Five Vision Tips for Parents

Your Child's Eyes:  Five Vision Tips for Parents

Ideally, children’s vision should be tested long before they are able to talk or identify letters or shapes on an eye chart. Since many vision problems become less treatable with each passing year, the earlier a problem is detected the higher the chances of saving the child’s eyesight.
 
Children's Hospital Los Angeles is home to perhaps the largest pediatric ophthalmology program in the United States. My colleagues and I treat many complex forms of eye disease, including cancer and cornea and retinal disorders. But, we also treat many young children facing permanent vision loss that could have been prevented if only they had received the needed treatment just a few months earlier.
 
Vision disorders significantly impact a child’s ability to explore the environment, learn and develop relationships with family and friends. Parents play a key role in ensuring proper eye care for their children. The following are guidelines to help parents better understand common eye problems and how to best treat them.
 

1.  Primary physicians must perform basic tests on the eyes of infants and toddlers during well-child visits to ensure the eyes look straight and they reflect light equally. Pediatricians should perform a dilated eye exam to detect any serious eye problems within the first two months of life.

2.  Parents should take flash photographs of their infants without using the red-eye reduction feature on their camera, a very simple way to detect vision problems in pre-verbal children. If the photo shows one eye red and not the other, it could be an indication that there is some abnormality in the eye. If this happens several times, parents should have their child’s eyes examined by a pediatric ophthalmologist.

3.  Cross-eyes are not typically self-correcting. A misalignment of eyes is one of the most common vision problems in children, affecting about 4 percent of youngsters under the age of six. When children are born, they are unable to use both eyes together. In order for the brain to develop this skill, the vision in both eyes should be about equal and both eyes must be looking at the same thing at the same time. Learning to use both eyes together begins by two to three months of age and the majority of the development of the binocular vision in the first year of life. If a child’s eyes are not straight in the first year of life, depth perception will be diminished. If your child has cross-eyes at three months of age and you wait until one year of age to seek treatment, you have lost the critical window of opportunity for the brain to learn to use both eyes simultaneously. In many cases children with cross-eyes can be treated with glasses, which they eventually outgrow. But for treatment to be successful, early intervention is the absolute key.

4.  Tear duct obstruction, in the majority of cases, is self-correcting. Twelve-percent of children are born with this problem and in 95-percent of cases, the problem resolves without any medical intervention. The best treatment is preventing the tear sac from building up too much pressure by gently squeezing it against the side of the nose with your little finger to express accumulated mucous back onto the surface of the eye. From there it can be wiped away with facial tissue. Eyelashes crusted with dried mucous can be wiped clean every morning with a warm damp cloth. If the tear sac swells too much, germs from the sac can break through into the skin causing an infection of the skin on the side of the nose with redness, swelling and tenderness. Such an infection needs to be treated immediately by a doctor. If infection is avoided, the tear duct, which allows the tears to drain from the eyes into the nose, usually opens naturally by one year of age. Continued tearing beyond this age should be evaluated by an ophthalmologist.

5.  Reading problems are rarely caused by vision problems. There are many “developmental optometrists” selling “eye exercises” to parents believing this will make their child a better reader. Parents need to know that vision training will not affect or improve a child’s reading or academic performance. I have seen many parents with children who have dyslexia or other learning differences and who falsely believe that certain eye exercises will “cure” their child. What these children need are tutors, not eye doctors.