
“When I was 8 years old, we went to a small Pete Seeger concert. Pete put all the kids on stage which was mostly me, my siblings, and cousins. He turned away from the audience and sang Abi Yo Yo directly to us. I’ll never forget it – a song about an outcast.”
I’ll confess. I had never heard of Abi Yo Yo, but when this advocate speaks to me, I listen very carefully. So I YouTubed Abi Yo Yo (we have such wonderful site verbs these days), and its tale of courage and resourcefulness speaks for itself.
There is a palpable feel in the air now of individuals who are standing on the shoulders of advocates such as Marjie Thompson, who spearheaded PAVE: Parents Active in Vision Education. As the name implies, they are activists in the finest tradition. But why is activism needed in the first place? As the person who emailed me this morning observed, it requires courage to publicly challenge the dogma of a powerful, self-serving establishment. There is now an impressive cadre of bloggers spearheading advocacy for vision therapy in the mold of Marjie Thompson and Sue Barry, ranging from “Strabby” to “Jillian’s Story” to “Cavin Bounce” to “Living With Diplopia” to “Vision Therapy Parents Unite”, just to name a few.


As we reviewed my findings, I asked mom if the pediatric ophthalmologist did anything like the tests we did through the stereoscope objectively documenting partial suppression of the left eye. Or the infrared sensor eye movement recordings we did objectively documenting eye movement patterns while reading. “No”, she replied. “The only test he did that was similar to yours was the one where we had the 3D glasses on and lshe ooked at which dots were raised in the booklet.” And? What did he find? “That she could see what she needed to see; only that it took her a lot longer to figure out the answers”. I asked her what the pediatric ophthalmologist suggested they do, and she said: “Only that we get her a tutor and spend more time and energy on educational support rather than vision therapy. But we’ve done that already, and she’s still struggling.”
Mom’s mother related that she was an educator before she became an attorney. She knew something was wrong because her granddaughter had an easier time trying to read when the print was enlarged despite having normal acuity. For children of good intellect, who grasp things well by ear, it isn’t good enough getting to the finish line crawling on your hands and knees due to inadequate visual efficiency or processing. Vision advocacy in the mold of Pete Seeger is changing all that. On his way out, mom’s dad said to me: “And by the way, the pediatric ophthalmologist isn’t an unreasonable guy. He said he was very interested in the outcome of our granddaughter’s vision therapy.” I asked the family if there were any other questions I could answer for them. “Yes”, mom replied. “When can we begin?”