S3 Episode 22: Your Child Can See. But Can They Cope? Why Vision may be the Missing Piece behind Attention, Behaviour and School Struggles with Dr Bryce Appelbaum

Welcome to My Mighty Quinn

In this powerful episode, I’m joined by Dr Bryce Appelbaum — neuro-optometrist, founder of My Vision First, and creator of ScreenFit Vision Foundations.

Dr Bryce’s work sits at the intersection of the eyes, brain, body and nervous system — helping families understand why a child may pass a standard eye test, yet still struggle with reading, learning, attention, coordination, behaviour and confidence.

Together, we explore a concept that may change the way parents understand their child’s struggles:

Eyesight is not the same as vision.

A child may be able to see clearly, read the letters on the chart, and be told their eyesight is “fine” — while still struggling to track across a page, coordinate both eyes, shift focus from the board to their book, process visual information, or integrate vision with balance, posture and movement.

This conversation takes us beyond 20/20 eyesight and into the hidden world of functional vision — the eye-brain-body connection that underpins so much of how a child learns, moves, attends, regulates and feels safe in the world.

It is both confronting and deeply hopeful, because when vision is understood as a learned, developmental and trainable brain-body skill, we begin to see that many children are not lazy, difficult or simply “not trying.”

They may be working far harder than anyone realises.

Key takeaways

• Why passing a routine eye test does not mean a child’s visual system is working efficiently
• The crucial difference between eyesight and functional vision
• How hidden vision difficulties can affect reading, writing, copying, attention and classroom stamina
• Why visual stress may show up as behaviour, avoidance, frustration, fatigue or dysregulation
• The connection between vision, balance, posture, movement and primitive reflexes
• Why some children labelled with ADHD, dyslexia or poor motivation may have an overlooked visual processing difficulty
• How screens, reduced movement and lack of outdoor time are affecting visual development
• Why crawling, early movement and developmental sequencing matter for the eye-brain-body connection
• How functional vision challenges can impact confidence, sport, coordination and social engagement
• Why the right visual exercises and training can help children build stronger, more efficient visual skills

This episode is about asking a different question.

Not simply can my child see?

But is their visual system helping them learn, move, focus and regulate?

Because a child may have perfect eyesight and still be visually overwhelmed.

And when we understand the difference between eyesight and vision, we uncover a hidden piece of the developmental puzzle — one that may be sitting behind many of the struggles parents are seeing every day.

Resources

Free Guide: A Parent's Guide to Functional Vision - Including vision checklist!

Dr Bryce Appelbaum's Website

Get $200 off ScreenFit the digital eye strain relief online vision therapy tool from Dr Bryce Abbelbaum, using code MYMIGHTYQUINN

PLUS 10% off Digital Performance Lenses using code MYMIGHTYQUINN at shop.myvisionfirst.com

Transcript

Lucia Silver (00:00)
Welcome to today's episode of My Mighty Quinn. Your child has had their eyes tested. They can read the letters on the chart. You've been told that their eyesight is absolutely fine, but they are still losing their place when they read. They avoid books or written work. They struggle to copy from the board. They become tired, distracted, or overwhelmed in the classroom.

And perhaps you're observing they find catching a ball, navigating space or coordinating their eyes and body much harder than other children seem to. So what are we missing? Because being able to see clearly is not the same as being able to use vision efficiently. Eyesight is about clarity. Vision is about how the eyes, brain and body work together to make sense of and respond to the world.

Functional vision will not explain every child's learning, attention or behavioural difficulties, but it could be one important blind spot within a much bigger whole child picture. And that is what we are exploring today. Hello and welcome to my Mighty Quinn, a mother's conversations with world leading experts. I'm Lucia Silver, founder of the Brain Health Movement and mother of that Mighty Quinn.

This podcast was born from my search to understand what was happening beneath Quinn's symptoms and struggles. That journey in turn taught me that a child is never simply a diagnosis, a behaviour or a collection of disconnected difficulties. Learning, attention, sensory processing, movement, health, emotional regulation and development are deeply interconnected. And sometimes an important part of that picture is hiding in plain sight.

Today we are talking about functional vision. Most parents understandably assume that if their child has passed an eye test and has 20-20 eyesight, their vision has been fully assessed. But eyesight and vision are not the same thing. A child may be able to see the letters clearly while still struggling to track across a page, coordinate both eyes, shift focus from the board to a book, process visual information, or even integrate vision with balance and movement.

So today's episode, and I am super excited to be talking about this, is the eye test said everything was fine, but eyesight is not vision. The functional vision blind spot that may affect your child's learning, attention, behaviour, and confidence. And I am so excited. My guest today is the world leading Dr. Bryce Applebaum, a neuro optometrist, founder of My Vision First, and creator of Vision Performance Training.

Dr. Bryce's work focuses on the eye-brain connection and on identifying functional visual difficulties that may interfere with learning, reading, attention, coordination, and performance. He is also the creator of ScreenFit Vision Foundations, a guided at-home training program designed to help children and adults actively strengthen visual skills, improve the way their eyes and brain work, and support focus and build

greater resilience in our increasingly screen dominated world. Through the fantastic My Vision First and ScreenFit, as well as neuro optometric rehabilitation, Dr. Brees has helped children, adults, students and athletes improve how efficiently their brain work together. His central message is wonderfully simple. 2020 eyesight is not the full story.

Welcome to my mighty Quinn, I'm so excited to have you today.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (03:46)
It is such an honour to be here and what an intro. That was perfect. I need to lead with that anywhere I go. You you really hit the nail on the head for all that we're gonna be hitting on today.

Lucia Silver (03:56)
well, listen, this has been a super important journey for us. I feel like we've been around every organ, every system, every expert, but it has taken us a very long time to find someone as extraordinarily skilled in this area as you. So we're very, very grateful to have you explaining and delving deep today into this area. So let's begin right at the beginning. We always say when it's this complicated, let's keep it simple. So.

eyesight versus vision. Let's begin with the big blind spot at the heart of this entire conversation.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (04:31)
Absolutely. And the most important take home from this conversation here, there's so much more to vision than just eyesight. And eyesight refers to our ability to focus light clearly. It's a symptom. That's what people have glasses or contacts for. And eyesight's important, but that's where most eye doctors start and end off. But really, vision is where we pick up. And vision is how the brain filters, organizes, and processes all of the information coming in through the eyes.

So know to make sense of it, drive meaning, and then direct the appropriate action. So let's think of eyesight as a symptom. And vision is really brain, which means that functional vision problems are brain problems. And as everyone listening knows, there are treatments for brain problems based off of neuroplasticity and our brain's ability to learn new things at any age for any brain. So much can be done to avoid unnecessary struggling.

in reading, learning, sports and in life based off of functional vision problems, especially when we know what to look for. And then these problems are no longer hidden. They're kind of right in front of our face.

Lucia Silver (05:39)
That's a beautifully clear entrée into the subject. And so what in a nutshell does 2020 actually tell us and not tell us about how a child is using their visual system?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (05:53)
Yeah, it it it tells us and it twenty twenty, twenty hundred, twenty whatever is a test and a measurement from over a hundred years ago. And it really tells us our ability only to discriminate or see clearly far away on a dark letter chart and a dark exam room, but so much more of life takes place in all other distances and in a dynamic fashion rather than just in a static fashion. So that just tells our ability to see.

But we don't our eyes don't allow us to see. We see through our brain, not our eyes. Our eyes gather information, but our brain really interprets that information. And what we need to be looking at is how does the brain tell the eyes how to converge, to track, to focus, to process information, how well we can see in depth, how well we can understand our sense of self and space, how well we can converse with somebody in terms of interpersonal connection.

