Stella is a toe-walker.

She’s been tiptoeing around for as long as I can remember. Prancing, really. Her gait has been so bouncy and adorable, so evocative of a little ballerina, that her physical effervescence has charmed even sour onlookers. I’ve been kindling a small flame of worry about her overworked and constantly clenched toes, despite an inner voice that told me to stop looking for trouble where there was none.

Early last year, I met up with Stella’s occupational therapist–the OT who helped Stella overcome her feeding aversion–to check in and discuss ideas for an article about our feeding experiences. I couldn’t help but ask for her expert opinion on Stella’s toe-walking. And just as I’d hoped, she reassured me. She rightly noted that Stella could stand on flat feet, bend her legs and pick something up with ease. Stella walked flat-footed here and there, and when she stood still, it was often on flat feet. Clearly, Stella was not incapable of walking flat-footed. Besides, she was less than 18 months old at that time, and toe-walking is relatively common in such little ones. In my heart and soul, I agreed with this assessment. I mean, really, do we have to make every little kid quirk into a problem to be fixed? It made me angry to think that something so seemingly age-appropriate and  harmless about Stella could be pathologized. Enough with the medicalization of childhood already! As my dad used to bellow, in Braveheart fashion complete with a raised fist before leaving to pick up our Friday night pizza, “Who is with me?!” So I stopped worrying about it. For a while.

Fast forward a few dizzying toddler months. Sail past the great eye-crossing incident of 2010 and whiz by the diagnoses of strabismus/accommodative esotropia, hyeropia, anisometropia and amblyopia. Jump to Stella’s first appointment with her developmental optometrist, Dr. Torgerson (“Dr. T”) of Alderwood Vision Therapy Center. (‘Bout time I named her–we’re very lucky.) Upon meeting Stella, having taken her hand in the waiting room and led her to the exam room, Dr. T noticed that Stella walks on her toes. (Note: Stella’s ophthalmologist never noticed, or at the very least never mentioned, this.) During that consultation, Dr. T placed yoked prism goggles over Stella’s regular specs. Stella’s toe-walking was completely eliminated. She walked flat, instantly. No. Joke. Stella seemed to be looking at everything with new eyes. Dr. T seemed interested but unsurprised and made a note that this was worth exploring. I was still a bit defensive, a bit reluctant. I tried to reason around it. As in, “Well, she was just walking very slowly and cautiously due to the weird distortion of the prisms and that’s probably why she wasn’t as bouncy or tiptoe-y.” Of course, while my focus at that time was beginning a course of vision therapy to address the aforementioned diagnoses, I did at least make a mental note about the prisms’ elimination of her toe-walking. In truth, I pushed it aside, not wanting to create another problem. Not wanting to accept that in addition to her feeding and vision challenges, Stella’s toe-walking was “an issue.”

Turns out that the toe-walking wasn’t so much a seperate issue as an unexpected (to me) extension of her visual one(s). Since that fateful day, Stella has worn the prism goggles many times during vision therapy sessions. After the first time Stella wore them under the guidance of our vision therapist, Bethanie, I was sold on their effect. There was no denying it! I was struck not only by how her gait instantly changed, but also her demeanor. With the yoked prism goggles (the stronger the prism, the more pronounced the effect), she not only walks “flat” but also seems more calm and able to focus. The stronger ones are pretty overwhelming, however, so we’ve scaled back to some less powerful ones with plans to work in the original stronger pair soon. It’s a mind-blowing work in progress, if you will.

In essence, yoked prism goggles help re-wire the brain, forcing it to re-map spatial relations. Every time she wears them, they help her gauge the world more accurately. The repercussions are stunning. This isn’t just addressing Stella’s vision. Changes are happening in her brain, in how she perceives the world and her place in it. And that dramatically affects how she feels and behaves.

When Stella leaves those vision therapy sessions (wherein she wears the prism goggle, of any strength, really), she is more outgoing. She is open. Allow me to explain why that fact is so incredibly huge. I don’t label Stella as shy. I don’t want to presume, at age two, that “shy” is who she is and I don’t want to convince her that it is. But I will say that she is often quite tentative. We do see flashes of wonderful social interaction and friendliness–she’s very attached to her best friend, Cooper–so I know her social self is in there. But most often, she shrinks back under even the friendliest gaze from a stranger, or is daunted by mere proximity to people.

On the playground, Stella’s crowd avoidance is overt. She rarely uses structures if anyone else is there already. If someone playful soul is on or near the slide, instead of waiting for a turn or walking up with the understanding that they’ll be down soon, she avoids it completely. If people step aside and watch her, with a smile and friendly encouragement or quiet patience, she refuses to go down. She’s protective of herself. At music class, when the basket of instruments is placed in the center of the room, every other child in the room just flat-out goes for it. They make a beeline for the basket, and grab what they want, carefree! Stella immediately takes a step or two forward, only to halt as everyone rushes by. She waits for a big opening instead of squeezing in willy-nilly like the rest. Part of me has long wanted to push her into the fray. To tell her that she’s just as entitled and doesn’t have to wait for everyone else to take first pick. I just chime in with lighthearted encouragement, and a hand on her back.

