Parent Becomes Believer – Then a Trainer

When a medical specialist recommended Dr. Rick Graebe, a behavioral optometrist in Versailles, to treat Amy Holtzclaw’s daughter, Emily, Mom thought she was getting the run around.

Math was Emily’s problem in fourth grade. She could read well and wore corrective glasses.

How could an eye doctor help her? “I was skeptical,” Amy said.

Flash forward a few years and Emily is a success at school and Amy is working for Dr. Graebe.

Amy took her daughter to Dr. Graebe because she refused to give up on her child.

“My daughter was very bright and, yes, she was clumsy, but I thought that was because she was tall for her age,” Amy said.

Testing with Dr. Graebe revealed that Emily had problems with eye convergence and eye teaming, which means her right and left eye were not cooperating with each other.

“She was seeing double and didn’t know it,” Amy said.

Dr. Graebe immediately prescribed a new pair of glasses and a course of 30 sessions of Vision Therapy.

The family saw immediate results.

The first day that Emily wore the new glasses she told her mom, “I ran up the steps without looking at them and I didn’t have to hold on to the railing.”

Her mother reported that Emily’s confidence soared, and teachers say she came out of her shell.

Her math grades quickly climbed from C’s and D’s to A’s.

This past summer Amy received a call from Dr. Graebe’s office asking if she would like to learn to become a Vision Therapy trainer.

Amy is an elemen-tary school teacher in Lincoln County with 20 years exper-ience.

Because of her belief in Vision Therapy, Amy jumped at the opportunity, even though it means driving 90 minutes after teaching all day from Lincoln County to the Children’s Vision and Learning Center in Versailles.

“My passion is to help children,” she said. “I know what it’s like as a parent to cry yourself to sleep because your child is struggling.

“If I can help another parent going through that, absolutely I will. This is a great job.”