Ben E. Stoebner, O.D., Developmental Optometrist, Retired

Developmental Vision:
The Solution to Children’s Learning Problems

The solution for children’s learning to read, write, and learning how numbers work has been solved.

Since 1954, a year after graduating from optometry, I became interested in what was, or would be, termed Developmental Vision. After over 50 years of studying and pursuing it, the solution to children’s learning problems is available.

What is Developmental Vision? After years of working with children having learning problems, my definition. For those of us who use reflected light as information source, learning how to see the visual concepts of things, space, time and movement, is the basis of and the development of intelligence, survival intelligence. It is also the preparation for academic intelligence, that is the visual abilities and visual concepts of reading, writing, learning numbers and how they work. Most all of what we learn passes through our visual process.

What is the visual process? It means everything we have seen since birth, are seeing and will see in the future. It means anything to do with the mental activities , the visualizations, of what we have seen, are seeing and will extrapolate into the future. Do not confuse the visual process with eyesight, which is part of the visual process. Eyesight is the raw material.

Helping someone learn how to see visual concepts is teaching. Developmental Vision is the only solution for solving children’s learning problems. The field of education should be interested, but from my attempts at communicating with them, have concluded they do not understand it. They are administrators, not teachers(?)

During my active years in practice, I worked over 30 years with children having learning problems, one-on-one, personally,

Ben E. Stoebner, Member of Triple Nine Society for 30 years

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