Help for kids: Trouble reading? Maybe it’s trouble seeing

Friendly Dr. Jenessa Hartman has opened Sunflower Vision Care, offering therapies to children experiencing difficulties in overall development, including posture, movement, balance and behavior, as well as drawing, reading and learning. In this photo, Hartman was helping me see that a passerby would soon be in the photo. Her new office is at 301 E. 2nd St., across from the Granada Theatre.

By Tom Peterson

Jenessa Hartman’s journey took a significant turn in 2017.
She and her husband Mo were living in Yakima, and she started a job at Washington Vision Therapy. Center. Hartman is a doctor of Optometry, and she had been teetering on the edge of burnout.
But at this clinic, she was getting to pursue her career in vision therapy.
“I had a third-grade girl come in,” she said. “She was sad and depressed.”
The girl was reading at a first-grade level. Her friends were far more advanced. The girl knew it, was shamed by it. The print was getting smaller in the books she was attempting to read. And her math was now using story problems, which required even more reading.
“Her self-esteem was shot,” said Hartman, noting the girl was on an individual education program.
She assessed the girl and watched her try and read. 
Her eyes were having difficulty turning in when she looked up close, Hartman said. When her eyes looked at a word, each had a different focus. So in attempting to read, her brain was getting two different images.

“She was seeing double,” Hartman said. 
She gave the girl several additional tests, and she was able to diagnose it as Convergence Insufficiency. Headaches, growing tired, and reading the same line over and over were a couple of the red flags that emerge with double vision, she said. 
It’s a serious health issue. Students will give up on attempting to learn to read and avoid it altogether if left untreated. 
Studies show that reading has proven to be a major indicator of future success in adults.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information shows reading is one of the most difficult and valuable skills developed during childhood but is also one of the most cognitively challenging proficiencies to acquire,(Lyon, 1998). Many believe that early success may set a positive life-course trajectory, leading to good academic and psychosocial outcomes, whereas hampered reading skills may lead to less desirable outcomes (e.g., Butler, Marsh, Sheppard, & Sheppard, 1985; Senechal & LeFevre, 2002; Stainthorp & Hughes, 2004; Wagner et al., 1997).
There’s a lot riding on reading.
So, Hartman started vision therapy with the girl. One-on-one. She customized specific activities to retrain the child’s brain on how to refocus her eyes through coordination techniques.
“It’s similar to speech therapy,” she said. “It takes six months to a year.”
But results can come sooner.
“She was seeing better after eight weeks,” she said. “She was a different person. Happy, confident.”
“I was blown away,” she said. “It changed her life. She’s going to succeed.”
Hartman said that much of our vision is a learned process. And better yet, we all have neuroplasticity or the ability to relearn things through retraining our brains. 
Hartman said helping and seeing people’s lives so dramatically improved pushed her to open her own practice and offer pediatric eye exams and follow-up therapy if needed. 
“Children are developing right before our eyes at a rapid pace. Just like gross motor, fine motor, speech, and many other things, vision is developing as well, from birth throughout childhood. Many parents do not realize that vision problems can impact overall development, including posture, movement, balance and behavior, as well as drawing, reading and learning… the whole child and their overall visual development will be considered during their eye exam,” Hartman said on her website.
Sunflower Vision Care is at 301 E. 2nd St., across the street from the Granada Theatre.  

Putting it all Together
Hartman and her family, including three children, returned to the Gorge several years ago, where she continued to see patients at Cascade Eye Center in The Dalles and Hood River. 
And about a year ago, she decided to move forward with opening her own practice and applied for and received a business loan. 
She said Cascade Eye’s John Willer and Jeff Judah provided much assistance in getting her new office open.
It has been a struggle at times, noting she delayed opening and using her business loan due to the coronavirus. But a caveat in her loan found her in the last week of November having to purchase $80,000 of equipment in a single week. Anything costing less than $3,000 she had to cover out of her own personal finance and then be reimbursed through the loan later. Moving in, setting up computers, purchasing software. It’s been a whirlwind in the past few months.
Hartman said she realized two weeks ago that her dream of treating and providing therapy to patients was coming true. 
She hung a therapy ball from her ceiling- used for developing eye coordination. 
“It sounds crazy, but that was a really happy moment,” she said. “I could finally see that I could get started in the business of helping people.”

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Dr. Hartman attended the University of Kansas and then went on to earn a Doctorate of Optometry degree with great distinction from Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, TN in 2012.

Dr. Hartman has completed post-graduate training in the diagnosis and treatment of binocular vision disorders, strabismus and amblyopia, visual perception, and vision problems associated with acquired brain injury (including concussions). Having worked over 1,300 hours in direct patient care in this field, diagnosing and treating developmental and behavioral vision problems and providing vision therapy to patients, Dr. Hartman delighted to provide this specialized care to children and adults in the Columbia River Gorge. 

She registered her limited liability company with Oregon with the name Ad Astra Optometry, LLC. It’s a reference to her home state. It’s the Kansas motto Ad astra per aspera - Latin for “to the stars through difficulties.”

In this video above, Dr. Hartman demonstrates one of the coordination techniques used to help patients work through vision problems by retraining the brain.