because if you're supporting, for example, nutritionally with sleep and everything else, the brain's gonna respond a lot faster and more effectively to any therapy that you do as well.
So, as always, as you mentioned, we wanna focus on those foundational health things like diet and environmental factors and, and things like hydration and everything else to, to make sure that we're, we're supporting the therapy that we're, we're putting the time and energy and money into on a weekly basis, monthly basis while we're doing vision therapy.
Thank you so much again, Kelly, for joining us here. If, if anyone wants to reach out to, to Kelly, you can find her on Instagram, we're gonna put the link to her Instagram page. Is there anywhere else that people can reach out to?
30:13 Kelly Meehan:
Yeah, so just through my website, https://designedfamilywellness.com/ or even through email, [email protected] is the the easiest way to get ahold of me.
30:23 Tara Hunkin:
We'll make sure that we put those links down there too. I so appreciate you coming and speaking with us today and I'll remind everybody that Kelly also joined us to give her a talk about how her journey with her child as well with respect to specifically gluten and the impact of gluten on their, their journey. So please we'll link to that podcast as well.
So if you've enjoyed this episode, I really would like you to go back and listen to that as well. And again, I so appreciate you joining us here today and sharing your expertise with us and everyone here at My Child Will Thrive.
30:56 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
30:58 Tara Hunkin:
Thanks for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please support us by subscribing and giving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next episode of the podcast or over at mychildwillthrive.com/ where you can find articles and the free My Child Will Thrive Toolkit too.
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00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified functional nutritional therapy practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit.
Now on with the show.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really pleased to have with me today a repeat guest, Kelly Meehan. She was with me back in last fall to talk about her journey with her child with respect to gluten in particular, but Kelly's background is actually in optometry and her original background. She is now doing more than that as we talked about last fall.
But I asked her if she would come back and talk to us about a little known type of treatment that a lot of people may not have thought about before, which is vision therapy. So we're gonna dive into that in a minute, but just in case you didn't hear her episode back in the fall, Kelly is a wife and a busy mom of three children.
She has a bachelor's in Human Nutrition from Arizona State University and a doctorate in optometry from the Illinois College of Optometry. She completed a residency in primary care with an emphasis in pediatrics at Nova Southeastern University and she most recently became an Integrative Health Practitioner in 2021 and is looking forward to helping transform yours and your family's trajectory towards your best health. So I love that you have this integrative background and a whole different perspective that most optometry-focused practitioners wouldn't necessarily have.
So it's really a pleasure to have you here again today and thank you for sharing your time again.
02:51 Kelly Meehan:
Thank you for having me. So glad to be back.
02:53 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So we're gonna talk, let's, let's talk about most people when they, they think about optometry, they think about vision in terms of can I see that distance over there? Or doing I need reading glasses or, you know, there can be some other things too that the basics of what most people know about optometry have to do with being able to see distance or being able to see close up.
So let's talk about all the things beyond that, which is what are the types of vision problems that can impact things like attention and learning in our kids?
03:33 Kelly Meehan:
So you're exactly right. So whether you go to the optometrist or even at the pediatrician's office where they're, you know, do vision screenings or maybe your child has a vision screening at school, what they're testing for is, you know, can this child see 2020? And a lot of times they're actually only checking for distance, not actually near isn't always tested, particularly in a screening, which is where a lot of things will go missed.
As well as, you know, ocular health is the other thing at the optometrist office that you're, those are the two like gold standards, those will be covered. And even at the optometrist, this is kind of a a bigger question because depending on what type of optometrist you go to, while those two things will be covered, not all of them test beyond that and do what we call a binocular vision exam, which is where a lot of these things might be caught.
So when you have a binocular vision exam, some of the things outside of those two gold standards that are gonna be checked are things like eye tracking, the way that the eyes team or move together. This is particularly with reading, this is looked at, we look at different distances, our eyes have to move together to coordinate so that we don't see double vision. So that's one of the things that's checked. And then also the ability of the eyes to focus. So depending on what distance you are looking at, whether that's distance or near, your eyes have to either strengthen their focus or relax their focus or be able to jump focus.
