A child's visual acuity is only about 6/180 at one month of age, and reaches 6/6 (20/20) by 6 months of age.
Vision develops progressively through interaction with the environment. This is why it is so important to have your child's vision checked thoroughly by an optometrist at an early age, before ocular problems become permanent.
Common visual problems seen in children include:
- Refractive errors: hyperopia (long-sightedness), myopia (short-sightedness), astigmatism
- Poor eye coordination (eye teaming):
- Strabismus (an inwards or outwards turning eye)
- Amblyopia (or "lazy" eye)
- Convergence problems (difficulty turning both eyes inwards to see an object at near)
- Poor focusing skills
- Deficient eye movement skills (can be associated with poor reading, poor hand-eye coordination)
- Poor visual information processing skills (visual perception)
If your child exhibits any of the following symptoms, they can be managed by adequate glasses and/or visual therapy by a behavioural Optometrist:
- Difficulty seeing the board at school
- Blurred vision when reading
- Blurred vision from desk to board
- Rubbing eyes
- Headaches
- Sore eyes, eyestrain
- Squints
- Double vision
- Unusual head posture
- Holds books very close
- Covering one eye when reading
- Avoids reading
- Short attention span
- Slow copying from the board
- Complains of words moving on the page
- Loses place when reading, skipping lines or words
- Poor reading comprehension
- Trouble with spelling
- Slow to learn letters
- Reversing letters (b's/d's, p's/q's) or trouble differentiating similar words
- Poor recall of visually presented material
- Untidy writing
