I read that I should check my child’s eyes yearly. She sees everything clearly. Why should I bother?
We have two eyes, and so the visual centre of the brain gets two images, one from each eye. The brain then fuses these two images into one, but because they are not identical (due to the fact that the eyes are separated in our face by about 2-3 inches) the image then has depth, ie its three dimensional. People who have only one eye have no depth perception, and cannot accurately tell how far one car is in front of another, or if they hold their hands on top of each other, they cannot tell how far apart they are.
If one eye is not seeing clearly, because she has another eye seeing perfectly, your child will behave as though there is nothing wrong. For example, if the left eye is very nearsighted, the child will see things up close very clearly with that eye, but will not see well in the distance. Thus, if you ask her to see something across the road, or something on the floor, she will see both clearly. But she actually has one eye that is not seeing well. If the prescription in the bad eye is high, often times that eye becomes ‘lazy’ because the brain prefers to use the sharp image from the good eye. This condition is called amblyopia. Only by having an eye exam will this be picked up. Some children have symptoms like double vision, headaches, difficulty in reading, and some have none at all. Most times, this problem is picked up by an optometrist during a regular eye examination.
I don’t want my child to wear glasses; she’s only five years old.
If you were told your child needed to wear glasses, it was obviously for a reason. If she cannot see the board at school without glasses, would you prefer she continue that way? And do poorly in school? Most schoolwork involves near work and reading. If your child cannot see comfortably or clearly to read, she will not perform academically as well as she should. A lot of parents feel that children become ‘dependant’ on glasses and don’t want them to start wearing them at an early age. Unfortunately this is a mistake. If your child needs glasses to see better, they will want to wear them. Their eyes are not ‘dependant’ on them, they simply prefer to see clearly with the glasses than without.
In the past, parents rarely brought their children early enough, so oftentimes eye disorders were not picked up at an early stage. Nowadays, parents are more aware of health care issues and are bringing children in to optometrists at an earlier age to get their eyes checked and thus eye conditions can be addressed earlier. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about your child.