And how we how well we can prepare our body for what's coming, process that information, tap into higher level thinking, higher level cognitive processes, and then be able to execute the appropriate response, whether it's with movement, with thinking, or a combination of all of these. And so really vision is so much more complex. And vision is how well we can integrate input from all of our senses and how well our eyes, brain, and body are working as a team.

Lucia Silver (07:20)
And that's the difference. think parents tend to think that vision, all of us think, not just parents, that vision is what happens in the eyes. And what we're really talking about today, most importantly, is the eye, brain, body connection. So when a child reads, when a child copies from the board, catches a ball or walks into a busy classroom, vision is having to coordinate with attention, with movement, with balance, with posture and processing. Is that right? And how can you help us understand what's going on there?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (07:50)
Absolutely. And I think even if we back up a little bit, it'll help kind of set the tone for what we're talking about in terms of treatment and unlocking potential through vision. No one is born with the ability to read or to use their eyes to converge, to track, to focus, or even with the ability to see in 3D. This is all developed through our life experiences and through the right sequencing of developmental milestones. So it follows then that.

Functional vision and all of these skills, they're either learned appropriately through the right sequencing of developmental milestones or learned poorly, leading to vision imbalances. And then as everybody knows, the visual demands of school and life increase every year in beyond the classroom, into the workplace and and into the future. But if we don't have the foundational skills in place to meet those demands,

There's a gap between where we're operating and where we should be. And that gap just gets wider as the visual demands increase, unless there's intervention to close the gap. And so I think a a really key take-home from this is the eye develops through biology, but vision and the visual cortex really develops through experience. So we need to make sure that our children and ourselves are being exposed to the right experiences.

to allow for the right learning to take place so that we're not struggling unnecessarily with these hidden functional vision problems.

Lucia Silver (09:16)
And this is where it's streamlined so perfectly, Dr. Bryce, with everything we say about the development of the brain, that it is largely led by input, largely led by stimulation, movement, all these things that we think are of ancillary to development. They're absolutely foundational to development. And when we're looking at the most commonly missed visual skills, so when that system is not working efficiently,

which visual skills tend to cause the biggest problems for children? For example, you know, the tracking across the page I'm thinking of in the classroom or keeping both eyes working together. Which of those is most often missed and why do they matter so much for learning and behaviour?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (09:57)
Great question. I mean, think it really is the integration of all these systems that matters the most. But when we think about the three most crucial visual skills for reading, let's say it's our tracking, our focusing, and our eye coordination or eye teaming. So let's kind of hit each one of those. So tracking is ocular motor control. So that's either keeping your attention on a ta on a target as it's changing position. That's a pursuit eye movement.

Or a cicade or saccade, depending on where you live and how you want to pronounce it. That's jumping your eyes from one place to another. That's the eye movements needed for scanning across a page to read. And then fixations are really keeping your eyes on a specific target and holding it steady with accuracy. And so when somebody has an oculomotor problem or this tracking problem, that can often show up for children as losing their place with reading, skipping words or skipping lines.

Getting to the end of one line and then scanning to the beginning of the next and the wrong place, then all of a sudden comprehension gets impacted and their mind starts wandering and then they're fatigued and there's ants in their pants. And then that also shows up with sports and tracking a ball across your midline or following something as it changes position in space. So oculomotor control is is a massive area of opportunity for improvement. Convergence, which was the second one, that's really our eye coordination.

And that's our ability to keep our eyes on a target as it's either approaching us or at near when we have to pull our eyes in to maintain a single clear image. Now, a convergence insufficiency, the inability to converge our eyes effortlessly to our nose, is, in my opinion, the most important functional vision problem that can impact performance so drastically. And there's a very high correlation with kids and adults who have a convergence insufficiency and difficulty focusing.

And difficulty attending to sustained near concentration tasks and difficulty engaging with desk work. And with a convergence insufficiency, I mean we can go over statistics, but there's a very high correlation with if it's if you're having a hard time controlling your eyes and their ability to focus, you're gonna have a really hard time controlling your mind and its ability to focus. And somebody diagnosed with ADHD is three times more likely to be diagnosed with convergence insufficiency because so many of the symptoms and behaviours.

Of a convergence insufficiency mimic those of something like ADHD or an attention problem. And then the third area, the ocular focus, which is our accommodative system. That's the inside muscles of the eyes responsible for clarity. We want that system to be like a old school camera lens that's on autofocus. But when it's stuck on manual focus, we have to adjust our body. And so a lot of times you'll see kids leaning in with desk work or bringing a tablet or book real close because.

Their body's taking over what that focusing system isn't able to do on its own. And that can cause words to appear blurry or difficulty copying from near to far without having that flexibility or words moving a little bit. And then when the inside muscles aren't functioning the way they're supposed to, oftentimes our brain sends a signal to try harder. And then the outside muscles try and take over what the inside muscles aren't doing as well as they could or should. And then we see this fragile eye coordination and this unstable binocularity.

So there's usually not a problem in isolation. Oftentimes these are related to each other. And something as simple as like a spatial mismatch where we're aligning our eyes as if we're perceiving something in a different place in space than where it is, closer, farther, higher, lower, whatever that is, that's gonna then influence all of these systems because we're gonna be tracking a plane that's different than where we think it is. So these are simple tests that can be screened for at home.

from any parent definitely should be evaluated from from a doctor and at an eye doctor's office, but rarely are they because well there's a lot of reasons why, but rarely are they tested because we're trained as eye doctors to take this reactive model rather than a proactive approach and to manage vision decline rather than allow for optimization and enhancement.

Lucia Silver (14:09)
And evidently, you don't know what you don't know as a parent or otherwise. You don't know that you're supposed to be looking for these things, that convergence and eye tracking and so forth are even relevant. It's not brought to our attention. So you can understand why many parents would immediately jump on. It's an attention issue. It's a behavioural issue. Just doesn't like that teacher, just doesn't like books. So this is incredibly important.

they did think that there was something wrong with their child's eyes, then you'd be cutting them along for a routine eye test and you'd be sent home and told, there's no problem here. So to that extent, what would a comprehensive functional vision assessment actually look at and assess? Is it exactly as you've said? it those three areas that you take yourself as well as your child in once you find out about this and have the whole family looked at? Is that what you're doing? Is that what you're testing?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (15:04)
Yeah, I mean you're you're really looking to make sure that that individual, child, adult, at any age, this can this is present and can impact life, you're making sure they have the right skills in place to meet the demands of life. So oftentimes, you know, you finish the eye exam and the doctor says you're 20, whatever, or the eyes are healthy and here's glasses. But really we should all be asking, is my child visually ready for reading? Are they visually ready for learning? Are they ready?

To handle what's coming at them in life. And I mean, I think a thorough functional vision evaluation is gonna look at depth perception and visual processing and visual memory and visual spatial and sequential memory. It's gonna look at tracking, focusing, I teaming. It's gonna look at peripheral awareness. It's gonna look at reaction time, really all the skills that we take for granted when they're functioning the way they're supposed to. But when they're not, that can allow for so much unnecessary struggling and make

Reading, learning, driving, navigating through space, sports, and even engaging with interpersonal connections so much harder than it's supposed to be.

Lucia Silver (16:13)
Indeed, and I think what parents actually notice, and I think what's going to be important in bringing this immediately into the lives of the families listening, is trying to identify how those functional vision problems actually show up in a child who's struggling, because it doesn't necessarily look like what it looks like. So if a child is struggling with reading or writing, concentration or coordination within the classroom, or even participating, maybe you could help to start paint a picture, Dr. Bryce, of how

parents might notice this during, I don't know, homework or sport or, yeah.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (16:48)
Definitely. So I I I

I would say in my mind, the the five most common signs that a vision problem is likely interfering with your child's ability to read and learn. So number one would be skipping lines, skipping words and rereading lines. So inefficiencies with reading, poor reading comprehension. And in both of those, that could be your child prefers to be read too.

