Crash Course on Vision with Dr. Jesse Willingham
Most people think vision is simply about seeing 20/20 or needing glasses—but there’s so much more to it!
In this quick crash course, Dr. Jesse explains how vision involves much more than clear eyesight and how it can impact reading, learning, attention, sports, and everyday life.
Whether you’re coming in for an initial evaluation or simply want to better understand what you or a loved one may be experiencing, this video will help you become a mini-expert on vision before your visit.
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Did you know that there’s one, two, actually over a dozen vision skills that are important for day-to-day functioning?
Even people who see better than 20/20 can have a vision problem.
Welcome to Brighter Outlook Vision.
In this video, you’re going to be learning:
- Why sometimes a routine eye exam is not enough
- Everything that we’re going to be looking at during your initial evaluation with us
- How vision therapy and developmental optometry can help you with your problems
My wife, Abbigail, and I built Brighter Outlook Vision to help children who are struggling with reading and learning and attention problems.
Along the way, we’ve also helped:
👀 children and adults who struggle with crossed and lazy eyes
😵💫 people who have dizziness and motion sensitivity
👯♀️ people who see double vision
🧠 and those who struggle after having suffered a concussion or a traumatic brain injury
The great news is there’s a solution and our initial evaluation points the way.
The initial evaluation at our office lasts about 90 minutes.
In that time, we’ll go in depth to see not just how clearly you see, but how your visual system functions.
We’ll ask you lots of questions, go through your history, and put your eyes and vision through a few different exercises to see what you’re good at and what’s holding you back. By the end of it, most patients will have a prescription for glasses if they need it. But mostly, we’ll have a game plan and what we can do to help your vision function more efficiently, more accurately, more comfortably.
After the evaluation, we’ll spend even more time together in a conference to review this treatment plan. So you can become a mini expert in vision and especially your own vision or your child’s vision to better understand how we’re going to move forward to help you.
Our visual system was used for thousands of years to help with exploration and movement and looking off into the distance.
The majority of our time was spent hunting and gathering and in farming. We did only brief periods of near work.
But 200 years ago, everything changed.
We went from occasionally doing small crafts up close to compulsory education where suddenly we’re spending most of our time looking right here today.
Most of us spend a lot of our time looking at things that are 2 feet away or less. Things like…
💻 computers
📱 phones
📖 books and
📝 homework.
Our eyes can absolutely do this up close near work, but they were designed to mostly look further away – 2, 8, 10 feet.
I’d like to invite you to try something with me.
Take a pen or a pencil or even just your thumb. Hold it out in front of you. Now, begin to move it closer and closer to your eyes. Keep coming. Really work. Focus your eyes on it all the way up to the very end. And hold that for a second.
Could you feel that? For most people, that’s pretty uncomfortable. For some of you, it was already uncomfortable out here.
Now, imagine if even when you’re just working on a computer, reading a book, doing your homework, you always feel that. For children with conditions like convergence insufficiency, they have to put in so much effort to bring those eyes together, even just on a word. They’re really struggling. They keep it together word to word, and then they have to do that all the way to the next line.
That’s where we start to see issues like losing our place, reading but not remembering it or understanding it because you were working so hard just to see it, repeating lines or skipping the lines, and really just avoiding reading because we all avoid things that don’t feel good.
Our brain is constantly working to keep our eyes tracking, focusing, teaming together, and thinking about what we’re seeing. Problems in even just one of these areas can start to lead to symptoms.
Our brains are amazing. But when vision becomes difficult, our brains try to adapt. However, these adaptations are not always helpful.
There are three main ways we see people adapt to visual stress.
Response number one, kids struggle.
They just push through it. These are children who you think are really bright. We know are really bright, but they spend hours doing homework. They struggle to get assignments done on time. They may struggle to sit still for a long time. That’s because what we’re asking them to do is physically uncomfortable for them. They’re carrying an extra load that many of us are not.
Response number two, the eyes physically change.
Some children become nearsighted, meaning the eye physically grows bigger to reduce the stress of seeing up close, but then we get blurry vision far away. Sometimes the eyes become uncoordinated, struggling now to cross in or crossing in too much as a response to try to anticipate that extra load of near work leading to discomfort, sometimes even visibly crossed or lazy eyes.
The final option is to just avoid it altogether.
Just like when we touch a hot stove, we learn to avoid things that aren’t good or comfortable. Oftentimes people will show great aptitude in sports, building, drawing, things that don’t require the same level of visual stress, but we learn to run away from homework, from reading. That’s whenever these things become a real battle to get done. These children aren’t lazy. They’ve just learned to not hurt themselves.
So, what is functional vision? Most of your eye exams have aimed to answer a few questions. Can you see clearly? Do you need glasses to see more clearly? Are your eyes healthy? But we’re aiming to answer the next question. How well do your eyes and brain work together?
Our evaluations sometimes look at over a dozen different visual skills and how they work together. But here are the big three that we call visual efficiency skills.
Number 1: Eye Tracking
Do your eyes look efficiently and quickly and smoothly from place to place to follow that line of text or to follow that ball flying through the air?
Number 2: Eye Focusing
Can you clearly and quickly adjust your focus from far away to up close to identify what you’re looking at and maintain that?
Number 3: Eye Teaming
Can your brain point your two eyes to the same place? And do you know how you got there? Do you know where you’re looking? Do you know how far away it is? And can you quickly and efficiently change that and maintain it?
The exciting part is this: all of these visual skills that we’re talking about and many more can be trained.
The brain has this thing called neuroplasticity. You’ve probably heard it. It’s a buzz word these days, but it’s real. When we learn something and really learn it, the brain can physically change for good.
Just like after an injury, physical therapy can retrain movement that you’ve lost. Vision therapy retrains the visual system to work better, more efficiently, and more comfortably.
But vision therapy isn’t just eye exercises. It’s a personalized program designed specifically for your visual system.
Each activity builds on the previous one, helping your vision become more coordinated, more efficient, and more comfortable.
The goal isn’t just better eyesight. It’s…
- easier reading
- better attention
- less fatigue
- and greater confidence and performance in a visual system that works automatically instead of constantly struggling.
Just like we learn to talk and to walk, we learn to see. And just like you can do things like speech therapy to learn to speak more clearly and physical therapy to walk safely, vision therapy can help you learn to see in a better way.
Every patient who walks through our doors is unique. We can’t wait to sit down and listen to find out how we can help you with your vision. Just like all of the other patients who’ve trusted us.
It’s been great talking to you!
If you’ve already scheduled your initial evaluation with us, thanks. We look forward to meeting you and going on this journey with you toward better vision.
If you haven’t scheduled your evaluation yet, we’d love to see you. Give us a call at 843-203-0200 and we can see if your vision is potentially holding you back. We look forward to seeing you!