So if I'm looking at the chalkboard or, well we don't really use chalkboards anymore, but if you're looking at the board at school and then you're looking back at your paper, your eyes have to be able to focus, you know, back and forth. And some children struggle with the ability to do that and so things actually will appear blurry when they're going back and forth actually at the board and on their paper.
So those are some of the things that you're gonna dive into, more tracking. Also, in particular, if you are looking, I always used to say when I'm in the clinical office, if I'm looking at one corner of a room and I look at the other corner of the room, in a perfect world, my eyes would land from one corner to the next corner.
But what actually happens is maybe a child will make 10 small movements to get to where they need to be, or the eyes will overshoot altogether and then come back to where they need to be. And imagine if you're reading, if I'm trying to read the word cat and I see the C and I jump all the way past, you know, beyond the T and come back to the A, that's gonna be very difficult for me to to form that word. So there's some very small technical pieces there.
And then visual processing is a whole another world within vision therapy that really has to do with the connection between the eyes and the brain. So it helps the brain to understand what the eyes are seeing. So sometimes I might have a 2020 vision and I might not actually struggle with any of the things that I mention, just previously mentioned, but I might struggle with visual processing. And that's really where we start walking a road. If you're not seeing the right person, it's just not gonna be assessed and you can be in trouble there.
06:32 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, it's amazing how many things, so you, when you start talking about that, you, you, you know, if you have a kid that's coming home and saying, and I'm sure parents have been through this before where they're like, they're trying to look up at the board or whatever it is, and then look down at their paper, especially as they get older and they're progressing through school and they're like, my vision's blurry. And you're like, but I just took you to have your eyes checked. And they said they're fine.
So it's a very confusing thing for most parents and for the kids to say, but they're like, but it's, but it is. So I'm guessing, obviously this is one of the signs, there's lots of different signs and symptoms, but this would be one of them that you want to be thinking about going to find someone who specializes in vision therapy, so if if their, if your child's talking about something like that.
07:22 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. So along what you're saying, so even if someone can see 2020, but a child just says, you know, towards the end of the day, maybe they have an English class or reading or something that's seventh period or, or later there is something that happens with visual fatigue.
So basically the eyes will tire out and that blurry vision won't actually show up towards the end of the day or the headaches won't show up until the end of the day. So if you have them tested at 8:00 AM everything might actually look great. So I usually used to recommend when those symptoms would show up, I want you to schedule an exam for after school, even if we'd done an eight o'clock exam and let's see what our numbers look like after a full day.
You know, working the eyes in the brain and see if things look a little bit different. But also kids who are just visually inattentive. So a lot of, you know, ADHD type symptoms, kids who just dislike reading, there's usually an underlying reason there.
Why do they dislike reading? It's probably because it's difficult on some level. And so we need to dive into that a little bit deeper and see if there are, you know, particular symptoms when it comes to vision and or the processing of vision of what we're reading that need to be addressed a little bit further.
08:35 Tara Hunkin:
So let's talk a bit more about ADHD symptomology specifically. So if you have a child that comes into your practice, which I know that's not what you're doing right now, but, but if they were coming into your practice and their parent said, my child has ADHD or says they are inattentive or you know, they're having having trouble, you know, focusing and staying on task in school or, or and or, or, or, or all the different things or they're having some behavioral issues depending on their age and the symptomology.
Are you taking that ADHD diagnosis at face value if they have it or that symptomology in their or the suspicion or what can you do? Like what can you look at from a vision perspective that might explain some of those symptoms?
09:20 Kelly Meehan:
So there's always root cause you're gonna hear me say it all the time and so no, I don't ever take it at face value and we need to rule out that vision is not a piece of that and or you know, causing that. And so I need to make sure that the child is understanding what they're seeing. So that's always my goal to start.
So they'll, we'll do a binocular vision exam and particularly looking at vergences or the way that the eyes move or team together is one of the things that I need, really need to be sure is working optimally or because 8 to 12{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of the pediatric population actually has something called convergence insufficiency. And that's important to know because convergence insufficiency and ADHD, about eight of the ten symptoms, are almost exactly the same.
