PART 3: Teaching. The Strabismus World Transformed Through Vision Therapy and Straight Eyes

hi my name is Melissa Daniels and I have strabismus strabismus is when your eyes

don't point in the same direction and your brain doesn't know how to use both of them and so you're

kind of using one eye at a time or only one eye and this can wreak havoc on your entire life but

the good news is that if you do the work you can get your brain to start using both eyes and then

that havoc goes away and it's replaced with this amazing wonder of having both

eyes work together and that's what I've been experiencing for the last three years as I've done vision therapy and I did have surgery as well I have seen

huge changes in my life and it's so magical so this whole summer series is

all about sharing the differences that I'm seeing in my daily life with all of

you if you want to know more details about my background there's timelines

and so many articles on my website at strabismusolutions.com. You can read all of those details over there

So today I want to talk to you about what a difference having my eyes work together and be straight has made in teaching

Now this one is going to be a little bit more of the emotional side, not so much of like having depth perception

I am a math teacher that's my I got a degree in math education and I also teach a lot at my church and in those situations you standing at the front of a classroom and you looking at this group of kids and if you I mean okay so I don know how it is for I do

know how it is for normal people now but I'll just kind of explain what it's like

when you have strabismus so because your eyes aren't pointing the same direction

when you want to call on somebody and you look at that person and say that you know they're raising

their hand and you say yes you know that you might say what's two plus two and then someone

raises their hand and you say yes and you you gesture towards them or look at them and they

don't respond and then they look confused like are you talking to me and then they're looking over

their shoulder trying to figure out if you're looking at them now as a teacher what i would do

to combat this is I would learn everyone's names as quickly as possible. Their pictures would show

up on like my rosters and I would try to memorize them as fast as I could because then you could

call on them by name. You can say, yes, Tim, go ahead. Yes, Mary, go ahead. You always would

you have to use a name because otherwise they don't know if you're looking at them or not. And this is really hard when you're teaching high school and you have like 120 students

It's just impossible to keep track of all of their names. And so for the first few days

you just have a lot of really confused students. And so then you start gesturing and you're like pointing

like yes, you right there in the red shirt, and you're like describing what they're wearing

And it just it tough The same thing can happen when you teaching in church even in a small setting and you just got like 10 kids in your class and you trying to call on somebody and again like if you don know their name they don know if you looking at them

and there's always this like awkward, like over-the-shoulder glancing, like, are you talking to me? Is it me? Is it them? Okay. It's just kind of the worst. I mean

I hate to be a complainer. I try to be positive, and like, you can think whatever you want and

change your thoughts and all that good stuff. But I'm just gonna say it's just not that fun

to have people not know if you're looking at them or not. It's not the end of the world, they're not being mean

I don't take it personally, or like someone's trying to attack me by not knowing I'm looking at them

Like, I get it. If I had somebody with Strabismus teaching my class

and they called on me, but not by name, I wouldn't know if they were looking at me either

So I get it, but also it's just really hard and not that fun

So here's the big change that I've seen since doing vision therapy and having surgery

and having my eyes be straight. I don't have to think about it anymore

I don't have to have people's names memorized. It's so easy. You simply look at the person and say

yes, go ahead, and then they answer. It's like this human connection

It's this unspoken thing that people understand what eye contact means. they can tell where your eyes are pointed

and they know you're pointing them at them and they know it's their turn to speak. Does this I know is that too simple It is it so easy I don think about it anymore Every now and then I recognize that oh my gosh I can call on anybody and I don have to know anyone names I not so stressed about remembering everybody names anymore

I still wanna learn people's names because I wanna be the kind of person that knows names

but it's not this like overbearing like anxiety about like, what's their name, what's their name

I have to know their name because if I don't know their name, they won't know I'm talking to them. And so I just can relax and it's so nice

So yes, is that vein? Maybe a little bit, but you can't talk about the benefits

of having your eyes straight without talking about that because I'm telling you, it's been amazing

So if you wanna learn more about how I decided to do vision therapy

and why I decided to have surgery, or if you are trying to investigate this for yourself

definitely head over to my website. You can even schedule a consult with me

and we can talk over Zoom about it. I can help you find either vision therapy or surgery

depending on what direction is best for you and your diagnosis and your, you know

whatever your specifics are in your life. And that's strabismusolutions.com slash consult

And I just hope that there's so much hope for people who have struggled

I know I'm not the only one who's had those struggles. There is hope and it gets so much better

and it's worth the work. It's so wonderful. So, I hope you join me in the journey

from strabismus to stereopsis. See you in the next video