August is Children’s Eye Health month. Today we are talking about the importance of proper vision care for your kids. AUI has a number of resources that employers can distribute to employees. To learn more please contact us.
Properly developed vision is vital to a child’s growth and development. Use the following guidelines to help understand and care for your children’s eyes.
Infant Vision
- During the first four months of life, infants will follow moving objects with their eyes and attempt to reach for things.
- Between four and eight months, a baby should begin to turn from side to side, as well as use his or her arms and legs. At this time, eye movements and eye-body coordination skills begin to develop, and both eyes should focus more.
- At 8 to 12 months old, a baby should begin to use both eyes together and be able to judge distances.
A baby’s eyes should be checked at birth and during well-baby doctor visits throughout his or her first year. All children should also undergo a complete eye exam at around 6 months old.
Preschool-age Vision
Between ages 3 and 6, children continue the process of fine-tuning their vision skills. Preschool children develop visually-guided eye, hand and body coordination; general motor skills; and the necessary visual motor skills to learn how to read and write. If no previous vision problem has been detected, your child should have a thorough eye exam by age 3 to ensure vision is developing properly and to detect any developing eye diseases. If the child remains healthy, his or her next eye exam should be at age 5.
School-age Vision
Astigmatism, nearsightedness and farsightedness are the main vision concerns for school-age children. To detect and treat these problems, they should have their eyes checked around age 6 and every two years thereafter if no vision problems exist.
However, if a child requires glasses or contact lenses for refractive errors, he or she should receive a vision exam every year. The basic vision skills a child needs by school age include:
- Near and distance vision
- Eye movement skills
- Focusing skills
- Peripheral vision
- Hand-eye coordination
Parents should bring children in for a complete eye exam and should not rely solely on vision screenings done by a school nurse or pediatrician
Spotting Eye Problems
Signs that a child may have vision problems include:
- Constant eye rubbing
- Extreme light sensitivity
- Poor focusing
- Poor visual tracking (following an object)
- Abnormal eye alignment or movement after 6 months of age
- Chronic eye redness or tearing
- A white pupil instead of black
- In school-age children, watch for other signs such as:
- Inability to see objects at a distance
- Inability to read the blackboard
- Squinting
- Difficulty reading
- Sitting too close to the TV
Source: www.kidshealth.org
