testimonials
From mother of 10-year old
In order for one to understand how grateful I am to have found the solution to my son's problem, I have to tell the entire story. My son had been having serious issues with skipping words when writing and spelling. The teachers at his school stated that he may have dysgraphia. They weren't particularly concerned in correcting it at the moment, since he was in 3rd grade, and writing was not going to be significant on the 3rd grade STAAR test.
With a lot of advocating, the school brought someone in to help him write when the class had writing exercises. Unfortunately, he didn't qualify for a 504/IEP. I was afraid that the 'helper' who was working with him was doing most of the work for him because he was unable to reproduce the work that he was doing at school with the helper at home.
I took my son to a writing tutor, two OT's, and had a consultation with a psychiatric neurologist (charging $3000 for a diagnosis only, no therapy only a referral to a therapist and then more money). The writing tutor and the OT just flat out could not help him. In fact, one OT just gave up. At our last visit, she gave me some exercises to do with him and we were left alone to figure out the problem.
For the beginning of 4th grade, I decided to put him in a private school with smaller classroom sizes (15 students). The teacher worked closely with me regarding my son's writing issues. One day she called me and said that she thought something was wrong with his vision because whenever he read he tilted his head a little bit too much. I expressed this to the second OT and she said that witnessed the same thing. She advised me to take him to vision therapy.
I researched and found Dr. Fong in Sugar Land. His staff was amazing and gave me a briefing of what to expect. Dr. Fong took him as a patient and did testing. He found that my son had deficiencies in his spatial ability. He also discussed with me that when my child was reading, the words appeared as if they are jumping around the page. There were a few other deficiencies as well. I decided to go with Dr. Fong after looking into and trying many avenues.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. This was a process and in the beginning and even toward the middle I was wondering if this was going to work. I trusted the process and we kept pushing. Eventually, I saw his spelling improve. Approximately 3-4 months into treatment, his teacher called me and said that he was writing fluently with no hesitation.
Here are a couple of things to note...my son, although he can write manually, he does better with the keyboard. The teacher allows him to bring his keyboard to class. As far as focus, the school has allowed him to wear headphones with music to block out distractions when he has to do assignments in class. He's always been bright and had good grades. Now, I can see him becoming more independent since vision therapy with Dr. Fong.
I am forever grateful to Dr. Fong and his amazing staff!
Dr. Lori Lumpkin-Jones
From grandmother of 7-year old
After his diagnosis, a friend recommended we supplement his tutoring with treatment from Dr. Fong. Dr. Fong's office treatments were twice weekly eye exercises. Honestly, we are not sure how the exercises work, but the improvement cannot be characterized as anything less than remarkable. First, and very importantly, Dr. Fong established a great rapport with our grandson. He was always happy to come to the office and do the work with the Dr. Besides that we saw very rapid improvement in his ability to concentrate and quickly his word comprehension improved. His attitude became more mature, his vocabulary improved and, very importantly, his self-esteem and confidence improved as well.
We do not know how well this works for all children, but we know this treatment worked very well for our grandson and would encourage anyone with a child suffering from this disorder to consider having Dr. Fong see if he can help. He has helped us more than we had thought possible.
Regards,
Barbara L. Cappello
From mother of 7-year old
I want to thank you for helping my daughter through vision therapy. When we first came to you, she was struggling with reading in first grade. After the first fourteen hours of therapy, there was a very noticeable improvement in her reading ability. As a result, she reached the required reading level to pass first grade! The additional fourteen hours of therapy to focus on phonemes has been very beneficial too. This was great enrichment during the summer months to strengthen her ability to sound out new words and blend letters together to make words. I am really excited about my daughter entering second grade with all of the new skills that she has, which will make reading a lot easier than it has been for the past two years.
Getting my daughter to this point has been quite a journey. I am really grateful that we met you, and you were able to work with my daughter. Your demeanor with both children and parents is great! Your enthusiasm was very encouraging when the therapy became difficult for my daughter. Also, the way that you explained the therapy and the results of the evaluations made it very easy for me to understand what was happening. I wish you continued success in your practice.
Sincerely,
Robbyn M. Johnson
From mother of 8-year old
"My daughter is in third grade. She has always been a
good reader but would always refuse to read. We could not keep up on her
reading assignments at school. I read some symptoms of vision problems in
children and asked my daughter if she had any of them. She said yes, especially
headaches. I also noticed that she would turn her head sideways to look at
things like the t.v. We went to Dr. Fong and got
her special glasses with a prism while she was doing vision therapy. Her
headaches have stopped and she now reads willingly. She also can now read
without the glasses. Don't hesitate to get your child tested and to ask them
questions if they refuse to read, even though they can. My daughter enjoyed
seeing Dr. Fong for her vision therapy appointments. I am so happy that she had
vision therapy with Dr. Fong! It has made a huge difference."
