Question: I can’t remember if NDM® helps with vision issues related to dyslexia or not. Doing some reading about possible dyslexia treatments and before we travel that new and potentially expensive road, wanted to check in and see if this is an area that the NDM will be helping.
Thanks, Bette! F
Hello F and thanks for this question.
Vision matures as the child goes through the Developmental Sequence. NeuroDevelopmental Movement® (NDM®) traces the developmental sequence. We are all born with very immature vision. In the first couple of months, the visual focal point is the distance of a nursing mother’s eyes, and the baby uses that visual connection, specifically observing the openness of the mother’s pupils, to determine their own mood state.When they are 2.5 – 7 months old, on average, being on their tummies on the floor and developing that into a good crawl will support the muscles that pull the eyes outward, which corrects a potential ‘crossed eye’. Additionally, the baby who is crawling will develop horizontal eye tracking. Any skips in horizontal eye tracking can cause the child to skip words or letters, or engage at the beginning of a line of words, then lose their place towards the end of the line. Or conversely, they may read with difficulty through the first half of the line of words, then finally engage in the second half of the line. It all depends on the pattern of skipping in horizontal tracking. The best way to stabilize horizontal tracking is through crawling and related patterns.
When the child is 7 – 12 months old, creeping on hands and knees will trigger the nerves that go to the muscles that pull the line IN, so they are not ‘wall-eyed’ or have a ‘divergence’. This allows the child to use both eyes to look at the same thing at the same time. If they do not have this function developed they may see the words jumping or wiggling on the page, or even see the words appear to wiggle OFF the page.
Additionally, creeping helps the child develop good vertical tracking, so they can jump down to the next line as they read down a page. The best way to stabilize vertical tracking and get good convergence is through hands and knees creeping and related patterns.Then there is the corpus callosum issue. A child who has not done creeping may not have effective communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, and may have issues such as ‘high fluency/low comprehension’, or unable to put their thoughts into words on a page.The Developmental Sequence is the key to having a brain that reads easily with comprehension. Many of my clients, including two this summer, have gone from reluctant readers to avid readers. Three in the past few months have described the way that the words no longer move on the page and they didn’t even know the words appeared to move until they no longer did it.
Hope this helps!
Bette Lamont