Children's Vision
What Do I Need To Know About Childrens Vision?
Vision is so important for learning as it is the main sense that is utilised at school. Many subtle visual issues can be overlooked when your child is assessed at a school screening or undertaking a routine eye exam, as your child may have "20/20" vision but be seriously straining their eyes and concentrating extremely hard to achieve that. If you have any concerns with your child's learning or school performance, then please make sure that you gain an understanding of how your child's eyes are: Focusing, Aligning and Tracking
👩🏫Is your child struggling at school?
Most children with learning difficulties do not present with a 'refractive error', meaning that they are not significantly long-sighted (hyperopic), short-sighted (myopic), or have astigmatism. Instead, they tend to have minimal refractive error, but significant issues with how they use their eyes.
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Here are some signs and symptoms to watch out for that may indicate that your child has an vision issue and will benefit from a comprehensive eye exam to explore whether glasses or vision therapy may be helpful.
😵Signs and symptoms to watch out for that relate to how the eyes team together:
- Double vision
- Headaches
- Words moving on the page
- Covering or closing one eye to read
- Poor reading posture
- Tilting their head to the side when reading or writing
- Blinking
- Motion sickness
👀These signs and symptoms may be due to your child having trouble with their focusing:
- Avoiding small print
- Becoming fatigued when reading
- Complaining of blurred vision when reading
- Complaining of eye strain
- Frontal headaches
- Having a short attention span when reading
- Holding books very close
- Rubbing their eyes when concentrating
📖Signs and symptoms that may indicate issues with your child's eye tracking:
- Losing place on the page often
- Skipping words and lines often
- Using a finger to keep place
- Poor eye-hand coordination
- Moving their head when reading
- Reading slowly
- Reading comprehension decreasing over time
- Difficulty copying from the board
🤔Signs and symptoms that your child may have issues with their visual processing ability:
- Responds orally but not in writing
- Has good verbal comprehension but poor reading comprehension
- Seems to know material but does poorly on written material
- Trouble learning left and right
- Reverses letters and numbers
- Has untidy handwriting
- Frequently erases their written work
- Has poor organisation on a page
- Writes neatly but slowly
- Has trouble learning basic maths
- Mistakens words with similar beginnings
- Has poor recall of visual material
- Difficulty following a set of instructions
- Has trouble learning letter-sound correspondence
- Has poor word attack skills
⚽🏀Signs and symptoms that your child may have issues with their motor ability:
- Poor gross motor coordination
- Difficulty with scissor/small hand tools
- Dislikes or avoids sports
- Difficulty catching or hitting balls
EYEWEAR FOR CHILDREN
🤓I also understand that finding eyewear for young children can be difficult, and have invested in a range of lightweight, soft, comfortable, easy-to-maintain and affordable eyewear for little ones called the Bendy Series, exclusively available at Carina Eye Care. Tomato glasses are also a great option for this age group.
Some frames come with a complimentary strap that can be swapped into for situations when the glasses need to be extra secure.
