ADHD or an infrequently tested eye disorder?

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Nearly everyone has heard of ADHD or ADD. You might even personally know someone affected by it. However, there is also an eye disorder, often completely treatable with no medication needed that often masquerades itself as ADHD. Most optometrists don't test for this disorder and unless you test specifically for it, your child may have 20/20 vision, but still suffer from it. The disorder is called Convergence Insufficiency or CI. CI is a vision tracking disorder, where the left eye and the right eye fail to work together appropriately. It causes letters to bounce around, making text blurry and difficult to read. Kids have issues with looking back and forth between the board and their notes, reading for long periods of time and they suffer eye strain. Often, as in the case of my child, they look off into the distance seemingly staring off into space, to rest their eyes. If your child is like mine, they were labeled. I even had a teacher tell me "something is wrong with your child, he just stares off into space." Even after I tried to explain, she still could NOT understand. Although I had to pay for the CI treatment out of my pocket while the insurance happily would pay for ADHD medication, I know I did the right thing. My child was in drum practice yesterday and I watched I'm track the music without an issue. I couldn't help but think inside myself "Thank you Dr. Newton" for all your help! My youngest child has an appointment in 2 weeks to make sure he doesn't also suffer from CI. They say it can be detected and treated in children as young as 3. I'd rather not wait until my youngest is in 4th grade and try to catch him up on 4 years of academic visual stimuli! Have you ever heard of CI????? (if you're interested in our story and some of the research I've done you can read our full story at: