My 8 y/o son (diagnosed with ADHD in the spring/summer, doing well on Concerta) just had an OT evaluation at his school to see if he qualified for help based on his terrible handwriting. He is otherwise doing well in school and loves to read.

I just got the report today and was very surprised to see he had lots of difficulty with his functional vision. From the report:

A gross observation was made of the ability to visually track a moving object. He found this task to be very stressful. He demonstrated excessive blinking during tracking and rubbed his eyes vigorously when the task was over. He had difficulty maintaining eye contact with the object. He would begin to follow but then would look away and then relocate the object. He demonstrated what appeared to be appropriate convergence (bringing the eyes toward the nose) and divergence (bringing the eyes back to neutral). Issues noted can be indicative of functional vision skill difficulties. Functional vision is important for tasks such as reading, writing and copying such as from the white board. The parents may wish to pursue an evaluation by a vision specialist such as a developmental optometrist to determine needs and treatment.


I have a call in to the pediatrician for a referral. I don't know much about 'functional vision' and am wondering how this relates to his ADHD and developmental issues? Anybody know much about this? TIA (I'm off to search google...)

I had my son examined by a developmental optometrist just to rule those issues out. This was last year right after ds started kindergarten--we didn't have an ADHD dx at the time but my understanding was that sometimes ADHD kids have vision issues as well. At that time we went because his handwriting is poor and he struggled with some speech issues so I was concerned about dyslexia and dsygraphia.

The exam took a little bit longer than a regular exam and the dr. checked tracking, convergence and binocularity in addition to acuity. Turns out his vision is fine--his handwriting still stinks though. I can't tell you what type of therapy would have been recommended if there was a problem.

I found the optomitrist through this website:
http://www.covd.org/

I just found a very interesting doctor thru that website right in my town! Thank you!