Regular eye exams are a must for kids. Since vision problems often appear for the first-time during childhood, having annual eye exams offers a simple way to protect your child’s eyesight and ensure they are seeing well.
Good Vision Is Essential for Learning: Your child relies on their visual memory to remember spelling words and recognize shapes and letters. If your child’s vision is blurry, the information stored in the brain’s visual memory center may not be accurate. This can lead to difficulty reading, completing math problems, copying words, or writing clearly. Kids who have poor vision may also become frustrated at school, which can lead to behavioral problems.
School Eye Exams Don’t Identify All Vision Issues: Although the eye exams schools conduct are certainly helpful, they may not identify all vision and medical problems related to the eye. In fact, school vision screenings fail to detect up to 75% of vision issues, according to the American Optometric Association.
Vision Problems: A variety of vision problems can affect your child’s eyesight and school performance, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, strabismus (crossed eyes), amblyopia (lazy eye), visual processing disorders, focusing problems, and eye teaming or tracking difficulties.
Children May Not Realize That They Need Glasses: Just because your child has never complained about poor vision doesn’t mean that they can see clearly. After all, it’s impossible to tell that you have a vision problem if the world has always looked slightly blurry.
Regular eye exams will help ensure the vision is crisp and clear. Not sure how often your child needs to visit the optometrist? The AOA recommends these visit guidelines: Once Between 3 – 5 Years, Before 1st Grade, and Annual up to age 18.