Rather than reading on their own. They prefer reading with their ears and listening to that information, having auditory processing take over because the visual processing is not where it's supposed to be. number three, homework taking way longer than it should with frustration and often tears. That's a clear sign something is not right here. reversing letters like B and a D or P and a Q, especially lowercase ones when they're reading, which often

has to do with directionality and laterality and seeing the same symbol in different orientations, but not being able to organize that spatially and and cognitively. And then number five, a short attention span with any type of near concentration task. So with reading, with writing, with schoolwork and things like that. But I think it also can go, it can extend even farther. You know, a child who has stru who struggles catching a ball or someone who struggles with eye contact.

And they don't know where to look or they can't control their eye movements. I mean, a change in eye movement is a change in attention, whether it's voluntary or involuntary. And so when you're saying, look at me, I'm talking to you, oftentimes they can't because they can't control and take in all that input the way that the brain is is designed for it to. oftentimes it can be knocking things, knocking over a glass of water, bumping into the walls, or getting too close and not having that kind of spatial bubble secure. And they get real close to people or real far from people.

Or it could be hesitancy around stairs or escalators and not trusting what they're seeing. It could be something objectively noticeable like an eye turn in, out, or up, or down, or one eye not seeing as well as the other, or their glasses prescription's always changing, or motion sensitivity. I mean, I know I'm biased, but vision is our dominant sensory system, and it's tied into so much of life and essentially.

Almost every academic and social scenario, if we really look at vision from this accurate and broad lens that that we're talking about today.

Lucia Silver (19:18)
And this is hugely relevant because our audience have children struggling with symptoms or diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, autism and so forth and we're very quick to assign it to those areas and I know there's a huge crossover and very much the

the job that the brain health movement has taken on is to un-silo this information, is to bring optometry together with primitive reflex integration to understand. I mean, you are a neuro optometrist, that in itself is just music to my ears. But the reality is that so often we are looking at these things in isolation. Primitive reflexes, which we'll come on to later today, are another contributing aspect impacted by the vision systems, which is gonna have an effect as well. And we talk about

if the vision is not in place, if balance is not in place, if the primitive reflexes are not integrated in the way they need to, a child can be stuck in fight or flight and that alone, finding the world unsafe in and of itself can speak to all of those symptoms you've just mentioned. So when you start to understand how cascading these deficiencies are, if you like, because they are deficiencies, they're areas where certain things have not developed sufficiently.

So when we say that, we say that with all the hope in the world, we say that understanding neuroplasticity, we say that knowing that these systems are dynamic and can be improved. And I speak to it as the mother of Quinn, who directly to your point on convergence and eye tracking, during just at the end of COVID Quinn and I started doing these exercises because I read about them and it was extraordinary. He went from being a child who if you threw a ball to him, he'd shield himself.

to a child who is now incredibly sporty in every team, hardly goes out without a ball. So, you know, just from that one piece, Dr. Bryce, you know, you can see improvement and we know there are other contributing factors, of course, diet and of course, screen and lots of movement and getting out in nature, all the stuff we're gonna come onto. But that alone, building that muscle, exercise, if you stick a screen into a baby's hands at 18 months,

How much eye exercise do you think they are realistically getting, let alone social engagement, let alone proprioception, let alone all the other things we need, just that. If your eyes are fixed in that position for that length of time, right?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (21:49)
yeah. I mean, vi vision is directed to guide movement. And we're intended to be scanning the horizon for dinner and danger and exploring through nature and having this delicate balance between intricate near work with our hands and lots of distance work. And now that's all clashing against modern day demands that have us reading before visually ready, indoors and sedentary for most of our time, and locked into near screens. So you brought up like 10 topics. I would love to spend an hour on each of those, but

Lucia Silver (22:14)
I'm sending.

Yeah

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (22:20)
you know, I think just screens in general, that screen time is the new pandemic. And we're now seeing what it's doing to social development, emotional development, cognitive development, but now vision development. And there is a very intimate link with too much screen time and myopia or near-sightedness. And there's an intimate link with not enough time outdoors and myopia and too much New York with poor lighting.

And right now, about 30% of the world is near-sighted. It's estimated that by 2050, 50% of the world is gonna be near-sighted. And the numbers are increasing at such an alarming rate. In the US, let's say, in 1969, when we landed on the moon, 43%, a fourth of America was near-sighted. We now fast forward to today, 43% of America is near-sighted, and that number is climbing. And we have research to show that two hours a day outside in natural light.

Is protective for the progression development of near-sightedness. We know that screen should be limited for all of us, but especially for a rapidly developing brain and an infant. And that's not even talking about the high energy light and the blue light and the contrast and the brightness and the sedentary nature that comes with staring at screens for too long and the dopamine that's released, or especially for an infant, they just want more and more along with all of us. But

we need to know better so we can do better in in all of these scenarios.

Lucia Silver (23:46)
Yes, absolutely.

Amen. And to the same point, know, in the way that we are able to train the brain out of things and back on track with development, we can also train the brain negatively. think, you know, one of the things that was in the mix of the negative fallouts of screen is the inability to hold attention. And when you're with this dopamine hit that you're talking about, we've very much become a dopaminergic generation now where

we just fed at this level with short attention span, but the more we do it, the less those neural pathways are developed for sustained attention. And so so-called ADHD could be highly epigenetic, driven by environment constantly. If you keep giving the brain two seconds worth of Instagram scrolling and another two seconds, sometimes nanoseconds, that is the way you are training the brain.

So, and also another point on this blue light, which is what I love with our worlds converging Dr. Bryce is that mitochondrial health, you know, when we look, when we come right back to the root cause, the root cause, the root cause, what is happening at a cellular level as we are developing, which in turn is the development of all of our systems, that unnatural light constantly, you know, instead of waking to the sun and going to sleep to the sunset, our natural circadian rhythms, we're completely

railroading those natural systems with this blue light, let alone as you say what it is doing to the development of the visionary system which in turn develops so many other systems.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (25:25)
And Lucia, even to go as far to say this screen time is toxicity for our nervous system. And when we are under stress, when the autonomic nervous system taps into fight or flight, that is the root cause of so much systemic dysfunction and disease. But from a vision perspective, when we're under stress, our pupils widen and we get locked in with this tunnel vision.

Which means we're literally shifting how our brain is processing information, relying on focal central visual processing rather than peripheral ambient visual processing and not using these in a balanced fashion. And then that can contribute to motion sensitivity. That can contribute to headaches and eye strain. That can contribute to mental health challenges. And really pulling back it's from in many cases, or at least contributed by too much screen time.

Lucia Silver (26:21)
Yeah. Since you told me that I am so much more insistent on looking away from my screen, not just for my eyes, but for my nervous system, understanding that correlation that the only time we would ever be as we talk about, there is a purpose for something called the moro reflex. There is a reason for us to be in fight or flight state, but it is generally when a lions come in and we need to be on high alert. Never would we be

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (26:32)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (26:50)
for a sustained level fixed on our prey, which is the equivalent of where the eyes would be in the state of fight or flight, as you say, which unfortunately is replicated by the screen. So fixed in that state. I know there are times where I'm at my screen for four hours without taking a break. If I get hyper-focused, you know, would you ever in nature sit for four or five hours focused? It's totally unnatural. You'd be looking around, you'd be, and you'll explain to us, the importance of

That movement in turn is a fluidity that is telling the nervous system it's safe again, but you're signalling to the nervous system to not be safe and you're not.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (27:28)
I mean, if that that lion or the saber-tooth tiger, if you're looking at them for four four hours, you're gonna be turned into dinner. I mean, that there's like that doesn't that can't exist. And yet we're on screens. I mean, the average eight to ten-year-old in the US spends six hours a day on screens. And fifty-eight percent of kids have their own device by the time they're four in the US. Like that is not okay. And

Lucia Silver (27:35)
Yeah! That's a word!

