Get Your Kid a Globe

I can’t imagine a home without a globe! I grew up with a big, freestanding, lighted one which fascinated me. My son’s is not that fancy but answers the need remarkably well. It sits on his desk and is referred to almost daily. Best of all it was MADE IN THE USA! You can get yours from Replogle. They have a plant in Chicago and they have all kinds of globes in all price ranges. Mine was promptly delivered and nicely boxed. Go get one!

P.S. The folks at Replogle have no clue who I am, I just like them.

Orthoptics

This is a controversial subject. Orthoptics are eye exercises designed to improve eye muscle coordination and depth perception. My child’s opthalmologist told us it was nonsense and could not hurt but was unneccesary. WRONG!

At age 8 my son was finally able to tell me, by drawing what he saw, that he was seeing double! No wonder he could not read! I felt so terrible for him!

I then noticed something. When he was trying to read he appeared to be having muscle spasms in his eyes. One or both eyes would suddenly lose focus and “jitter” around for a few seconds.

I took him to our well-respected opthalmologist who brushed off my concerns. An aide at the public school he attended suggested that I contact a local optometrist who provides orthoptics. This optometrist immediately told me my son needed +1 reading glasses, which would need to be prescription because child-size drugstore reading glasses do not come in child sizes. He also recommended a program of eye exercises. It would be conducted in his office 3 days a week for a few months after school and the other days by me at home. This program cost $1200 and was not covered by our insurance, *sigh*. We crossed our fingers and signed up. Here is what insurance says about it -

“xxxx company” does not cover vision therapy or orthoptics, because they are considered experimental, investigational or unproven for the management of visual disorders and learning disabilities.

Well, for us it was an “experiment” well worth taking. It worked like a charm! The reading glasses helped my son immediately and I began to see results from the orthoptics within 3 weeks. His depth perception improved dramatically and the eye muscle spasms gradually decreased. He stopped seeing double. It was well worth the total $1400 investment.

Here is more information on orthoptics, or vision therapy.

I’d like to add my observation that there is enormous pressure on schools to perform well, and to get students with learning disabilities up to “grade level”. ORTHOPTICS CAN HELP AND SHOULD BE COVERED BY INSURANCE OR PAID FOR BY A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM FUNDED BY OUR TAXES. This is the kind of thing for which I do not mind paying taxes. Not one little bit. It hurts me to think that many families cannot come up with an extra $1400 to help their child with this one critical thing. How much does it cost for an insurance company to cover a few years of Viagra for a middle-aged man vs one round of vision therapy for a child in need? It’s a disgrace that we cannot help children by providing orthoptics.