Archive for the ‘Children’s Vision’ category

Vision Development and Therapy for Preschoolers

November 11th, 2009

Puerile time is a key period of children’s development, including intellectual, social and physical development. They learn much knowledge about the nature, science and human communications while they grow up rapidly physically. Parents will pay much attention at these aspects to provide their children a well-balanced growth condition. However, preschool visual development and vision therapy is often ignored, which can be critical in children’s study and school performance during their puerile period.

In general preschool development, there is a specific development points called milestones. These specific time frames are charted to see if the child has physical development problems or intellectual challenges. It is usually very useful and easy to find problems which can be solved in time after suitable therapy.

However, it is much harder to find the children’s vision problems by setting such milestones. What we do now to exam the visual system of children? Most of the parents, teachers or even optometrists just exam the child to see if they can see properly, for instance, can they see 20/20 line clearly? Optometrists may do more to exam if the children’s eye is straight. But, these exams are really not enough in judging the health condition of their visual system.

Experts in the children’s vision development and vision therapy have suggested a higher standard that may change a child’s whole life. It is found that kids with identifiable learning disabilities have vast majority to have problems of their visual system. It is a pity that almost all of the children can pass the Optometrists’ eye tests. In other words, passing the eye tests is just a base level, there is much more to learning about how to develop the children’s visual system by a series of vision therapy.

Vision therapy is researched to develop preschool vision skills of the children. These vision therapy include eye coordination and focus, eye movements at all directions, coding, sequencing, gross and fine motor, balance, visual memory, and so on. These therapies are not only used to develop the visual system but also have amazing effects on the development of learning skills such as reading, writing, and remember spelling words without magic pill or magic glasses. All these skills can be trained!

So don’t hesitate doing the right vision therapies, it can help developing your child’s learning ability as well as their vision system.

The Development of Children’s Vision

November 9th, 2009

Children’s vision develops significantly fast in the first year of their lives.

When a child is born, they can see only black, white and grey. That is because newborns have only the mechanism of vision but not full ability to see every aspect of things. Infants usually prefer to see people’s faces first, and after that they will be interested in other objects. Make sure that the child has healthy eyes in the first 12 weeks of life which is a very important period of the development of vision. It is recommended that the child be check for the health condition of its eyes by paediatrician. From 8 weeks old to 4 months, infants begin to follow objects, moving their eyes or moving their head together in the same direction of their vision.

Between 4 and 6 months old, children’s visual acuity or sharpness has developed as their eye muscles begin to have the ability to coordinate the movements of their eyes. And what is more exciting, children can see in color by 4 months’ old. During this period, children also develop other skills, such as roll, push, move themselves. And you may find that they are interested in putting everything that they can reach into their mouths for exploration.

From 6 to 12 months, as children develop their ability of walking instead of crawling, their visual perceptual skills developed, and children begin to have the ability of judging distance. Besides, their eye-hand coordination also improves greatly during this half of year.

During the preschool years of children’s lives, eye problem such as myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, poor coordination of eyes, turned eye, or poor eye-hand coordination may occurred. Parents should pay more attention to their child’s behavior which can be signs of a vision problem. For example, children blink their eyes frequently, sit close or squint their eyes whilst watching television, hold a book very close to the eyes, tilt head noticeably or cover or close one eye when reading, rub eyes frequently. As children may not have the ability of telling blurred vision or sore eyes, when parents notice these behaviors frequently, please contact a behavioral optometrist for help.

How to select kids glasses

November 6th, 2009

Kids glasses market is expanding at a rapid speed. As the overwhelming spread of TV and Internet, the number of kids that get myopia is increasing. Of course, kids eyeglasses are not only for vision correction. Sometimes, kids want fashion too. You can find kids glasses in a variety of styles and kid-friendly colors.

There are some factors you should keep in mind while shopping for kids eyeglasses. Polycarbonate lenses are impact-resistant and lightweight so that most of kids glasses are made of them. Scratch-resistant coatings make kids glasses more resistant since kids are mischievous. Kids eyeglasses with this coating usually last a little longer. Silicone nose pads are more softer and comfortable so they often appear in kids glasses. They also have a non-slip surface that makes the glasses stable. Kids eyeglasses should be equipped with spring hinges. These hinges allow the temples to bend outward when putting on the glasses or taking off. This is important because some kids are lazy and always yank off the glasses with a single hand. Since kids grow up quickly, a one-year warranty of kids glasses is enough. But you should ask for a scratch warranty.

The taste of kids towards eyeglasses is significantly influenced by popular characters or childhood icons. Harry Potter, Sponge Bob and Barbie set some fashions for kids glasses. Some trends of kids eyeglasses also exist. Many kids like the classic designs worn by adults, just in different scale. Branded or licensed kids glasses are becoming popular. Kids sunglasses are useful to protect kids’ eyes from harmful rays.

Kids and eye wear

November 5th, 2009

In today’s world higher percentage of kids are getting disorders of eyesight, mostly nearsighted. Some of the kids get pseudomyopia which needs to be treated by doctors and they may recover to normal. While for some other kids the disorder of their eyesight become irreversible, then these kids need to buy eye wear to correct their sight.

Eye wear for kids range from eye wear with childhood marks or logos to some mature styles or a combination of both. When choosing eye wear for kids, one thing that should keep in mind is that we must let kids be an active participant to selecting the eye wear for them. This ensures that they will like to wear their eye wear. If kids do not like the eye wear, their frequent taking-off or eye wear from their heads will only worsen their eyesight.

On the frame materials, experts recommend parents to buy plastic eye wear instead of metal ones. In choosing the lenses, better quality anti-scratch lenses will be the first choice, as kids may use unsuitable cloth or paper to clean the lenses which will cause scratches and make the lenses blurry.

As kids are in the ages of fast growing, one pair of eye wear may become unfit in a short time. So a new pair of eye wear is necessary if the frame size does not fit again.

Another thing worth pointing is that parents need to carefully observe the reaction of kids after putting on a new eye wear, and be sensitively aware of any change of eyesight. If unfavorable thing occurs, consult and see a doctor for a new prescription, and get a new eye wear.

Children’s vision care

October 15th, 2009

Nowadays, there are an increasing number of children who have various vision problems, yet some of which frequently go unrecognized and untreated, and the kids may not get proper vision care. But if parents also do not pay attention to children’s vision care, vision problems may affect the kids’ whole lives. So children’s vision eye care is absolutely important.

Vision care is effective for children’s vision improvement when they are very young. Many researchers believe that the vision care can help visual system to develop better visual acuity up to about age 8 to 10. Vision eye care includes some individualized vision care programs and some other methods to correct problems such as amblyopia, eye movement and alignment problems. Also, the rate of getting a nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism can be decreased a lot through an appropriate vision eye care.

Some children’s vision problems such as myopia may be inherited from their parents, so the parents who have myopia should pay more attention to vision care of the kids. Most of children’s vision problems caused by environments, especially myopia. In Asia, the pressure from children’s study is so big that plenty of kids have to spend a lot of time reading books or staring at computer screens without any idea of vision eye care, on this point, the kids in this country is mush easier. So the consciousness of vision care should be held both by kids and parents.

Indubitably, vision care is so important for children that may benefit a kid’s whole life. Having a properly vision eye care can improve not only the children’s vision but also the efficiency of their study.