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (27:55)
I'm not anti technology. I'm not anti screens, but we need to have the right habits in place, the right protective mechanisms in place. And just like we train and exercise our bodies, we need to be training and developing and exercising the eye brain connection so that we can actually thrive in this digital world that is not going anywhere.

Lucia Silver (28:15)
Yes, let us get back to preventative because I just get, I feel like my blood's boiling the minute we get onto, where we've ended up with screens because where change can come is in understanding what is driving this, right? So while we have the privilege of having you here, I want to, you know, really exercise this because...

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (28:19)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (28:36)
Your child, I think this is really important that parents understand this, you your child is not going to say, my eyes are not tracking properly. Your child is not going to say my two eyes are not converging nicely, mum. You know, what they say instead is I hate reading. This is boring or my head hurts or I can't do it. And they must. Yes.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (28:52)
Or I'm not smart or I'm stupid or everything's

easier for everyone else than it is for me.

Lucia Silver (28:57)
And that's just a horrendous piece of the puzzle. But a child simply doesn't assume that what they're seeing is the same as what everyone else is seeing, right? They only know what they know. And bright children will compensate. This is the piece that I really also want us to understand. So they may technically be able to read, they may complete the work, they may achieve reasonable grades, but doing the task is taking enormous effort. You alluded to this earlier, right? The energy that it takes when the system's not functioning properly.

You know, could a child appear to be coping while using just a huge amount of visual and cognitive energy that's really leaving very little for anything else, like attention and regulation, for example.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (29:39)
yeah. And this isn't could. This is very likely. I mean, the s the stats now will say one in four children has a vision problem significant enough to impact learning. I think the numbers at least double that. But, you know, to your point where the child doesn't know that things are different or that they should be, they shouldn't be this way. I hope everybody listening can grab a pen or pencil tonight and do a quick screening test on their child for convergence and sufficiency. Because

With convergence insufficiency, at least in my exam rooms, nine out of ten times when a child can't converge to their nose, and at a foot away or six inches away or even farther, they say I see two, or one of their eyes drifts, or it's really hard to stay focused on it. Nine out of ten times I'll then say to that child, Do you sometimes see the words moving when you're reading or see double or two things when you feel like there should only be one of them? And there's this like eyes wide open, nodding, like

my God, yes, you see me, but also that's not normal. And then every time the parents jaws drop and it's like, You never told me that. I didn't know that. Well, as a parent, we didn't know to ask those questions or to look for that. But seeing double is so common with reading and with near work. And yet it literally could take ten seconds to start with a pen all the way out in front of your child and then bring it towards their midline.

Saying, tell me when you see two of these. And it should be one easy and effortless all the way in. And when it's not massive red flag, neon lights around this, that there is a functional vision problem that's likely interfering with that child's ability to achieve it their potential.

Lucia Silver (31:20)
And such a simple thing to test. By the way, you you don't need to be spending fortunes on this one. These are exercises you can do at home in the first instance, right?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (31:28)
A hundred percent. And and even just recognizing there's likely an area of opportunity here for improvement and for rerouting development and academic and life progression. I mean, that's doctors should be testing this, but many are not. So as parents, let's take matters into our own hands and and at least be the advocate for our child knowing that we have ammunition to say, I know something's not right here.

Lucia Silver (31:53)
Yeah, it'd be very interesting to know what a classic vision doctor would say if you did come in and say convergence isn't working, tracking is, I it's not in their portfolio. It's a little bit like me going back to conventional medicine and trying to explain in, you know, this type of inflammation and autoimmune responses and gut dysregulation and dysbiosis, because conventional medicine in the same as conventional optometry is not understanding this. And yet look at this raft of symptoms. Why

you know, to be able to bring a child and say, okay, they're in some cases, they may be managing just about okay in school. But look at the fallout after school, Dr. Bryce, look at the collapse from the visual fatigue and probably the sensory overload and all the other incumbent systems that have had the knock on, you know, lack of development. one of the most common experiences within our community is children who hold it together at school, and then everything falls apart at home.

Now we could be looking at this as something connected to sustain visual demands contributing to this cumulative, if you like, fatigue, right? know, what might be close? Yeah.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (33:00)
Absolutely. And

when the wheels come off at home, I mean, as a parent, you would rather that your child hold it together when they're at school and in public. But then when their brain is on overdrive all day long, just trying to line point and focus their eyes, they can't then tap into other areas of higher-level processing. They can't self-regulate and self-monitor the way that they deserve to. And they're in this state of fight or flight all day long. I mean, you brought up dyslexia earlier. Do you know how many people I see who

are labelled as dyslexic, they're de they identify as being dyslexic. They've never even read a book in their life. And we go through testing and then we go through treatment and it was actually a hidden functional vision problem causing the exact same symptoms, behaviours. And then they're reading after. I mean, we've had adults come in for our vision performance training intensives, which is a week long boot camp. We can talk about that if you'd like, where literally by the end of the week they're reading. And it's not always that

that case, but more often than not, it is because something like dyslexia, it's a label slapped on behaviour early on when you're asking a rapidly developing brain to engage with one of the most complex neurological tasks that exists, which is reading. And when a child is consistently confusing a B or a D, or their reading was and and it really should be saw,

The immediate assumption is often dyslexia. And so the parents, they schedule valuations, they take the child to see a s neuropsychologist, or they have they're looking into language processing and focusing, but they're often looking at the entirely wrong system, entirely, because for a significant number of struggling readers, the problem isn't just how their brain processes sound and language, it's how their visual system manages the physical act of reading.

And often it's just they're visually overloaded. And reading is not a single pathway skill. It's one where it's a complex integration of a lot of different systems. And even the naysayers who say dyslexia is a language-based processing disorder. Sure. Processing language, though, begins with vision and decoding and having accurate eye movements to then take in that language and make sense of it. So reading is and excuse me, vision is always a piece of the puzzle. And in many cases, it's a massive piece of the puzzle.

Lucia Silver (35:25)
And as you say, it is one of the predominant feeders into the brain during those early stages of development. And that's why we see at our end of the story, 80 % of the children who are struggling with, let's say so-called dyslexia right now, because as we've said, a lot of things are getting thrown under banners very kind of lazily and willy-nilly. But in those cases, the majority of those children didn't crawl.

And if they didn't crawl, they also didn't have the bilateral systems, the left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. I can't tell you how many parents when I start with that, I'll ask. Same with ADHD. There are a couple of the primitive reflexes which are vision led. If they have not been integrated in those early stages in the first year of life, once again, we see inability to sit still, inability to move from the blackboard.

to the piece of paper in front of them or the computer in front them. Those movements have not been correctly developed. And as you and I screeched about the first time we met, the CDC in America simply moves the milestones. Suddenly we're seeing this absolute epidemic of children who are not reaching their milestones. And instead of saying, on a minute, what's going on with development? Why are we seeing this? What is the root cause? What is driving this?

We've decided to just republish it and set it six months back.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (36:52)
We don't need the or we don't even need that milestone anymore.

