As a follow-up to my last blog post on normal vision development in young children, I’m going to share some strategies you can use at home with your baby to encourage proper vision development. Infants are not born with complete vision, good vision is developed through looking, touching, and exploring as your baby grows. This means that you, as the parent, can make a big impact on their vision development.
Why would vision be so important that vision tests might be considered mandatory? It’s because 80% of learning at school is done through the visual system, meaning that vision problems can play a huge role in struggles at school. Having good vision can set your child up for successful learning to reach their full potential.
80% of learning at school is done through the visual system, meaning vision problems can play a huge role in struggles at school. But most vision problems don’t have easily detectable symptoms, and the symptoms presented can be mistaken for various learning and behavioural problems in kids.
August is Children’s Vision and Learning Month, for the 20th year in a row! The goal of this month is to help educate parents and educators about the critical link between vision and learning. This year, the College of Optometrists in Vision Development is focusing on the link between concussions and visual-learning symptoms. The story of Kelsey Ransom is a perfect example of this link:
As an Optometrist, I know that many visual processing problems can be corrected using Vision Therapy rather than just lenses. I’ve had countless patients come to me having been told that “it’s too late to fix your vision problems” or that they’ll “have to learn to live with these issues.” But with Vision Therapy, so many of these patients have been able to improve their vision problems. So what is Vision Therapy? Vision Therapy improves the way vision is processed in the brain. These are some of the problems I’ve helped to correct in my clinic with Vision Therapy:
At Family Eyecare Centre, we currently have a 10-year-old boy in our Integrated Vision Therapy Program who has completely blossomed from his shell. His boost in confidence has given him the ability to do activities that were previously difficult in many parts of his life, including his social life.
