Your Child's Eyesight

It is vitally important to have your Child's vision checked at periodic intervals. Poor vision can seriously hamper a child's ability to learn and develop.

All babies are born with long sighted vision and the ability to focus on fine detail is acquired during its early months. The eyes are not fully developed at birth and vision needs to be stimulated in order for it to develop correctly.

Children can be checked from a very young age - it is not necessary for them to recognise numbers or letters to read the test chart. We strongly recommend that your child is checked pre-school.

Your optometrist will check:

That the eyes are healthy and developing normally
To rule out short sight, long sight and astigmatism
That the eyes are working together
To rule out a squint
To rule out a lazy eye

Parents should not rely on their children to complain about problems with their vision as a child can often live with poor vision because they do not know what normal vision is.

Just as children visit the dentist regularly it is worth making regular visits to your family optometrist. Many eyesight defects such as long or short sight, astigmatism, squint and lazy eyes can be inherited - so if there is a family history of these sight deficiencies, your child is more at risk.

Parents should be alert for the following signs:

Not showing an interest in learning to read
Frequent headaches
Sitting very close to television
Struggling to follow work presented on the black board

Having an eye examination for the first time can sometimes be a frightening time for the child in a room filled with 'strange instruments'. All of our optometrists are experienced in examining children and we try very hard to make the tests as fun as possible making the whole experience an interesting event.