Lucia Silver (36:55)
We don't

need it, it's not a barometer. And you'd never do that with an animal. Can you imagine taking your puppy into the vet and the vet going, don't worry about that, that's just individual. If they don't start walking for another six months, it's really not a problem. I mean, you'd be like, yeah, but nature just doesn't nature just do it like this and this is an exception. No, no, no, no, no. We and all our grand arrogance are gonna disregard that.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (37:22)
Yeah, nature doesn't matter anymore, apparently, right? I mean, the amount of kids that we see who have an eye turn or lazy eye, and then we rewind and realize they either had a very short crawling period or didn't crawl at all. I mean, that is the crucial foundation from which we develop vision from the bilateral integration, the core stability and the visually directed motor patterns. And yet

At least in America, we don't need to crawl anymore, which which is crazy. And and I love that you bring up primitive reflexes because those provide such a clear indication of the neurological development of a child. And when primitive reflexes are retained beyond the first year of life, they always interfere with brain processing, with development, and this lack balance, proprioception, happiness, and the lack of this integration.

leads to poor eye movement control, poor fixation from near to far, poor visual coordination, poor hand eye coordination, poor visual processing. And we know from this conversation alone what that then means downstream for the rest of their life.

Lucia Silver (38:32)
Yeah. So you have to go back, you know, in the same way that nature has its natural sequence, so does healing or rehabilitation. You go back, you know, I don't think you or I or any of the experts on our Brain Board of Excellence are saying anything other than look to nature, look to look to what we were supposed to have done in the first place. So while we're looking now at this with

symptoms that look like distractibility, look like poor regulation, look like reading resistance or clumsiness, behavioural avoidance. How do we help parents ask, you know, is this really attention, behaviour or motivation, or is this the visual task itself that's too demanding? How do we help them unpack that?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (39:16)
Yeah.

And that can sometimes be hard because there's not a blood test that says you have ADHD or you have dyslexia, right? It's based off of symptoms and behaviours. And with ADHD, 15 of the 18 most commonly associated symptoms also are the same symptoms of functional vision problems. And I think most parents are often shot down by doctors or specialists who

act like they know better. And your intuition, your gut instinct about your child, I've learned myself with my own kids and with our thousands of patients, is always right. You know, a child who can focus well for certain tasks, but then cannot focus at all for others. That's not a biochemical imbalance. That's let's see what the task is and what's involved with the task and why there is this extra effort or this struggling that's in place. And

I'm not anti-surgery. I'm not anti medication, but those should be last resorts. And we should be tackling everything else first, especially from a holistic standpoint, where again, if you cannot control your eyes and their ability to focus, you cannot control your mind and it's ability to focus. And the ability to take in space and to selectively shift our attention is based off of eye movements. Any eye movement is a change in attention, whether it's conscious or unconscious.

If you think about that, like our eyes go where we want our attention to flow and we where we want our memory to go. And and something as simple as just following a target. I mean, you could do that with your finger, you could do that with your head, you could do that at with an infant walking side to side, cle near and far. If your child is not tracking you or tracking that finger, again, neon lights, we need to figure out what's causing this. And in many cases, it has to do with.

The wrong sequence of developmental milestones, certain milestones that are skipped, with the wrong stimulation at too early of an age, the wrong visual demands too early. I mean, kids are being asked to read earlier than ever before. They're being introduced to screens and technology at earlier and earlier ages. And we're not outside. We're not engaging with three dimensional space. We're not climbing trees. We're not looking at actual clouds and developing visualization. We're looking at pictures of clouds on a tablet. And

We are in a three dimensional world, the learning and the exploration needs to take place in a three dimensional environment in order to develop this eye brain connection that is more of a problem now than it's ever been.

Lucia Silver (41:50)
And as you say, it's not going anywhere. We absolutely need to address it. One of our great heroines over here, Sally Goddard Blythe, I don't know if you've come across her work in development, she commissioned a huge piece of research which essentially exposed that children were simply not ready to learn. And she was looking at their eye system, she was looking at their balance system. And the same point came out and the document was delivered back to the UK government saying these children are simply not ready to learn, their systems are not ready.

And it was just too complicated and too expensive. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna make kindergartens and nurseries last longer? Are we gonna change our entire educational curriculum? Are we gonna try and keep kids at home longer? What about parents wanting to work? You when you actually look at what it demands of the entire socio-economical ecosystem to change this, it's a big ask. But the reality is,

when you are looking at one in four children in every classroom falling out of the system now, which is better. I think we need to do some work at the beginning instead of seeing this catastrophic outfall.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (43:00)
And and there's

easy wins. I mean, I know teaching is super challenging and and manning or woman a room of twenty, thirty children is a is no easy task. But not just having throwing tablets in front of kids and asking them to follow through a protocol or go through an app, I mean, that alone is an easy win. Where tablets should not be in elementary school. It should not be in the early years.

And it should be limited later on, but that's that's one. It's estimated that over 80% of what's learned in the classroom comes through the visual processing of information. And yet so many children are now relying on their ears and let what the teacher is sharing verbally than their eyes, because they don't have the system functioning the way it's supposed to. And there's a disconnect between how the brains are are gathering information and then how we're interpreting it.

Lucia Silver (43:54)
This is what I love about your approach because this information largely is siloed. It's also often we stare simply at one child and one symptom, but actually this is an entire, this is a whole child, whole family realization, I think. And your broader approach considers vision within the context of all of this, rather than just treating the eyes as an isolated system. Why don't we start looking at why might everything from?

sensory processing, movement, balance, sleep, general health, nervous system function, be impacted when we understand how vision is functioning. And I'm looking now and thinking, you know, how would you encourage families to start seeing it even as relevant to themselves as adults within the family? Because this is not. I began my journey entirely talking about the kids. And now I've begun journey.

coming right the way back and going, okay, mom and dad, where are you guys at before we begin this journey? Because there's going to be a lot asked of you in going back and beginning this journey again for your child. But guess what? You are an inextricable part of this. So how do you see that from your vision?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (45:10)
I think it really starts with putting the right habits in place as adults. I mean, our children model our behaviours. If you're telling your child no phones, no tablets, no screens, and yet at the dinner table, you're on your phone, your tablet, and your screens. Like it you're speaking a different language to them. And, you know, at my house, we have a no-phone zone and we know there are no phones allowed in pretty much the entire scenario. And my kids are 12, 12, and eight.

They'll be the last people of their all their friends to have phones and I just I know better. And they're also very limited with screen time. I mean, they get they earn 15 minutes a day of screen time and they're allowed two of those, but they have to be balanced with at least that much time, if not a whole lot more, outside. They're wearing digital performance lenses when they are on screens, which are therapeutic lenses that change the stress response to screens.

And give the brain a better opportunity for the inside and outside muscles, the eyes to work together. And they complain and they get upset. And I'm sorry, we know better, right? I mean, this is just how it is. And I think for those listening, simple take homes. I mean, if we are on screens, the bigger the screen, the farther away, the better. If you're gonna be facetiming with a loved one who your child hasn't seen in a long time, absolutely that's important and there's value there. But

Mirror the FaceTime on a television across the room and do it in a limited amount of time. Take as many vision breaks as possible with any screen engagement. So we talk about the 2020-20 rule, which is at least every 20 minutes on the screen, taking a break for at least 20 seconds and looking something at least 20 feet away and giving your eyes and your brain a break from that near stress. But honestly, it should be every five minutes. It should be every two minutes. We should be taking as many breaks as we can.

Lucia Silver (46:37)
Good.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (47:02)
And anything that can be taught from a human or engaged with a human, we need to be having human interaction rather than having these digital two D devices doing the same work.

Lucia Silver (47:13)
Yep, and I think it's about becoming intentional. The screen time consultant, who's one of the leading experts that we've had, who's in our course, but is also podcast with us, Emily Cherkin she talks a lot about becoming intentional. So if you, I think that's part of it is that we're mindless in our use of screen time. It's become of course addictive and we talk about the whole cocaine habit idea of it and the dopamine and so forth. But

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (47:25)
I know her.

