Children

Ready For School?

“He’s a smart kid, but he’s just not doing well in school!”

I can hear the frustration in the parent’s voice. Often the child is doing their best, but they are waging an uphill battle. Your child may be fighting against undiscovered vision problems. Few children will complain because they have nothing to compare it to. They just know that no one understands how hard it is and that mom, dad, and their teacher are not happy.

A vision problem may be present if your child: (more…)

By eidauk|2018-12-19T17:20:38-07:00August 13th, 2014|Children, Eye health|0 Comments

Your Child’s Vision – Why You Should Be Concerned

Source: Facebook / Tara Taylor

Facebook may have saved this little girl’s sight! This photo was posted to Facebook by her mother, Tara Taylor. It shows the smiling three-year-old, Rylee Taylor. Immediately, friends and family knew something wasn’t right. They suggested that she get the little girl into an eye doctor due to her white left pupil. An eye exam revealed that Rylee had a rare eye disease called Coat’s Disease, which can lead to blindness. The mother had no idea her little girl was going blind in that eye.

As eye doctors, we are very concerned with children’s vision for many reasons. Here are some of our concerns.

Children often don’t complain about vision problems because they have nothing to compare it to. If their vision is blurry, they figure that everyone sees like that.
A child’s brain is so adaptable that it will often compensate for a serious vision problem. If one eye is blurry, the brain will shut off the blurry eye and favor the good eye. Imagine never using your left arm. Eventually it becomes weak and useless. The visual system is no different.
A child could be blind or going blind in one eye and the parents would not even notice it. The child can still spot an airplane off in the distant sky, but may only be using one eye.
The refractive error or prescription of a child can change rapidly from year to year. One year they can see just fine at school and the next year their grades begin to drop. The parent determines that the child just isn’t paying attention or applying himself. But in reality, he’s doing the best he can with his increasingly blurry vision.
The inside of the eye lacks pain-sensing nerves. This concern applies to adults also. The outside of the eye is the most sensitive part of the body. It can sense a speck of dust on the surface. But you can have your retina pull away from the back of the eye, known as a retinal detachment, and have no pain. You can lose your side vision from glaucoma and have no idea until it’s too late and irreversible damage has been done.

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By eidauk|2018-12-19T17:20:38-07:00April 4th, 2014|Children, Eye health|0 Comments

Study Shows Eyeglasses Raise Kids Intellegence, Honesty

I remember getting my first pair of glasses at 14 years old. When my optometrist recommended them, visions of being called “four-eyes” and random punchings by the many prominent bullies at my school filled my mind. To make things worse, just a few months after getting my glasses, my orthodontist recommended braces! A very traumatic childhood indeed.

Research to the rescue! Kids may have a few less social problems to worry about in light of a new study.¹ 42 girls and 38 boys were shown various pairs of pictures of children, which included one child with glasses and the other without. About two thirds said the children wearing the glasses looked smarter and 57 percent said they looked more honest.

In my personal and professional opinion, children are not very interested in looking smarter or more honest when I tell them they need glasses. Kids mostly just want to fit into social circles with their peers. This is where the study results get interesting. Despite a child’s social fears with glasses, the researchers did not find any significant preference in who they’d rather play with, who looked better at sports, who looked more shy, nor who was better looking. (more…)

By eidauk|2018-12-19T17:20:46-07:00May 29th, 2008|Children, Fashion|0 Comments