Experts say that 80% of learning is visual, which means that if your child has trouble seeing clearly, it could affect how well he or she learns. This is also true for babies, who use their eyes to grow and learn about the world around them. An eye doctor should check your children’s eyes and vision at certain ages to make sure they have the visual tools they need to grow and develop properly.

The American Optometric Association (AOA) says that a child’s eyes should be checked by an eye doctor when they are 6 months old, 3 years old, when they start school, and then at least every 2 years after that. If there are any signs that the child might have a vision problem or if the child has certain risk factors, such as delays in development, being born early, having crossed or lazy eyes, having a family history of vision problems, or having been hurt in the past, the child should have eye exams more often. If a child wears glasses or contacts, his or her eyes should be checked every year. As children grow, their eyes change quickly.

From birth to 24 months, babies need eye exams.

Over the first few months of life, a baby’s vision slowly improves. They have to learn how to focus, move, and work together with their eyes. To understand and act in the world, the brain also needs to learn how to handle the information from the eyes. With the development of eyesight comes the base for motor development, like learning to crawl, walk, and coordinate your hands and eyes.

You can make sure your baby is hitting milestones by keeping an eye on how he or she is growing and changing and by making sure your baby has a full eye exam at 6 months. At this exam, the eye doctor will check to see if the kid is seeing well and growing normally. He or she will also look for conditions that could hurt eye health or vision, such as strabismus (misaligned or crossed eyes), farsightedness, nearsightedness, or astigmatism.

Since your baby is more likely to have eye and vision problems if he or she was born early or is showing signs of being behind in development, your eye doctor may want to see him or her more often to keep an eye on his or her progress.

Eye Exams in Preschool Children: 2-5

Children’s brains and bodies change a lot between the time they are toddlers and when they are in preschool. During this time, they will develop the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and perceptual skills that will help them learn to read and write, play sports, and do artistic things like drawing, sculpting, or building. All of this depends on good eyesight and how well your eyes work.

Parents should watch for signs of lazy eye (amblyopia), which is when one eye doesn’t see well, or crossed eyes (strabismus), which is when one or both eyes turn inward or outward. The faster these problems are treated, the more likely they are to get better.

Parents should also be aware of any gaps in their child’s development that have to do with recognising objects, numbers, or letters, recognising colours, or coordinating their movements. The cause of these kinds of problems is often visual. You should take your child to the eye doctor if you see him squinting, rubbing his eyes often, sitting very close to the TV or something he’s reading, or avoiding games or colouring.

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

Children and adults with vision problems that aren’t found or fixed can have trouble in school, with friends, in sports, and in their personal lives. If your child is having trouble at school or with events after school, there could be a problem with their eyes. Good vision and the ability of your eyes to work together are important for learning, physical development, reading, and many other skills. Children who have trouble focusing, reading, teaming their eyes, or coordinating their hands and eyes often feel frustrated and may act out in other ways as well. Most of the time, they don’t know that what they’re seeing isn’t normal, so they can’t say 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 look at the area around the eye and inside the eye to see if there are any health problems or eye diseases. You should tell the doctor if your child was born early, has developmental issues, has a family history of eye problems, has had an eye injury, or is taking any medicines. This would also be a good time to talk to your child about any worries or problems that could be signs of an eye problem.

If the eye doctor does find that your child has a vision problem, they may talk to you about eyeglasses or contacts, an eye patch, vision therapy, or Ortho-k, based on the problem and the doctor’s area of expertise. Since some conditions are easier to treat when they are caught early while the eyes are still growing, it is important to find out about any eye or vision problems as soon as possible.

If you follow the rules for eye checks for kids and watch out for signs of vision problems, you can help your child reach his or her full potential.