Lucia Silver (47:39)
It really is, if we don't adopt that very, very awakened response to it, we're gonna get stuck with it. And the other comment that another fantastic neurodevelopmental, Dr. Robert Melillo, who's at the forefront of primitive reflex integration, again, on our Brain Board of Excellence, he said, do you want hard now or do you want harder later? To really, really understand, because it is hard, even Quinn, who is actually...

very, very modest in his screen time. But if I tried intervene when he's on his phone, it does feel like a world crisis. it's not without understanding that you and I are saying, you you've got a family, might be like me, a single mom, what if you've got many kids and you've been at work all day and you've come back and you're now being a mom at home and you're cooking and the kids are screaming.

it would be so much easier to put them on the screen. So we do understand, but I think if you understand what you're actually creating and developing, then we're putting out lots of guides and lots of support to parents to understand just the little 5 % changes you can make to just shift the dial a little bit, right? Because it's hard.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (48:55)
And the

and those changes compound and there's a cumulative effect. And they're absolutely like you shared, is a time and a place, right? And on a flight with a s you know, that's hours long. Like there should some screen time is okay, but it's not having them in the corner buried on the tablet for, you know, a hundred hours. And I love that. Do you want hard now or harder later? I can promise it only gets harder, especially as

other areas of function and sensory integration become impacted. And then it's well, we see where the the habits started to bifurcate early on and then it just it goes downhill quickly. So slowing down that progression is is huge. But then also making it so that that stimulus doesn't cause the same response. That that's a huge piece of this as well.

Lucia Silver (49:46)
Yes, the really, really root cause reprogramming of the system because these stresses in life are always going to be there. And that's why we're so driven to understand the root causes and really get the system resilient and get the nervous system adapting. know, the way these children are responding is the way the nervous system is supposed to respond given those stimuli. not actually, they are not doing anything wrong. The environment that is being handed to them is at fault.

So that is where we need to come in with this. So if we wind back again, because the primitive reflex conversation for many parents, it may be a new phrase for those who have followed us for some time, they'll understand that these are a very, very natural and important piece of development alongside the autonomic nervous system. And they go hand in hand with the work that you are having us focus on, Dr. Bryce. So we frequently explore the foundational relationship, if you like, between

primitive reflex development, balance movement and visual skills. We don't have many experts in the UK. I know we have an international audience listening to us now, but we don't have many experts in your field who would at any level be bringing all of these things together. So can you talk to us just a little bit about how some retained primitive reflex patterns may be associated with

eye tracking, posture, bilateral coordination, visual attention, all of this stuff. We alluded to it briefly, but it's just so exciting to have someone bringing these worlds together for us.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (51:19)
Absolutely love to. So primitive reflexes are automatic that and they do not require thinking. And they originate, they start in the brainstem to help a new-born adjust to this crazy life outside of the womb. And in the womb, they're safe, everything they need is provided for them. They leave the womb and all of a sudden everything changes. These reflexes help them integrate this overwhelming amount of stimuli.

Coming in in real life. And they're crucial for the baby's survival, not just during the first few weeks of life, but then beyond. I always share this story with. So I have my oldest are twins, and they were so blessed, they were full term, they were delivered vaginally. But my son, who came out first, opened his eyes and immediately was just completely overwhelmed and then knocked out. And his Apgar first.

Two Apgar scores were terrible. His third was perfect, but it was he wasn't ready. And we did everything possible to set us up for success, but he wasn't ready. And same thing with my daughter. She came out right after, 27 minutes later, she had meconium in the sack. She came out and immediately was blue. And they s they took both away. We didn't see them for a while, and they were in the NICU for mo for monitoring. They ended up both being perfectly fine. I'm so grateful and so lucky.

But then afterwards I said, my God, we know there's going to be retained primitive reflexes beyond this, and did a ton of work beyond that point. You know, as the as they matured and as all children mature, the higher level brain centres inhibit these reflexes so that more advanced motor and cognitive skills can develop. But if these roadblocks are in place, those skills don't develop. And without going into details about all the primitive reflexes,

Even just early on, there's so much we can do to help facilitate the right motor development. And, you know, approaching your baby from different angles, feeding from different sides, r rotating their where their crib is in in a room. So it's not just up against a wall. You know, having toys and and contrast stimulation being presented at different positions and stimulating both sides of their body, both sides of their visual world. You know, there there's a a really interesting story. We have

there were three babies that were born in an orphanage in China. And somehow they were in this crib for the first two to three years of their life without any love, without any stimulation. And from what I understand, they were each positioned in the same place and never moved. We somehow got to work with two of the three of them.

And the third one actually got vision therapy in New England afterwards. But the one who was on her right side for the first two, three years of life developed a right eye turn. And the one who was on her left side developed a left lazy eye. And so moving forward, because those crucial areas of vision development were were inhibited and suppressed, they retained a lot of the primitive reflexes. They became

They got a lot of labels assigned to them. All three were diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. And at least the two we worked with, we worked with them for a while, but completely rerouted development to the point where both of them, eyes work well together as a team. There's no lazy eye, there's no eye turn. And their world has opened up so much. But the parents knew, you know, this these children didn't even receive eye contact for the first several years of their life. And it's crazy because any parent who is

Heavily focused like I was on the eyes in the first three to four months of life, and even six months of life, you'll see the eyes are dancing around. Sometimes it's in, sometimes it's out, sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. And I freaked out, even though I knew that was normal. But we're the the child's learning how to see. They're learning how to use their eyes together. They're developing a rapport with space. And they're developing control over these systems. I mean, when a child's born, their eyesight is anywhere from like

2800 to 2400, which means that big E on that faraway letter chart, if they were at an age where they could say, I see that's an E, that's the smallest they can see. And then the world opens up. And every child is born far-sighted. And then there's a a period where things become normalized. And so really looking at vision as a process that can be rerouted, I mean, even putting somebody in the wrong glasses or glasses too early.

literally reroutes development not necessarily in a positive way. So just like we learn how to crawl and then walk and then run and then sprint, I mean the same is true with all different systems. And really looking, screening for primitive reflexes early on is going to just allow for a much more linear path up the mountain of development, especially if we know what to look for.

Lucia Silver (56:28)
Absolutely. And also I keep it very clear and clean with parents as well. It's something I didn't know is that when we're born, 75 % of the brain is not developed, which tells you that we have a lot of work to do as soon as this little bundle of gorgeousness arrives. It's all to be done. So don't assume vision. Don't assume anything. It's all got to happen. It's an active, not a passive process. And even

As far as primitive reflexes are concerned, parents will say, no, we had a normal birth, we had a C-section. Well, actually that's not a normal birth. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have C-sections, they save lives. But increasingly we're having an elected C-section at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon and getting back to work the following morning, you know, where primitive reflexes, some of them are integrated in the birth canal. So we can make certain assumptions even from that if we know.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (57:00)
Yeah.

Yes.

Lucia Silver (57:24)
what we now don't know, but we need to know, right?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (57:27)
And I always talk about a vaginal delivery being so crucial for so many things if we can, but especially for the vestibular system and the visual system and them starting to develop in a parallel fashion. For those listening who don't know, the vestibular system is kind of our internal GPS in the road app of life that lets us know which way is up and down and left and right. There's such a higher correlation with C section deliveries and motion sickness.

Lucia Silver (57:54)
Yep.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (57:54)
And also with motion sickness, so much of motion sickness has a visual component that's treatable, especially for those who notice that their symptoms are way worse in the back seat or on a tablet or phone. But when they're driving in the front seat and they can engage with periphery and motor plan for what's coming, it's way less symptomatic or not even an issue. That's conflicting signals between these two systems and the brain not filtering and interpreting them simultaneously and allowing for this disequilibrium.

To emerge where you're no longer feeling safe in space, and then these symptoms are signals that of of where the problem is.

