As September’s Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month approaches, we are encouraging you to make the most of your children’s education and maximize their potential, livelihood and development by including a comprehensive eye exam as part of your child’s back to school checklist.
Though most children have healthy eyes, one in four school-aged children either have vision problems or suffer from some degree of visual impairment. What’s more concerning is that 80 percent of preschoolers don’t even receive a vision screening.
Often starting at an early age, eye conditions such as amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (cross-eyed) and refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatic), if left undetected and untreated, can damage your child’s vision and negatively impact a child’s learning ability.
Although your child may not demonstrate symptoms, it is possible for your child to have a serious vision problem without being aware of it. Some things to keep an eye on include squinting, sitting too close to the TV, complaining of headaches, poor hand-eye coordination or a lack of concentration when reading that requires the child to either point to words or skip them.
“Treatments of eye diseases are most successful when detected early,” says Dr. Abnous Samford, one of our optometrists at Hoover Vision Center. “Eye screenings conducted by professional eye care specialists are an effective way to detect abnormalities and can help save children from a lifetime of low vision.”
We at Hoover Vision Center recommends scheduling a preventive eye exam at the age of six months, three years, before kindergarten and once every two years thereafter, starting at the age of five. Call us today to make your child an appointment!