So it's really important, it's very huge correlation. So it's really important that we rule that that condition out and you know, some of the things that the child will say is, or that we know that are symptoms of that, of like words moving on the page or they look like they're swimming on the page. Well if words are swimming on a page, that's gonna be really difficult me for me to read and that's gonna lose my, I'm just gonna stop, I'm gonna have inattention to that because it's difficult.
Sometimes a child will report seeing double vision. On a lot of times, another thing that's interesting is a child who has seen double vision their whole life, you'd be surprised how many, even 10, 12, you know, 12 year olds, so you would think would be able to have the feedback to say, I see double if they've seen that way their whole life, they don't even know to report to you, oh wait, everybody doesn't see like that. That's not what double, you know, double vision is.
So sometimes I'll actually take my hands and hold them up and you know, slide my hands back and forth, do you see the words doing this or do you, does it look like this? And they'll be able to give a oh yeah, all the, you know, all the time. And then I've, I have moms with, you know, eyes as big as can be, oh my goodness, they've been seeing double this whole time.
And so it's really important to just be very detailed, but that there's a lot of things that we're looking to roll out, but particularly convergence insufficiency is, is at the top of the list for a child with ADHD or with ADHD symptoms, I should say.
11:30 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, no, it, it is amazing that, that you, so there's that, that thing of, like you said, if they've been seeing that way all their life but also they, you know, the brain sort of changes to accommodate that for them to some to some degree as well. But it, it's the same as children that that may be having some hearing challenges as well, whether that it's it's caused by ear infections or not and they adapt and the brain adapts to that as well.
So it's, it's a really interesting problem that a relatively simple eye exam can identify as possibly the root cause of what they're, what's going on. So once someone goes through the testing that you do, as with these kids, what does vision therapy look like? What is, what is it? I know it would be different depending on what you learn through that, in terms of your findings through that exam, but what is, what is vision therapy when we, we talk about that?
12:27 Kelly Meehan:
So once someone's identified that they need therapy, they'll be placed in a therapy program that should be bio-individual to their specific needs. So that's one of the great things about vision therapy is can, it's very tailored to them and what's needed. And typically it's a four to six month process.
I say that very loosely. It does depend on what and how many things are going on when we're dealing with visual processing. It's definitely on the, on the longer end, but they'll be coming into the office typically once to twice a week depending on how that office is set up and they're performing activities with the vision therap, with the vision therapist, not typically the doctor, but the doctor has programmed whatever that program looks like and they're going through different exercises and activities to help work on that connection between the eyes and the brain.
So I'll stop here because a lot of people think that we'll explain vision therapy and they'll compare it to physical therapy and in some ways it, it is similar but we're not actually working on the eye muscles, we're not making your eye muscles weaker or stronger and that is confused a lot of the time and we're actually working on that coordination between the eyes and the brain.
And the great thing about that is once we've achieved that, vision therapy isn't something you should have to do over and over and over. You might need a little touch, I always say like touch up, here and there a few years down the road, but you shouldn't have to enroll in a therapy program year after year.
So it's different than just strengthening a muscle because there's plasticity in the brain. So that's awesome. And with that said, the other big misconception is it's actually not just for kids. So I primarily work with kids, but vision therapy can actually be effective for a lot of people. So kids it can be for adults with, especially with like post-concussion or stroke or traumatic brain injury, there's different reasons that we'll work on therapy there and having to do with the plasticity of the brain and trying to get back areas of vision or, or I should say working even with deficits that are there, working around that, just to make things a little bit easier and adapt back to activities of daily living for some and athletes.
So some whether they're pro or high school will come in to work for a hand coordination, different reaction times. So there's different reasons that someone might do therapy. Kids is definitely the largest chunk of that, but basically they're coming in and doing exercises and activities to, to get that wiring per se kind of firing again.
15:02 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, so you've hit on a lot of really important points there.
I mean obviously one of the reasons why I love things like this, it's a type of neuro rehab, it really isn't, as you said, it's not about the muscles of the eyes, it's about training the brain and with that positive neuroplasticity we can really make a difference and and sustain a difference for the kids long term. And then obviously all the other patients that you were talking about.