Lucia Silver (58:33)
And then we look at children in classroom compensating for that in turn. So those same children with those same STNR, ATNR, these same primitive reflexes, they are quite often wrapped around the school chair and the table and writing at a funny angle because they in turn are compensating for all the same things.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (58:47)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (58:53)
This is why we're so excited to get your module onto our course, because I think we need to see it in tandem with primitive reflexes, really. I think we need to understand those developing systems side by side. And at so many parents, I had no idea that crawling was important. I had no idea that that was why the kids are always sick in the back of the car. So it's amazing to be pulling the pieces together with you now. And again, we're looking at reading, we're looking at handwriting and copying.

All of these are functions of these systems. We've touched on dyslexia. I'm looking at all the different areas that our parents are constantly funnelling the same stories through to us, the same issues. Could a child be dyslexic and also have a functional vision difficulty that makes reading even harder? I guess so. That doesn't have to be just in isolation.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (59:46)
Absolutely. But I would say in tens of thousands of patients, we've yet to come across one where we couldn't improve their reading ability. And it's not like a portion of the brain is missing that allows somebody to read. It's faulty development and communication between the language processing centres, the visual processing centres, the proprioceptive centres, the visual memory centres. And I always give the analogy of it's kind of like.

There's all these airplanes taking off, but no air traffic controller telling them where to land. And to have somebody with dyslexia as the label who doesn't have any of the symptoms associated with functional vision problems is incredibly rare. And so at a minimum, reading ability can be improved. And it may still be that it's hard or there's there's roundabout paths in place, but especially the losing the place, the skipping words, the words moving and going into focus.

The thinking about what's for dinner rather than what we're reading, or the mind wandering, or the decreased comprehension, or even just the the adjustment of our body, like you shared. Like oftentimes there's a tendency for one eye to act higher than the other. And so we'll tilt our head or the book or page to then compensate. Or if our accommodative system, our focusing system's not operating the way it's supposed to, we'll lean in really close, or we'll have our bangs cover one of the eyes so that we don't have to use both eyes because we have this kind of occluder unconsciously in place.

And then when you bring up handwriting, so often the sizing and spacing of of letters or of symbols, writing up or downhill, taking what's up here, organizing it, and then methodically planning it out on the page, those are signs of of a vision at least playing a role, and in most cases can be completely eliminated or dramatically improved when the right type of relearning takes place to allow these systems to work in synergy.

Lucia Silver (1:01:38)
which bridges us perfectly onto my favourite piece of every podcast if we're able to offer it, which is the stories of transformation. We've done the revelation and we've done a lot of what's driving the root causes of the many symptoms that our children seem to be suffering from now. But let's look at some of the delightful stories and I've heard some of them before, Dr. Bryce. I love these from you. Could you share, obviously protecting our lovely family's identities and so on?

but a story or stories of any young person whose eyesight has been described as fine 2020, but who was subsequently, you you found to have these significant functional vision difficulties.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:02:20)
Absolutely. Well, I think I have to start with my story because it's it's too good and it's also most would think it's not possible. So when I was a child, I had massive visual developmental delays. I had an alternating eye turn. I had a bilateral lazy eye, meaning both eyes weren't able to see the tiny letters. I had no depth perception. I was lost in space. I was in the classroom having no idea what was going on. I was on on the soccer field just terrified and freezing as if like I didn't know what to do.

And I was so fortunate to be born to the perfect parents. My father was a developmental optometrist. My mother was a sensor integration-based occupational therapist. And they put in place the essential and necessary vision development for me to allow me to soar in life. So I went from being a reluctant reader to an avid reader. I went from being the last one picked on sports teams to a stud with athletics. And I went from being insecure to a really confident kid. And

Three all three of my kids were clearly my kids because they all had signs of these similar challenges at at much higher levels early on. All three have been through vision performance training. All three are doing amazingly well. But of course, I knew better. So let's talk about people who are not with the the last name of Appelbaum. I mean, we had one one that comes to mind so easily is we had this young man who I got to see for the first time at eleven.

he had not gained weight in the last three years. And the reason for that was he was on he had significant signs of inattention. So at six, they put him on an ADHD medication, a stimulant. It didn't do anything. So then they added a second, then they added a third. And by the time I saw him, he was on five different stimulants and wasn't gaining weight because his nervous system and his heart rate and his

Systemic regulation was entirely off and being compromised by pharmacological intervention. And he was like textbook, oculomotor dysfunction, binocular vision dysfunction, no depth perception, didn't know where to look, didn't know how to have vision guide any of his movements. We put him through treatment. And he's now just got into medical school, did unbelievably well through grade school, college, and beyond.

Medications all eliminated by the time he's done with treatment with us because the parents are like, well, this isn't doing anything. And vision therapy was actually, you know, bringing him to where he needed to be. And he's now going to med school to be a neurologist because he was so fascinated by what happened to him. But that's, I mean, he also went from like not being so scared of ball sports and and so afraid of being hit in the face to

has an offer for a baseball scholarship or had an offer for a baseball baseball scholarship, didn't take it. But like like Quinn went from, you know, really having a hard time navigating space and understanding where he was in space to then carrying a ball around with him everywhere he went and allowing vision to give him an advantage. That's a great one. we have so many patients who have concussion or traumatic brain injury who develop functional vision problems as a result. And and really the reason for that, vision's represented in every lobe of our brain.

More than half the real estate in the brain is dedicated to the processing of vision, not eyesight, vision. And two-thirds of the neurons entering our brain come from our eyes. So you can't have a head injury and not have vision be impacted. You also can't have developmental challenges and not have vision be impacted. It's just a matter of what at what level? What does that show up like? And we see so many people who can get back to screens, get back to work, get back to driving after this type of work. but one in particular, we have a teacher who teaches second grade.

She had somebody in the classroom through a toy, it hit her in the head. She thought everything was fine and all of a sudden couldn't function at all. Sensory overload, light sensitivity, headaches, eye strain, couldn't read, couldn't be on screens, and went through treatment. And then by the end, she's now back to the intricate lesson planning for her ch for her classroom. She's able to to email parents at night and and take in all this input around her without feeling overwhelmed and lost. And she really went from

kind of confusion and chaos to just order and and accuracy with so much of her life.

Lucia Silver (1:06:47)
That is outstanding and it is a complete reversal of the experience of her life. It just shows how every level of life is impacted. I can't imagine how that makes you feel. I'm tearing up just listening. And yes, it reminds me of what we did with Quinn. Let us move now. Those incredible stories of transformation will make everybody want to get on a plane and come see you. And we can't all come see you.

But what we can do is understand more about vision performance training and what we can understand and start to practice at home is very much led and championed through your screen fit vision program, which you invited me to experience before this interview and I'm now over halfway through the program. And what struck me was in the first instance, how much concentration and coordination these apparently simple exercises actually demanded clearly because

There's some muscular atrophy on my part. I am staring at a screen too much and I have not been using my eyes properly. But what's really exciting is I'm beginning to notice already in these early stages, and I believe these are exercises we should continue to do through life. I don't feel that this is just your program. I'm just going to do it and put it to one side. But I am already beginning to notice that some of the tasks are becoming smoother and quicker and less effortful. And that is thrilling.

because I'm sure I'm not supposed to be wearing these silly little one point something glasses. It's probably fatigue and just lack of exercise and so forth. talk to us a little bit because you're, this program is amazing and you can explain what it's designed to do, who it's for and what aspects of visual performance it can support. And also just in a nutshell as well, where does an at home program sit in relation to a fully individualized functional vision assessment?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:08:41)
L love you teeing that up there. So the gold standard always is office based treatment with a doctor board certified in this. So you get the best results possible. But I clearly recognize that's not possible or accessible for most people. And although we see people every week who fly in to work with us from around the world and so grateful and humbled for those for those opportunities, that's not possible for most people. So I created ScreenFit.

