Because there is often overlap between functional vision problems and deficits in motor skills. When a child hits a barrier in therapy — handwriting that will not improve, near work they avoid, coordination that lags behind everything else — an undiagnosed vision problem is one of the things worth ruling out.
Clumsy, or depth perception?
Math mistakes that aren’t math
Copying from the board
Your therapist may not have named the vision problem — that is what the evaluation is for — but referrals from occupational therapists usually come down to one of these three.
Amblyopia or Strabismus
An eye that turns in, out, up or down — or one eye the brain has learned to ignore — changes how a child judges distance and depth. That shows up in the tasks an OT works on every week: catching a ball, pouring, stacking, stepping off a curb, staying inside the lines. Amblyopia and strabismus are treatable well beyond early childhood.
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Eye Teaming, Eye Focusing or Eye Tracking Deficits
A child can pass a 20/20 screening and still have eyes that will not team, focus or track together. Print blurs or doubles, the place on the page is lost, and near work becomes exhausting. This is also where handwriting lives: letter size, spacing and staying on the line depend on the eyes guiding the hand accurately.
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Visual Processing Deficits
Taking in visual information is one job; making sense of it is another. Visual perceptual skills let a child tell b from d, find a shoe in a full closet, copy from the board, remember what a word looks like and organize work on a page. When those skills lag, schoolwork takes far more effort than it should.
View MoreWe work closely with occupational, physical and speech therapists to provide complete, comprehensive care. Vision is not a separate system that switches on for the eye chart — it guides posture, balance, reach, grasp and every fine-motor task your therapist is building. So when a child plateaus, the question is rarely "vision or motor skills". It is usually how much of the barrier is visual.
If there are underlying visual skill deficits, we can work together to help your child reach their potential. A developmental vision evaluation tells everyone on the team what the eyes are actually able to do, so the therapy your child is already doing can be aimed at the right target — and so nobody spends months drilling a skill that a visual deficit is quietly blocking.
Vision therapy and occupational therapy are not the same thing, and one does not replace the other. If you are trying to sort out which is which, start with Vision Therapy vs Occupational Therapy.
The reason for the referral matters — a plateau in handwriting, difficulty with bilateral tasks, an eye that drifts, avoidance of near work, poor visual attention. Your OT's observations, plus the interactive symptom survey, give us the history before we start testing.
This goes well beyond the eye chart. We measure how the eyes team, track and focus, how accurately they aim at near, depth perception, visual-motor integration and visual perceptual skills, alongside eye health and refraction. See what an evaluation involves.
Dr. Murray reviews the findings with you and explains, in plain language, whether a functional vision problem is part of what your therapist is seeing. When it is, the plan may include lenses or prism and in-office vision therapy — coordinated with the therapy your child is already doing.
Not sure this is the right starting point? Start here or browse every problem we solve.
The two overlap, but they are not the same. What each one addresses, and when a child may benefit from both.
The seven visual perceptual skills, how they work together, and how deficits affect schoolwork, sports and daily activities.
The role of visual-spatial skills in letter formation, spacing and alignment — and why more practice alone may not fix it.
How reflexes that should fade in infancy keep interfering with eye movement, posture and coordination.
What depth perception is, how it develops, and which vision conditions get in its way.
Every article on how vision guides movement, handwriting and coordination.
If you notice a patient hit a barrier in their progress and think it may be due to an undiagnosed visual problem, please send them to us for a complete developmental evaluation. We welcome referrals from occupational, physical and speech therapists across Coconut Creek, Boynton Beach, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach — and we are glad to talk through a case before you refer.
Looking for a therapist for one of your own patients? See our referral network.
The next step is a developmental vision evaluation — a measured look at how your child's eyes team, track, focus and make sense of what they see. Schedule at our Boynton Beach and Boca Raton offices.