I think the other thing that's really great about what you just talked about as well, especially with the older kids, if you have a kid that you know could be helped by this but they're resistant because it's another therapy if you can, if they are active in sports or some other thing that they can do that this could help them with their hobby and the thing that they love, it's, it's a great way, you know, and also you can give all sorts of examples of elite athletes and others that do this as part of their regular training. It's a lot easier to get them to be cooperative and actually engage and really thrive in the process as well.
16:05 Kelly Meehan:
Yes, it's a great motivating factor and honestly particularly for teenage boys who may not care a whole lot about doing vision therapy to improve their reading, especially if they really dislike reading or school as it is. So yes, we'll use that tactic a lot. Do you play sports? You know, tell me about what sports you play and also explaining how it can be can be helpful there because therapy, I mean truthfully is only as effective as the patient is motivated.
So it's very, very important and that's, and also they need to be able to give appropriate feedback, you know, are my eyes blurring? Do I see double? So with that said, we do typically have, we usually don't start therapy till about the age of six or so, depending on the child's ability to, to able to give that feedback.
Although you'd be surprised sometimes there is four and five year olds who can, can give appropriate feedback and sometimes they have an eight or nine year old, you know, who can't. So that makes it a little bit difficult in some senses the the child and parent do need to be motivated in order to have a successful therapy program.
17:08 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So do you typically have, you said that they come in typically around a couple times a week. Are there home aspects to a program as well?
17:18 Kelly Meehan:
There are usually, once we know that they understand the activity and can give the appropriate feedback, then there's, so our home activities, we're careful not to call them homework are taken home and worked on throughout the week, but to be honest it's pretty minimal.
Usually say, you know, it's just five to 10 minutes, three or four times a week so it's not like a 30 or 45 minute process and it's just to keep those neurons firing at those times that they're at home and working on those, maybe it's tracking or eye movements or whatever it is just to keep it fresh and going. Just if you go to the gym once a week you're not gonna make a ton of progress but if you did a little bit every day you're gonna be much more successful. So same concept applies here.
17:56 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So with, with all things neuroplasticity, we talk about this all the time too, is that it's frequency, intensity and duration and obviously you're giving direction on on that in terms of how it would benefit them. Is is there is, so with this type of therapy though, that duration aspect, is there a point at which you want them to stop?
Is that that where they're saying it's getting blurry because does it push it past the point of being beneficial and into where you might be sort of tapping into that negative neuroplasticity again?
18:30 Kelly Meehan:
Different activities, you know, sometimes we want them to blur when, especially when I'm talking about working on like strength of focus or being able to relax their focusing ability.
The blur is actually a cue to them that I've either reached or need to back off depending on what we're working on. That's their cue to stop a lot of times, you know, within the, the therapy activity. So yes, I, so I need to un them to understand what that looks like so they can do whatever's appropriate when the cue happens and we of course educate mom or you know, the adult with them on, on all the ins and outs of the exercises and, and what to do and, and how that works.
19:08 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, can can you give me an example of someone obviously anonymously like but that has come in and where they or their family has, you know, where they were when they first came in to where that, what they were able to achieve by going through just from a sort of a symptomology perspective?
19:27 Kelly Meehan:
There's a lot, you know, I I would say the most common scenario is someone who comes in for their eye exam 'cause they're struggling in school, right? That's the usually how someone lands into an eye exam.
And we've discovered, you know, there's either poor reading fluency and is, and typically I'd say the cases that we do have the most success with is, you know, poor tracking or we've, we've figured out some vergence issues or eyes are not moving appropriately when they read. So being able to work on those, and those are typically our three to four month cases I would say. And at the end of that, having a child who, from a symptom perspective, is enjoying reading again, mom will say I don't have the fight at home of getting them to read for for 15 minutes or even perform their homework because a lot of children that even avoid, let's just say math, for example, it may actually be that the, the tracking of the eyes is difficult is just as difficult in a math problem as it is with with reading.
So I hear that a lot. The symptom just symptom decrease as far as the dislike of the activity. And then from a teacher's perspective, they're much more attentive in class, they're willing to read out loud, their reading levels have increased or we're now up to to grade, grade level. So sometimes it's a longer process than that, but a lot of times in three or four months we can make a lot of progress.
20:50 Tara Hunkin:
That's amazing. So what would you recommend in terms of, so parents that are looking for this type of practitioner to work with, what are, what's the type of training background and focus like that they have to have within their practice in order to do vision therapy effectively?
