I would like to know is Bates method can help my son.
He is five years all and has suddenly experienced estrabismus. What has let me to this website is that he aligns his eyes when he is relaxed. After a good night, his sight is all right but with the passing hours he experiences diplopia (sees double image).
Doctors are still discussing about the origin of the problem but menawhile they have no treatment for him apart from waiting to see if the estrabismus desappears espontaneously.
I think that teaching him to keep his eyes relaxed could make all the difference.
We live in Madrid, (Spain) and I'm afraid I won't find a teacher to learn the method, Any suggestions/help?
Yes, Bates Method has been reported to help correct strabismus.
Also, I myself had it as a youth (one eye would swing outward) and it was cured by a combination of something called "patch therapy" as well as pencil exercises. That was far before I even knew about Bates.
Patch therapy is simply covering one eye with a patch. For me, I wore a patch over one eye one day, then the other eye the next day. You could even alternate every few hours. But you also want to encourage the eyes to work together. So maybe try one eye, then the other eye, then both eyes together. Rinse and repeat.
Don't be too aggressive with it. From what I've read, one or more muscles is too TENSE, pulling the eye in an outward direction. The point is not to strengthen, but to let that muscle release.
[edit:]
I forgot to mention that Strabismus could also be caused by one eye seeing a better "picture" than the other. You should test your son's eyes independently and determine if one is seeing much better than the other. If so, the "worse" eye is probably the one that swings out of place? In this case the brain basically tries to "discard" the worse image and deactivates that eye. If this is the case, the patch and pencil therapies above could still help, combined with a bit of vision training to improve the "worse" eye.
