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Pediatric Eye Exams

Does your child have trouble reading or focusing?

Welcome to Forsight Vision in Long Grove, IL. We are proud to offer top-notch pediatric eye care for children as young as 6 months. Whether you need an infant eye exam to ensure your baby is developing properly, or a back-to-school eye exam for your older kids, we’re here to help. We understand that the best way to deliver effective eye care for your child is to have their full and enthusiastic cooperation in the process. That’s why we tailor our pediatric optometry services to their specific needs, ensuring that every step of their visit, from the waiting room to the optical, is engaging for them.

Want to know more about pediatric eye exams and how we can help maintain your child’s vision and eye health? Contact our pediatric eye doctors today!

Oftentimes, in my almost 18 years of practice, patients come in and say, “oh my child passed a regular eye exam and we’re coming to you for a second opinion, but they’re still having problems with reading up close, headaches, they avoid reading, skip lines when they read… yet the other doctor I took him/her to said everything was fine.”

Well, one of our specialties is what’s called Developmental Optometry. Developmental Optometry basically breaks down to vision being more than 20/20.

There are three levels of vision:

1) there’s seeing clearly, which is great! Obviously, if it’s 20/20 – you’re fine.

2) more importantly, is how well the eyes focus and work together. When we look up close, our eyes turn in. About 15-18% of the population cannot converge their eyes or they have a weakness in their focusing – which is very easily fixable by doing Vision Therapy and by an evaluation by a Developmental Optometrist.

3) if your eyes are seeing clearly and your eyes are working well together, then there’s visual processing. So, how can you really expect a child (or adult for that matter) to be able to have excellent reading comprehension and really good reading processing if they’re stumbling at the first or second floor of vision?

So, vision is way more than 20/20. If you suspect your child has any issues with reading, focusing, taking frequent breaks, or eyes going out of focus – give our office a call.

According to experts, 80% of learning is visual, which means that if your child is having difficulty seeing clearly, his or her learning can be affected. This also goes for infants who develop and learn about the world around them through their sense of sight. To ensure that your children have the visual resources they need to grow and develop normally, their eyes and vision should be checked by an eye doctor at certain stages of their development.

According to the American Optometric Association (AOA) children should have their eyes examined by an eye doctor at 6 months, 3 years, at the start of school, and then at least every 2 years following. If there are any signs that there may be a vision problem or if the child has certain risk factors (such as developmental delays, premature birth, crossed or lazy eyes, family history or previous injuries) more frequent exams are recommended. A child that wears eyeglasses or contact lenses should have his or her eyes examined yearly. Children’s eyes can change rapidly as they grow.

Eye Exams in Infants: Birth – 24 Months

A baby’s visual system develops gradually over the first few months of life. They have to learn to focus and move their eyes, and use them together as a team. The brain also needs to learn how to process the visual information from the eyes to understand and interact with the world. With the development of eyesight, comes also the foundation for motor development such as crawling, walking and hand-eye coordination.

You can ensure that your baby is reaching milestones by keeping an eye on what is happening with your infant’s development and by ensuring that you schedule a comprehensive infant eye exam at 6 months. At this exam, the eye doctor will check that the child is seeing properly and developing on track and look for conditions that could impair eye health or vision (such as strabismus(misalignment or crossing of the eyes), farsightedness, nearsightedness, or astigmatism).

Since there is a higher risk of eye and vision problems if your infant was born premature or is showing signs of developmental delay, your eye doctor may require more frequent visits to keep watch on his or her progress.

Eye Exams in Preschool Children: 2 – 5 Years

The toddler and preschool age is a period where children experience drastic growth in intellectual and motor skills. During this time they will develop the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and perceptual abilities that will prepare them to read and write, play sports and participate in creative activities such as drawing, sculpting or building. This is all dependent upon good vision and visual processes.

This is the age when parents should be on the lookout for signs of lazy eye (amblyopia) – when one eye doesn’t see clearly, or crossed eyes (strabismus) – when one or both eyes turns inward or outward. The earlier these conditions are treated, the higher the success rate.

Parents should also be aware of any developmental delays having to do with object, number or letter recognition, color recognition or coordination, as the root of such problems can often be visual. If you notice your child squinting, rubbing his eyes frequently, sitting very close to the tv or reading material, or generally avoiding activities such as puzzles or coloring, it is worth a trip to the eye doctor.

Why aren't school eye exams enough?

First of all, the Illinois institute a law, in 2008, made it mandatory for every child entering kindergarten to have a full comprehensive eye exam for several reasons.

1) The school vision screens (the machines they use) allow children to easily squint or “cheat their way” through them and still pass.

2) The school vision screens don’t accurately check how well the eyes are working and focusing together. Although they can read the letters clearly, a major learning-related vision problem, such as eyes not being able to stay turned in or losing your place when focusing, is commonly missed.

That’s why a full comprehensive vision exams is mandatory to check the health of the eye. The school vision screens don’t check the retina to make sure there are any health issues, such as cataracts, bleeding in the retina, or any abnormalities the child was born with.

So, that’s why a comprehensive eye exam is highly recommended on a yearly basis. Unfortunately, in Illinois it is only mandatory for kindergarten and then we have these children coming in from the 4th grade complaining of blurred vision, whereas we could have caught it earlier every single year.

So, I always joke with my dentist friends that the dentist forms are mandatory every year; you have to get your teeth checked. You can learn fine with cavities, but you can’t learn with blurry eyes. So it’s really important to bring your child in every year, especially these days, where everyone is spending about 6 hours or more on devices, computers, iPads, etc.

Eye Exams in School-Aged Children: Ages 6-18

Undetected or uncorrected vision problems can cause children and teens to suffer academically, socially, athletically and personally.  If your child is having trouble in school or afterschool activities there could be an underlying vision problem. Proper learning, motor development, reading, and many other skills are dependent upon not only good vision, but also the ability of your eyes to work together. Children that have problems with focusing, reading, teaming their eyes or hand-eye coordination will often experience frustration, and may exhibit behavioral problems as well. Often they don’t know that the vision they are experiencing is abnormal, so they aren’t able to express that they need help.

In addition to the symptoms written above, signs of vision problems in older children include:

  • Short attention span
  • Headaches
  • Frequent blinking
  • Avoiding reading
  • Tilting the head to one side
  • Losing their place often while reading
  • Double vision
  • Poor reading comprehension

The Eye Exam

In addition to basic visual acuity (distance and near vision) an eye exam may assess the following visual skills that are required for learning and mobility:

  • Binocular vision: how the eyes work together as a team
  • Focusing
  • Peripheral Vision
  • Color Vision
  • Hand-eye Coordination
  • Tracking

The doctor will also examine the area around the eye and inside the eye to check for any eye diseases or health conditions. You should tell the doctor any relevant personal history of your child such as a premature birth, developmental delays, family history of eye problems, eye injuries or medications the child is taking. This would also be the time to address any concerns or issues your child has that might indicate a vision problem.

If the eye doctor does determine that your child has a vision problem, they may discuss a number of therapeutic options such as eyeglasses or contact lenses, an eye patch, vision therapy or Ortho-k, depending on the condition and the doctor’s specialty.   Since some conditions are much easier to treat when they are caught early while the eyes are still developing, it is important to diagnose any eye and vision issues as early as possible.

Following the guidelines for children’s eye exams and staying alert to any signs of vision problems can help your child to reach his or her potential.