Testimonial #1
I found Dr. Kaplan through a friend who suggested my daughter Kat might benefit from meeting him. After a full year on the waiting list, Kat finally had the chance to meet with Dr. Kaplan. It was worth the wait although painful to think of the year that passed and how things might have been different for our family had we seen him sooner. Kat was a little over 4 years old when she had her initial appointment with Dr. Kaplan. While in a special needs preschool, receiving OT, PT and speech therapies, Kat had no specific diagnosis. The simplest way to describe her was to say something was “off”. She was a very sickly child, in a pattern of almost one week sick, one week healthy. Her energy level was poor and her disposition difficult. Cognitively she was inconsistent – age appropriate in some areas and behind in others. Physically she was uncoordinated, imbalanced and stressed by dynamic environments- she was unwilling/unable to throw, catch or hit a ball, would pedal a bike a few times and quit, and would trip, fall and run into things constantly. While socially she was outgoing, she was inappropriate- talking to teachers who were across the room as if they were standing next to her, going from classmate to classmate repeating the same thing to each, etc. Needless to say, a very adept child study team acknowledged her shortcomings and placed her in a special needs program. After her first year in the program, her case manager (appropriately or not) informed us that she expected Kat to be in a Special Education program for the foreseeable future.
In September, we saw Dr. Kaplan for the first time. Within the first two minutes of the exam, Dr. Kaplan asked Kat to stand on one foot. She attempted to do so as her face grimaced, her hands flailed and quickly she had to put her foot down. Dr. Kaplan put glasses on her and asked her to try again. She stood like a statue and I was reduced to tears. The exam continued, converting me into a believer much more quickly than my skeptical husband. Trying to process the immediate and dramatic change in our daughter was challenging - but we saw the results firsthand. In fact, my husband went one step beyond and had Dr. Kaplan test him. My skeptical husband now wears the glasses, plays tennis at a higher level and is able to read more than two pages of a book before falling asleep.
The changes in Kat are almost too far reaching to list as we now can appreciate how challenging her world once was. Her digestive issues, her low energy levels, her difficult temperament and her chronic health problems have all disappeared. Never would I have imagined her visual function would be related to all of these seemingly tangential characteristics. Looking back, it all makes sense. When someone is tense as a result of their not feeling visually stable, their body is exhausted trying to compensate thereby causing many physiological issues. Cognitively, Kat has shown tremendous progress as well. She has quickly learned her letter sounds, can count and can reason – all contributing to her being placed in a mainstream preschool for a few days each week. She also has grown physically. She now initiates throwing and catching, can sustain herself on a bicycle for an extended period and has even learned to write.
We have worked hard with her over the past few months – never missing her prescribed vision therapy exercises that we do at home each day. While it would be difficult for Kat to comprehend the reason for her glasses and her exercises, she knows how she feels. She never takes her glasses off and works hard at her exercises. She clearly feels better wearing her glasses. At her most recent IEP meeting, one teacher described her as “the happiest child she had ever met”. And she is right.
Kat's life and our family's life has been changed forever thanks to Dr. Kaplan and his wonderful staff.
Testimonial #2
Dr. Kaplan has changed our daughter's life so much that we've often considered erecting a life size statue of him to adorn our Living Room. Seriously, our daughter's depth perception issues seemed insurmountable until we heard about Dr. Kaplan's book, Seeing Through New Eyes . No amount of OT or PT could have solved her issues since she did not see the world in the same way as us. Her brain used to see an average stair as a mountain to climb or fall off of. Climbing a playground structure was not a possibility because she was so scared. She could not navigate a supermarket where there were big aisles and white floors without holding onto a grown up for dear life. Life seemed like a scary roller coaster ride for her before prism lenses and vision therapy. Our daughter can now navigate stairs, play structures and markets like every other kid. It's been several years of hard work and dedication. She's really our hero because she works so hard.
Testimonial #3
I have worked with Dr. Kaplan for about a year. I started out by bringing my daughter for an evaluation and treatment and ended up getting myself some help. Dr. Kaplan and his staff were courteous and professional. Just as importantly, the type of work and training the center does is ground breaking. Dr. Kaplan's visual examinations are infinitely more thorough than other professionals I've seen. Having shadowed him to learn more about his work on a professional basis I noticed that he is also very disciplined in his field and continues to study and discover from his patients and current literature. He is in a unique position to apply these principles in his daily practice. I was also impressed with how he would pay close attention to the weekly or monthly progress of his patients, altering protocols to respond to their current responses. In this way each treatment plan is truly tailored to the individual. His staff has also taken it upon themselves to learn this field more in depth which adds to the atmosphere of continuous learning that is put into practice for the patient's benefit.
As far as my own personal experience, when I started out I had headaches a few times a week. My eyes felt uncomfortable in my glasses despite timely periodic check-ups with three different providers. Now I get headaches on average of <2 times a month and I do not experience discomfort in my glasses. In conclusion I feel that Dr. Kaplan embodies the essential characteristics of an expert clinician; he genuinely cares for patients and tirelessly seeks to perfect his professional knowledge.
A.S
Physiatrist
New York
Testimonial #4
Dr. Kaplan was gentle and very patient with our son. The staff is very accommodating and flexible. From day one our son refused to take off the prism lenses. I saw his body quiet down during the evaluation. He really wanted to wear the lenses and couldn't wait until the day we picked them up. The first day that we received the glasses I had a hard time convincing him to take them off when he was ready for bed.
Our son has benefited greatly from vision therapy. He has made a lot of progress since he started working with Dr. Kaplan. It is no longer difficult for him to go down hallways and stairs. He looks forward to going to Dr. Kaplan's office and that by itself is an indication that he is enjoying the therapy and that he knows that the therapy is helping him.
Testimonial #5
In addition to his contributions as a dedicated clinician, Dr. Kaplan deserves recognition as a true pioneer in the field of vision training. One of the most notable aspects of his work is that he made many of his first ground breaking discoveries about the role of vision problems in developmental and psychiatric disorders in the 1970's -- an era in which most professionals were still uniformly blaming such disorders on poor parenting or early emotional trauma. Dr. Kaplan's use of vision therapy to help patients with schizophrenia and anxiety disorders in the late 1970's and early 1980's, an approach that flew in the face of medical dogma, made him one of the first medical professionals to offer an effective biological treatment for these patients. He continues, to this day, to challenge the medical establishment -- and he continues to persevere in seeking the most effective ways to improve the lives of the children and adults he treats.
Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D.
Autism Research Institute
San Diego, CA
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