Children's Vision

Children have a difficult time assessing their own vision. They lack the benefits of adults' experience and just assume that the way they see things is the same as everyone else does. If the blackboard or a page in a book seems a blur, they think everyone sees it that way.

Vision is especially important to a child. More than 80 per cent of the information children receive about the world comes through their eyes. Poor vision can affect the child’s development in many ways. It can make learning more difficult, it can make a child clumsy and uncoordinated, and it can even affect the child’s personality development.

The most common vision problems in children are those affecting the ability to see clearly and sharply and include:

Myopia or Short-sightedness
- causes difficulty in seeing distant objects clearly.

Hyperopia or Long-sightedness
- makes it difficult for a person to focus on close objects.

Astigmatism
- causes objects to appear distorted or not in sharp focus.

Regular Examinations
Ideally, all children should be examined before they are three years old and again before starting school. During the school years vision may change rapidly.

Your optometrist will advise you on how often your child’s eyes need to be examined.

You should keep in mind that quick screenings, such as those conducted in many schools throughout Australia, are no substitutes for an optometric practice.

Behavioural Optometry (Visual Information Processing)

All Optometrists at Young Eyes have completed their Masters training in Behavioural Optometry and have extensive experience in this area.

What is visual information processing assessment?
Intelligent children can often struggle to perform well in the classroom. Sometimes this occurs because the child has not developed the 'building blocks' needed to enable them to understand what they are being taught. Visual perceptual testing aims to identify any age gaps in these 'building blocks' and is appropriate from primary aged school children upwards.

What is involved?
Initial examination - Prior to any visual perceptual assessment every child needs an initial eye examination. The test lasts around 30 minutes and is fully covered by Medicare.

An initial examination will determine:
How well your child can see - The initial examination will assess whether your child has long sightedness, shortsightedness, astigmatism, a lazy eye or an eye disease.

How well can your child maintain clear vision?
- Can they effectively use their eyes together as a team? (good Bonocularity)
- Can they focus and relax their eyes as needed? (good Accommodation)
These skills are needed to maintain clear vision without undue effort even under stress.

Visual Information Processing Testing

An additional appointment may be scheduled for visual information processing assessment. This test takes approximately one hour. After the assessment the Optometrist will compare your child's results with the level of performance expected for their age and write a detailed report for you and your child's teacher.

What happens during a visual information processing assessment?
Your child is asked to complete individual tasks in the following areas:
a) Eye Movement Skills - Needed in order for a child to keep their position in a page, copy from the blackboard and read fluently. They also assist general co-ordination.

b) Visual Spatial Skills - Good visual spatial skills start with a child's awareness of their own sidedness, progress to their awareness of external objects and finally to the printed page. Without this knowledge children will often reverse letters, numbers and words and show poor organisation.

c) Visual Memory - These skills allow a child to immediately recognise a word. Children with poor visual memory will often act as if it is the first time they have come across a word, even if they have come into contact with the word hundreds of times before!

d) Visual Analysis - Allows a child to 'make sense' of visually presented information. Without this ability children will struggle to appreciate subtle differences between letters, numbers and words, which impairs comprehension.

e) Visual Motor Integration - Handwriting requires a child make a mental plan of the letters and words (utilities visual analysis skills) then uses fine motor skills (pen control) to execute this plan. Children with poor visual motor integration will tend to have slow or messy handwriting or poor page organisation.

f) Auditory Skills - Although not a focus of our testing, it is important to get a baseline measurement to obtain an overall picture of your child's learning style. Good auditory skills allow for a child to sound out unfamiliar words, retain verbal information and understand information sequencing. This helps with reading, writing, mathematical and musical ability.

What happens after testing?
If the testing reveals any areas needing improvement, you and your child may choose to start a training program. Our Optometrists individually develop each program.