Good vision is essential to learning. Poor eyesight can significantly impact on a child’s ability to learn and also on their behaviour. Although children are screened at school at the age of 4 or 5, problems can still develop between the school screening and the critical age of 8 where there is no follow up in the school system.
Section 2
Children’s eye exams are different to adults and may require more than 1 visit. We may also need to use special drops to help determine if there is an issue.We welcome children of all ages. Children up to the age of 12 maybe entitled to have their eyes tested under the HSE clinics and we welcome prescriptions form local health centres. As the wait time in the HSE can be quite long we also welcome children to be examined at the practice.
The predominant visual skill in reading is aiming. Since the reading distance is generally fixed, aiming is carried out by the ‘Dominant Eye’. Without stable dominance attention will continually swap from one eye to the other. At the moment of swapping, letters will seem to shift position, causing you to lose your place in a sentence. School vision seeks to stabilise the dominant eye through the use of spectacles.
When your child reads, their eyes are busy aiming at the words. The aiming should be handled by one dominant eye. If neither eye is obviously dominant then both will try to share the task and your child’s attention will swap from one eye to the other. When this happens the letters on a page appear to move, in this case you may see your child following the sentence with their finger.
Richard has had great success with spectacles in these cases. For a school vision appointment please call our Knocknacarra branch.
