Academy of Vision Development, PLLC

09/05/2026

What does Neuro-Visual Rehabilitation, otherwise known as Vision Therapy, actually look like?

We LOVE this question, and it is different for each patient we see! There are no cookie cutter solutions.

At Academy of Vision Development, you will find yourself on a balance board, tracking a moving target, catching a ball, reacting to blaze pods, swinging or rotating on a swing, following targeted eye movements, or challenging your brain with dynamic eye-hand coordination exercises.

Why? Because your eyes aren’t an isolated system. Vision Therapy is more accurately named Neuro-Visual Rehabilitation when you take a whole body approach, because we are training the brain and eyes to work together and integrate that with other neurological systems of the body.
We use vision while we move through space, driving too!
We use vision while we read and learn.
We use vision while we play sports or instruments.
We use vision while we write.

We take a whole-body, integrated approach to Neuro-Visual Development and Rehabilitation. Our goal isn't to make someone read a smaller line on a chart—it's to help them use their vision effortlessly to live, work, and thrive.

Ready to see what your visual system can truly achieve?

616-485-9804

09/04/2026

Vision is part of athletic performance as well as work and school. Vision Therapy can help both!!

Think about what an athlete must do in a fraction of a second. Imagine soccer, but this applies to all sports:

See the ball.

Locate it.

Judge its speed.

Know where teammates are.

Know where opponents are.

Move the body into the correct position.

React.

And do it again.

That requires much more than 20/20 eyesight.

Visual skills such as tracking, peripheral awareness, depth perception, spatial awareness, eye-hand coordination, and reaction time can all contribute to how efficiently an athlete interacts with the environment. It also determines the effectiveness of learning in the classroom.

The eyes don’t play the sport by themselves. The brain and body have to work with them.

That’s why we take an integrated approach to visual development at Academy of Vision Development.

616-485-9804

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

Myth Post!
“They will just grow out of it.”

We have heard this one too many times. What advantage is there to “wait and see”? None.

Children do NOT mature out of visual dysfunction. They may maladapt and embed bad visual behaviors or just continue to struggle, especially in the classroom. Visualization skills require good binocular vision and are learned and developed through consistently normal use of the two eyes together.

If a child (or adult) is struggling with tracking, focusing, eye teaming, visual processing, spatial awareness, or visual-motor integration, simply getting older doesn’t teach the visual system to work more efficiently. It can do the opposite. IT EMBEDS THE BAD BEHAVIORS!! It often gets worse, not better, with time.

If your child is struggling, they may have a visual dysfunction that is not found in a routine eye exam, give us a call so we can get them the help they need to succeed!

616-485-9804

09/01/2026

Here is another issue for parents and educators to look out for…

Have you ever noticed a child (or maybe yourself) resting their elbow on the table and covering an eye? No? I bet you’ve seen a child who has long hair and lets the hair cover one eye when reading, writing, or doing close work.

As vision therapists, we know that can be a sign that both eyes have a difficult time working together.

Think about it: if seeing with both eyes is comfortable and efficient, why would a child consistently choose to cover one?

Children don’t just come out and say, “My vision is uncomfortable.”
They simply find a way to make the task easier. They don’t know what “good” should be! That can lead to MANY issues if left unresolved in the future.

📞 Academy of Vision Development
616-485-9804

08/31/2026

Your child can see 20/20 but have visual skills that make learning so much more difficult than it should be. 20/20 measures clarity (do they need glasses?), but there is a whole world of other skills underneath it that impact how a child functions, reads, learns, and moves.

08/30/2026

Parents have been asking for a post like this! This is worth sharing to your friends and family!

10 Things parents notice before they realize vision may be an issue.

Does your child:

1. Lose their place while reading?
2. Avoid reading or become unusually tired while reading?
3. Skip words or lines?
4. Have difficulty copying from the board?
5. Struggle with handwriting or spacing?
6. Have difficulty catching, hitting, or tracking a ball?
7. Seem to understand something verbally but struggle when they have to read or write it down.
8. Misbehaving in the classroom or say “I don’t like school”.
9. Hyper-focus on electronics, but won’t read a book.
10. Difficulty concentrating attention, especially on near work.

BONUS: Struggles to work academically up to their intellect. You know they are smart, but they don’t do as well in school.

None of these automatically means a child needs vision therapy.

But when several of these occur together, it may be worth asking:

“How well is the visual system actually working?”

The missing piece may not be more effort, it’s better visual function.

Call today to check binocular vision. It's much more thorough than a routine eye exam and could change your life!
616-485-9804

08/29/2026

"My daughter struggles to read, but her eye exam showed she can see 20/20."

Parents are very surprised by this. A normal eye exam is not the same as a binocular vision exam, whose purpose is to determine if the 2 eyes are working together effectively and efficiently.

A standard eye exam primarily tells how clearly a person can see. But vision is much more than clarity.

Vision also involves:

• Tracking across a page
• Moving the eyes efficiently
• Focusing and changing focus
• Using both eyes together
• Visual processing
• Knowing where the body is in space
• Coordinating vision with movement

So when a child says, “I hate reading,” or a teacher says, “She knows the material but struggles to get it on paper,” there may be more to investigate.

Clear vision alone doesn’t make a good reader.

At Academy of Vision Development, we look at how the visual system is functioning—not just how clearly the child can see.

Could vision be part of the puzzle? It is worth a call to find out!!

616-485-9804

07/29/2026

Vision therapy isn’t just for kids—adults can see incredible results, too.

One of the biggest misconceptions we hear in the office is that vision therapy is only for children who struggle in school. The truth is, we work with adults every day who have been dealing with symptoms for years.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

If reading makes you tired (especially at night), working on a computer gives you headaches, you experience dizziness, double vision, visual snow, or you just know something doesn’t feel right, it may be time to have your binocular vision evaluated.

We’ve seen people spend years looking for answers, only to discover the problem was how their eyes and brain were not working together.

If this sounds like you, we’d love to help!

📞 Academy of Vision Development
616-485-9804

07/28/2026

Virtual reality gets a lot of hype in vision therapy right now, and for good reason—it’s an amazing tool. But jumping straight into a VR headset without doing the groundwork is like trying to build a house starting with the roof.

Before we ever put a VR headset on a patient, we start with the absolute basics: balance, vestibular integration, gross motor control, and eye tracking. If the underlying visual and physical systems aren't communicating well, adding a 3D virtual environment too early just creates overload instead of progress and can further embed poor visual behaviors.

Once those foundational skills are solid, that’s when VR shines. It lets us push depth perception, eye teaming, reaction time, and visual processing in dynamic, 3D space in a way that feels like a game to kids (and plenty of adults).

Technology in our office isn't a shortcut or a shiny marketing trick—it’s a precise tool we use at the exact right moment in the therapy process.

If you’re wondering whether vision therapy might be the missing piece for you or your child, give us a call at 616-485-9804. We'd love to chat through where to start.