Editor’s Note: Happy Saturday. This morning we have local Optometrist Dr. Elaine Kerr on site educating us about the importance of preventative eye care. Here she is:

Imagine you are about five years old and your parents take you to a new and interesting place. There’s a kids’ play area where you entertain yourself for awhile, then you all go into a little room where someone covers one of your eyes and asks you to tell them what pictures you can see on a chart at the end of the room. It’s kind of fun and you identify a bird and a cake and a birdie. They then cover your other eye and you instinctively reach up and push their hand away. ‘Don’t do that!’ you say innocently. “That’s the eye I don’t see out of!”

Sadly, this scenario is not uncommon, and happened exactly like this when I recently saw a little boy from the North Island. He had a condition called ‘amblyopia’ or lazy eye. When most people think of lazy eye, they think of a turned eye, or a condition we call strabismus. But amblyopia can also be caused from one eye being out of focus, and this is much less obvious. It can happen if one eye has a very different prescription from the other, such being significantly more farsighted or near sighted. For the child, it’s just the way their eyes are and they don’t know it isn’t like that for everyone else, so they don’t mention it.

And there are often no obvious signs of problems since the other eye can see. Unfortunately, if the ‘blurry eye’ doesn’t get focused during the period of time when the child’s brain is developing, it may never see well, resulting in a lifelong condition of reduced vision in one eye even with glasses or surgery.

Although recent brain studies are showing that the brain is much more plastic than we ever thought, functional improvement in vision for an amblyopic eye is really difficult to achieve past the age of six or so, depending on the severity. The good news is, the earlier it is detected and treated, the better the chance to get that eye seeing well again.

The BC Association of Optometrists has been trying to get the word out about the importance of eye exams for children. Their interactive website is a fun way to help kids find out what happens during an eye exam, and help educate caregivers and teachers about children’s eyes and eye exams.

So what should you know about eye care and your child?

First, it is important that all children have an eye exam. If there is a family history of any eye condition, such as high prescription, turned eye or lazy eye, or if the child is showing any unusual signs, they should be checked by six months of age.  And every child should be checked by age three. If your child is older and has not had an eye exam, chances are they are okay, but they should still get their eyes checked. Even with 20/20 vision, there can be other concerns with the visual system.

One local teacher brought her kids in for an eye exam because she was having one, even though she had no concerns. During testing, I noted that her eight year old daughter was having trouble ‘tracking’, and she couldn’t converge, or cross her eyes. It turned out she had been diagnosed with a learning disability. She’d had her hearing checked and it was fine, but no one had thought to have her eyes checked because she ‘could see fine’. We set her up with some eye muscle exercises and two weeks later her mom called to excitedly tell me that she couldn’t believe the strides her daughter had made. Her reading level and interest had already improved in such a short time!

Vision is such an important sense, from learning development to social skills. Kids who are very near sighted may be shy and withdrawn because they can’t see what is going on. Kids who are very farsighted are often hyperactive because they can’t settle down and focus.

All children should have an eye exam by at least age three. Because kids’ eyes are changing so rapidly, it is often recommended they have an annual exam. Relying on signs of problems will not always tell you if there is a problem.

Some things to watch for are:

-One eye that is turned in or out, some or all of the time,

-Rubbing the eyes a lot,

-Clumsiness,

-Squinting,

-Losing place during reading,

-Closing one eye to read or unusual head posture while reading,

-Learning difficulties,

-Frequent headaches, and

-Withdrawn or hyperactive.

Optometrists have special tests they can use for children of any age, so they don’t have to be able to read. BC medical covers a benefit towards eye exams for children under 19, although most clinics have a small additional fee because they do extra tests as part of their exams. Some also promote a ‘Vision First’ check where they do not charge any fees for an infant’s first eye exam.