Tamara A.
From mother of 4-year old
While we started looking into different types of therapy for the issues we have encountered, we found Dr. Fong's website, which is a brand new approach compare to other conventional therapies which were recommended by JY's doctor. After the detailed assessment was performed by Dr. Edward Fong, we were informed that JY had very poor visual acquisition skills, which also caused his brain not able to properly process what he was seeing, and of course not able to act and perform daily tasks in a coordinated manner. We then decided to have 2-hours-per-week intensive therapy session with Dr. Fong, and we booked early morning sessions (thanks to Dr. Fong's time commitment for these early sessions), which also allowed him to attend the sessions with a more energetic and focused mind.
Before the therapy, he was never able to fold any paper or sheet in half on his hand, but just grabbed and grasped the entire sheet and made wrinkled or break the whole sheet with his fingers. After the first couple sessions, I clearly remember seeing the progress on JY. During one of our dinner after the first couple sessions, he was already able to put some rice to the small seaweed sheets, and then fold the seaweed sheets nicely into half without breaking or making big messes from doing it. Though this sounds simple to most of the people, this was one of the skills that he could not possibly perform in such a short timeframe with the issues he was having at the time. Also, while I worked with him at home, I gradually notice the progresses he started to making regarding holding pencils stably to draw happy faces, which composed of circles and arcs, etc... I was also very impressed about his persistence and patience in completing tasks on his writing and drawing, not like before when he got frustrated easily. I was very glad to see his gradual progresses in steadily holding his pencil, to be able to complete more drawings, and even move on to the writing of numbers and alphabets. We also notice significant improvements on his language and communication skills, which allowed him to gain confidence overall. Other progresses include his ability to play catch and enjoy sports activities with us or at his school.
Dr. Edward Fong has been very patient and skillful when engaging JY to participate in the therapy sessions. Though we did not know the detailed procedures that Dr. Fong has performed on JY, we know JY was able to always attend the sessions happily and willingly, and we clearly see and feel his progresses and growth. We are glad to be informed that he is now "graduated" after receiving therapy session from Dr. Fong for almost one year. We are very glad that we have made the right choice to make therapy to be part of JY's therapy programs during his most crucial development stage.
Evelina
From mother of 5-year old
I clearly remember the day we met Dr. Fong for Kendrick's evaluation. I always had anxiety during evaluations because you want your child to do better than expected. As Dr. Fong was working with Kendrick, I proceeded to help with some of the answers. I would either tell him that Kendrick didn't understand a question or that he does this at home. Dr. Fong politely explained that I was not helping "smile", that Kendrick probably understands what he was saying but just does not know how to send the information to his brain. What an eye opener for me!!!!! At that point, I began to just sit back and observe.
We began our weekly sessions, and after the first couple of months, the transformation began. We noticed that Kendrick's attention span was starting to increase. At Dr. Fong's recommendation, we changed Kendrick's frames to sports goggles to keep him focused on what was directly in front of him, eliminating the stemming and looking over the top of his glasses. I bought sports goggles in various colors because I knew that this would be a long process or at least this is what I thought.
After a year and a half of constant therapy, we slowly started eliminating the other therapy sessions as we continued with therapy. I am so proud and happy to say that in July 2009, it will be one year since our last session and as of May 2009, Kendrick has completed Kindergarten at a local public school with no aide. He still continues his speech sessions at school but he has successfully passed all tests for 1st Grade. He is also taking a Chinese language class along with playing basketball and soccer. He is just a social butterfly and very active in sports. Also, Kendrick NO longer wears his sports goggles. His focus and concentration is much better and he actually told us one day that he wanted to wear his other glasses and it is now 5 months later and he continues to wear his regular glasses on a daily basis.
We understand that we must work with Kendrick to help him continue to improve. Dr. Fong has given us a life that is promising and filled with fun instead of frustration. THANK YOU, Dr. Fong, we love you.
Kym
From mother of 5-year old
Her pediatrician felt that my daughter might have some visual problems that the traditional diagnostician could not measure and the doctor recommended Dr. Fong. After the first visit with Dr. Fong, we were told that there were visual problems with focusing, eye teaming, fine eye movements, and etc... He recommended the eye therapy to help give her some tools in dealing with these issues. Within a few months of attending the eye therapy twice a week, the headaches were gone and she raised her grades enough to pass first grade. We continued therapy twice a week over the summer and into second grade. We also added some additional tutoring during the summer. This has made such a difference. The second grade teachers were unaware that my daughter even had visual problems until we told them. On her first report card of second grade, my daughter made all A's except for reading in which she made a B...a far cry from the F's of the year before. Finally her IQ and grades matched. My husband and I would recommend the eye therapy to anyone with similar problems. My daughter's self-esteem has risen, she has more confidence in school, the headaches are gone, and her grades are certainly improved.
Kim R.