Vision Care for Kids
0 to 3 Years
Between birth to 3 years of age, our focus is on checking milestones and disease detection.
We look for congenital abnormalities such as cataracts, childhood glaucoma, strabismus and on very rare occasions, cancer.
The list of visual developmental milestones is long but most of the skills are easily observable by community nurses, daycare teachers and indeed, the parents.
2 things within the list of developmental milestones an optometrist should check are prescription and tracking. Believe it or not, the infant actually has rather poor eyesight and a large variant of refractive errors. We need to make sure the refractive errors gradually decreases as age increases and that tracking and convergence are developed at the same time as other fine motor skills.
4 to pre-school
This is the age where your child will receive a proper vision screening either in kindergarten or pre-primary. Providing that the eyes were healthy when checked at a younger age, we want to check for visual acuity and for any latent prescription.
Sub-standard visual acuity and latent prescription could result in poor focus which may lead to poor concentration at learning.
Primary School
Learning through the use of vision is much more intensified at this age, and most of the learning these days are done on digital devices.
In primary school, we focus on myopia detection & management and focusing/convergence issues such as Convergence Insufficiency (which can sometimes be mistaken for learning difficulties).
This is also a good age to teach the child good vision habit such as protecting the eyes against UV and regular breaks during reading.
High School
This is the age when seeing become more than just a pair of glasses. As kids become teenagers, their life opens up to more activities that place more demand on vision and eyes.
Contact lenses are useful for sport (for obvious reason but most contact lenses also has UV inhibitors to reduce UV damage) and social events.
Reading glasses for otherwise normal and healthy eyes may be required for someone that might be spending more than 12 hours a day in front of computers.
The eyes may also be more prone to dryness and allergy with the use of skin medications.