In the first couple months of COVID, when I saw the negative implication that screens were having on my own kids and recognizing this is a problem for them, this is a problem for the world. Unless we get ahead of this, we are doomed. So Screen Fit is a at home vision training program designed to teach the specific visual skills and abilities needed for life, for reading, for learning, for driving, through navigating through space. And it's kind of the equivalent of of a really thorough body weight program.

Rather than going to the gym. You go to the gym, you work with a trainer, you get all the equipment, you're gonna get better results faster, better shape faster. But not everybody can do that. So with Screen Fit, it's there's two different courses. Each course has 30 lessons. Each lesson is a video of me describing a specific vision exercise. You then put the phone or tablet down so it's not more screen time to treat screen time. And then you do the exercise. And it's intended to build from a broad foundation and a more fine-tuned approach as moving forward.

How we go through vision development naturally and the skills needed to continue to build moving forward. We've had as young as five, as old as eighty-nine go through it successfully. And I every time I say this, I want to knock wood. We've had thousands of people go through this. A hundred percent of people who have finished the first course have seen a reduction in symptoms. And even just saying that is like this is too good to be true, but

I've heard of I haven't I can't vouch for this 'cause usually people who are do screen fit are not patients we work with intimately, but I've heard people say motion sickness better or gone. Reading ability so much faster, more efficient. Driving at night becomes easier, easier to catch a ball, eye contacts improved, less brain fog, fatigue and frustration throughout the day. A lot of people saying they're not reaching for their third or fourth cup of coffee in the mid afternoon. And so

Most of these exercises are intended to do at a stoplight or in the bathroom or in between Zoom calls. So we can know, okay, eye push-ups or eye stretches really resonated with me. I felt this calm. I felt this kind of sense of almost like yoga for my visual system. And so those are in your your tool belt for things you can do throughout the day.

And love that you're seeing changes. Love that you're going through it. We're actually it's being turned into an app right now as we speak. So it's gonna be gamified and allow for probably better compliance. But this stuff works. And the people that say that vision exercises don't work are the same people saying that normal exercise doesn't work. You gotta do it, you gotta know what to do, and you gotta do the right stuff, but that's what's here.

Lucia Silver (1:11:41)
Yeah, and it isn't a magic pill,

it isn't a magic pill, it works because it scientifically works is what we keep saying. And one thing I would throw in there just super important is make it a family, make it a family thing. Because in the same way that when you're trying to get your kids to do primitive reflex exercises, the likelihood is the primitive reflex is there retaining you probably are too. There is a

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:11:54)
Yeah. Love that.

Lucia Silver (1:12:06)
a lack of time as it is for us to spend quality time with our children. So make these vision exercises part of what you do as a family. So to finish off Dr. Bryce, let us have a practical next step. What is the one thing you wish every parent knew about their child's vision? And what should a parent do after listening if they recognize their own child or perhaps themselves in this conversation?

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:12:30)
Love that. Well, before I share that, can I give your audience a a huge discount on this to just make it easier for people to get going? So let's use let's use MYMIGHTYQUINN, which will give $200 off, so 40% off. You only have to buy this once for the whole family. And I'm not supposed to say this, but once you buy it, it's yours. And doing this at the dinner table or before bedtime. And we have families who say they do peripheral pointing every night at dinner to d to

Lucia Silver (1:12:35)
Yes.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:13:00)
pick out what's on the table without actually moving their eyes to it. Or families that do eye stretches every time they're brushing their teeth. And so I think this is the type of thing, like you said, making it fun and modelling it for your families, it's gonna make it a lot easier for everybody to take that step across the start line and and get rolling. so I would say to answer your question, I think my hope for this is that everyone listening recognizes the

massive importance of vision and the eye-brain connection and is looking at so much of life differently through this lens of how are my eyes and my brain working together to either help me or hurt you in this scenario. So if somebody has a headache, they may see a neurologist. Some if somebody's child is squirmy in the classroom, they may go see a psychiatrist or learning specialist. If you're emotion sick, you may see an ENT. But with almost any symptom, we need to consider that vision

Could be a part of the problem, likely is a part of the problem, and why we really need to advocate putting our vision first, which goes way beyond just going to the eye doctor to see if you need glasses. Like start advocating for yourself and asking the eye doctor, What about my vision? Am I visually ready for XYZ? Is my child visually ready? And if that doctor looks at you funny or doesn't know what you're talking about, I hate to say this, but it's time to find another doctor.

And to find one who can be more of a a partner with you, making decisions with you, not just telling you what to do, because really having a quarterback with all aspects of health really allows us to have the best outcomes and and to live life to its fullest.

Lucia Silver (1:14:40)
Wow, thank you. That is absolute dynamite. I'm fuelled up. Dr. Bryce, what I'm taking from this conversation is that seeing a row of letters clearly tells us that one part of the story, a child also needs to be able to coordinate their eyes, shift focus. What else have I scribbled down? Track accurately, process visual information and integrate what they see with balance, movement and the rest of the body. And when those systems are not working efficiently,

the child may not have the language to explain what feels difficult, right? Instead, we may see, what have we said? Avoidance, fatigue, headaches, poor reading stamina, messy writing, distraction, clumsiness, overwhelm. frustration, lack of confidence, yeah. Functional vision difficulties.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:15:25)
Frustration, fe feeling different.

Lucia Silver (1:15:32)
may of course coexist, but may be driving the symptoms of ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other learning and developmental differences. But equally importantly, a child may present with apparent ADHD type distractibility, reading difficulties attributed to dyslexia, poor coordination, behavioural resistance, when the underlying problem could actually be how efficiently their eyes, brain and body are working together. So this is why

passing a routine eye test should not necessarily be the end of the conversation. And the better question is not simply, can my child see, but how effectively is their visual system helping them learn, move, develop, and as you so beautifully say, enjoy the world. Dr. Bryce, thank you for not only this eye-opening conversation, but for the passion and dedication and integrity.

with which you are working to get this information beyond specialist clinics and into the hands of families because vision is clearly fundamental to development. And we are just thrilled that we've got you here. We're gonna get you on the course. Thank you for refusing to accept 2020 tells us the whole story. And we have just to recap before we finish two wonderful gifts for you. The first is completely free.

We have created a practical guide using the resources generously shared by Dr. Bryce. The eye test was fine. So what are we missing? This is the parent's functional vision checklist. It's free and it will help you understand the difference between eyesight and functional vision. Recognize some possible signs during reading, handwriting, homework, screens and so forth. And you'll know which questions to ask if you feel your child needs a more comprehensive assessment. And we also have very excitingly.

a second gift from Dr. Bryce, a $200 saving on his incredible ScreenFit Vision Foundations program. I'm just halfway through, but you've heard that I'm already getting some fantastic benefits. So thank you again, Dr. Bryce. It is an absolute honour to have you here today.

Dr. Bryce Appelbaum (1:17:37)
Such an honour to be here. Thank you so much for taking your son's journey and your experiencing experience through it and helping educate and empower the world because I know how many lives you have changed just by being open. And when we know better, we can do better. So anyone who's in your tribe and your community, I hope you recognize how grateful you are to have access to all of this information, all these experts and

All this ammunition to live a more fulfilled, happier life.

Lucia Silver (1:18:09)
Thank you. And for everyone listening, you'll find Dr. Bryce's My Vision First, ScreenFit, and your free Parents Functional Vision checklist in the show notes. Please follow My Mighty Quinn wherever you listen to your podcasts, subscribe to the Brain Health Movement on YouTube, and share this episode with a parent, teacher, or practitioner who needs to understand that passing an eye test may not be the end of the conversation. Sometimes the missing piece is not invisible. We simply have not been taught how to see it. Until next time.