21:07 Kelly Meehan:
So just asking the question, do you perform vision therapy? Because that will rule out, you know, most. And optometrists, I I, it's really funny a lot of times they either love to see pediatrics or it's not generally a large part of their practice.
And so just asking a few questions, you know, do you see pediatrics? Some will say we don't see kids under, you know, under six and a lot of family practices will see kids but they don't perform vision therapy.
So asking, do you perform vision therapy, do you do binocular vision exams and if my child should need it, you know, do you have somewhere you recommend to go to therapy? Some doctors will do those exams and refer, have colleagues that they refer to for the therapy and they go back and forth that way. So just finding out there, you know, is it, is it part of their practice. Outside of that, looking on the College of Visual Development, we'll have a list of practitioners who do this type of optometry.
22:03 Tara Hunkin:
And how accepted is it, is, is vision therapy as a whole in the medical community. So do you find that pediatricians or GPs have knowledge of this as an option for children or is it just something that still hasn't really gained that traction in the traditional medical field?
22:22 Kelly Meehan:
It's hit and miss, it's more and more as more studies and research are coming out, of course there's always traction within that.
There are, you know, even with within ophthalmology it's hit and miss. So there's a lot of now ophthalmologists who are hiring optometrists because they're seeing the benefit of having therapy both pre and post-surgery in some, in some cases if it's needed or will refer for therapy to before surgery to see if we can get to avoid the surgery. That's always the goal of course.
So it's hit, it's hit and miss, it's definitely gaining traction in general, I would say in my experience within a pediatrician's office, it's lowly accepted and that's just because there's just not enough knowledge or education. Unfortunately, optometry has not done a great job on educating on the preventative care like a dentist does. So like you go to the dentist every six months, why?
Because the dentist says that you should go and, and have your teeth cleaned and, and stay up on that preventatively. But unfortunately we have looked at vision not in that way. And you know, when you have pink eye, you land up in the land in the optometrist chair or you've gotten to the point where you need the eye doctor because you can't see or we're having struggle in school.
So my biggest encouragement is to start those eye exams as early as possible. You can have an eye exam as early, early as six months. So your child does not need to be able to respond if your child has special needs, they don't need to be able to respond within an eye exam. Your eye doctor is trained to do an exam without their feedback.
So start it early and keep up and keep up on them. I will willingly admit my own child of, my five-year-old, during COVID, is when I had stopped practicing for a period of time and I had given him an exam and so I didn't for about two years and I noticed he was turning his head when he was looking at things now that he's in preschool and pre-K and I took him in and sure enough he has a very decent prescription in, in one eye.
So I thought, oh, I'm gonna eat it here, you know, but you know, we're all, we all make mistakes but even, you know, with that said, I'm like, if my friends are never gonna let my other colleagues let me hear the end of this, but so keep up on it just because you did it two years ago and always before the start of school.
So preschool, kindergarten, you need that baseline so that should things go awry, you know, in that first, second grade you have a baseline to go back to.
24:48 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting that you say that and, and it, you know, well first of all it's like the, you know, the whole thing about the shoemaker not having shoes, we, we son, we tend to sometimes not look to close to home, but at the same time Covid did do that for everybody.
I think in terms of the regular things that we were doing or we were used to doing and because it happened well seems to take forever, but yet in the blink of eye we lost a couple years and I think everybody kind of feels that way that how did we, you know, what happened to the last two years? It's like we jumped forward, we do need to catch up on these things that, and and obviously a lot of the, the healthcare practitioners were just trying to keep up and catch up with all their patient populations as well.
So it's a great reminder to go and do all of these things that we needed to be doing on a regular basis, especially when the kids are really young and growing. Here in Canada, they recommend every year as you were suggesting for, for children until a certain age and then it's every two years, but it is something that we really need to keep up on. It's amazing how quickly that can sneak up.
And I would imagine, again, touching base with the teachers as they start school to see if they see something that you hadn't noticed because you're around them all the time and sometimes we just, sometimes we don't see these things. Sometimes we we're the best people to be asking. I would imagine that that's a, you know, if something's popping up in the school year that never popped up before, it's a time to, to reach out for help as well.