Qualities like patience and shyness seem almost beside the point when I think about her vision, and the effect of the yoked prism goggles. I’m now convinced that such reserved, cautious behavior is due, at least in part, to the effect of her visual field–not just her innate personality. Crowded places (especially new ones) and chaotic situations can be so, so anxiety-producing for Stella. Thankfully, at long last, I now believe I understand why. She has trouble gauging her place in relation to a crowd. Per Dr. T and our vision therapist, Stella’s peripheral vision is likely limited, creating a type of tunnel vision that makes life more stressful. She’s always on guard because she’s learned that objects in her proverbial mirror are closer than they appear. She can’t quite trust her visual system in those situations. How startling that would be! And how draining and frustrating to be startled so often. So she takes extra precautions. Her separation anxiety, viewed through this lens of understanding, makes much more sense to me now. I’m her anchor amid the unfamiliar and unstable.

The same visual issues that cause this sort of defensiveness also give rise to her toe-walking. It’s not so much a problem as a solution Stella has come up with to better orient herself in the world as she perceives it. I get it now–the details may be hazy, but I am starting to understand a bit better how Stella sees, and how it affects her way of being.

Back to those yoked prism goggles! Despite some difficulty in getting her to wear them for extended periods, they seem to somehow relax her, and the results are stunning. After her last vision therapy session, during which the goggles are now a prominent therapeutic fixture, Stella ran out into the waiting room and strode right up to a much older child, looking him in the eye and beaming! I was elated. A few sessions ago, in the waiting area following one of her first (“full-strength”) prism goggle trials in vision therapy, Stella started chatting with another family. The mother was gently encouraging her children to put away the toys, and put on their coats, because “we’re going home.” Stella walked up to her, looked her in the eye and said, “We’re going home too! I’m going home!” She kept engaging them, over and over, as they walked out. They smiled and acknowledged her, probably regarding it as typical little kid behavior, but to me? I had to hold back emotion. On yet another such occasion, in between those two examples, Stella walked into the play area of the waiting room after goggle-clad vision therapy, waltzed up to the small play table which was closely encircled by older and taller children, and she confidently and without hesitation joined them. She nudged right in next to a 6 or 7 year old boy. She looked at him, started talking, and reached for the toys on the small table as the others played as well. She was unphased. I was awed. Deeply heartened. That was Stella, freed! That was Stella, no longer feeling caged in by her vision. Her world had opened up. She seemed lighter, less stressed, and more engaged with everyone around her. She carried an innate sense of security. I want her to feel that secure all the time (hek, I wish I did!), or at least more often. My hope is that continued use of the yoked prism goggles will get her there–in tandem with our other vision therapy efforts.

Already, Stella’s toe-walking is fading away. She isn’t so high up on her toes, and she uses her heels more often when getting around. Also! She used to flap her arms, especially when happy and excited, but we just realized that she hasn’t done that in a long, long time! Bear with me: Based on limited but fascinating reading, I’ve gathered that autistic children and others with tunnel vision (or other related visual issues in which ambient vision and/or depth perception are compromised) use arm flapping and toe-walking in part to help gauge their place in relation to their environment. Stella is not autistic, but there are clear parallels between Stella’s vision challenges, and even her behavior in specific situations, and those of autistic kids. Many of them would greatly benefit (not just visually but socially and emotionally and in all kinds of ways) from vision therapy yet never get exposure to it. Hopefully that’s changing as awareness of vision therapy grows. So much needless suffering could be eliminated or at least significantly reduced. I am the wanna-be Gandhi of vision therapy.

My view of vision therapy has greatly expanded over the months, along with Stella’s vision therapy regimen. At first, back in the dark ages, I viewed this work as the remedy for Stella’s amblyopia and probable accompanying deficit of stereoscopy. Plain and simple, just like the initial exercises: catching balloons, stringing beads onto pipe cleaners, and the like. Now, her exercises are centered around yoked prism goggles and vestibular activities. She’s using her whole body. Her brain is re-configuring the world. This isn’t an effort to “fix Stella’s eyes.” It’s a campaign addressing the myriad of ways her vision affects her physical and psychological wellbeing. And mine. Our stress reverberates between us, and can be overwhelming at times. I try to take a tip from Stella and just step back and be patient as we work through this, but sometimes I fail. It’s okay. We’re both doing the best we can. I get cupcakes for myself too often, but that’s a small and delicious price to pay.

The goal as I now see it? Stella won’t feel the need to tiptoe through life–literally or figuratively.