26:13 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. The teacher is a wonderful resource and so a lot of times we communicate with them directly back and forth, but you know, they're with your child all day and they're the ones who are gonna see, you know, even just talking about jumping from the board back to the paper, you're probably not gonna see that type of scenario at home, but the teacher's gonna see that. And a lot of times a teacher, a child will actually be getting in trouble for social interaction or talking, but a lot of times if they're sitting in the back of the room, they're looking at their friend's paper or talking to see, to figure out that they can't see and then they're trying to get the information from their friends. So that happens a lot sometimes that, you know, will, will come out.
They actually aren't as social as we thought they were just trying to see what was on their friend's paper and they get accused of cheating or whatnot, but they just were trying, trying to see, but the teacher is, is the best resource and they're also the best resource for progress, especially when we're dealing particularly with reading levels and, and working in that regard is they're gonna see that success much faster and easier in a lot of times than a parent will.
27:11 Tara Hunkin:
Well It's been really helpful. I think that, I mean as you know, I talked to a number of functional neurologists here and they often include vision therapy as part of an integrative approach to care as well, but it's really interesting and it's also likely more accessible to most people to go find you, you know, sometimes we can't find someone who can do all the things and it's always nice to have a specialist that that just does that one thing and to go to them and, and start working on it because it is amazing how many things that, how much improvement you can get.
Now that being said, let's sum things up in terms of, as you, I think you've already pointed out. When someone, when your child is presenting with a number of different symptoms, what should their expec expectations be as an outcome from vision therapy as a standalone therapy, and what else may they need to do beyond that?
28:02 Kelly Meehan:
So that's a great question. It's actually what made me for the moment kind of change career change careers. And that has to do so, like I'm, when we're talking strictly about eye movements, vision therapy as a standalone therapy can be very, can be very effective when we're starting to, to dig into more visual processing and the ADHD component, generally, it's a tool to use for the larger piece of the puzzle.
So of course, as we know, going back to the foundations, diving into our building blocks of nutrition and diet, I always say to to patients, you know, when you're on your third or fourth ADHD medication and it's not working, vision therapy's not, you're not gonna come in here and this is just gonna fix it.
This may be very helpful, but we've got a lot more digging to do here behind, you know, behind the scenes. So it's great. I would say, I would say maybe 50{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of the cases, it can be a stand, it can be a standalone and your doctor should be able to educate you based on your individual situation and what's going on, how effective just vision therapy will be as opposed to needing more of those tools.
29:14 Tara Hunkin:
No, and that's, that's, it's really helpful to hear that. And as you and I both know, all the things you can do to support your health while you do these types of therapies, they're gonna be even more effective because if you're supporting, for example, nutritionally with sleep and everything else, the brain's gonna respond a lot faster and more effectively to any therapy that you do as well.
So, as always, as you mentioned, we wanna focus on those foundational health things like diet and environmental factors and, and things like hydration and everything else to, to make sure that we're, we're supporting the therapy that we're, we're putting the time and energy and money into on a weekly basis, monthly basis while we're doing vision therapy.
Thank you so much again, Kelly, for joining us here. If, if anyone wants to reach out to, to Kelly, you can find her on Instagram, we're gonna put the link to her Instagram page. Is there anywhere else that people can reach out to?
30:13 Kelly Meehan:
Yeah, so just through my website, https://designedfamilywellness.com/ or even through email, [email protected] is the the easiest way to get ahold of me.
30:23 Tara Hunkin:
We'll make sure that we put those links down there too. I so appreciate you coming and speaking with us today and I'll remind everybody that Kelly also joined us to give her a talk about how her journey with her child as well with respect to specifically gluten and the impact of gluten on their, their journey. So please we'll link to that podcast as well.
So if you've enjoyed this episode, I really would like you to go back and listen to that as well. And again, I so appreciate you joining us here today and sharing your expertise with us and everyone here at My Child Will Thrive.
30:56 Kelly Meehan:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
30:58 Tara Hunkin:
Thanks for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please support us by subscribing and giving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next episode of the podcast or over at mychildwillthrive.com/ where you can find articles and the free My Child Will Thrive Toolkit too.
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