Vision is more than 20/20
By Laura Webb, Educational Therapist
Have you noticed your child has trouble staying focused while reading? It may not be attention issues.
Vision is most commonly associated with clearness of sight — or visual acuity — but good vision is more than just seeing clearly with or without glasses. When a person has 20/20 vision, it means that each of their eyes can see what an average person sees at a distance of 20 feet. If a child or adult fails the eye chart test, they can get glasses or contacts to correct their blurry vision. This solution, however, is limited to only checking a person’s sharpness of vision.
The eye chart CANNOT test many other important visual skills that impact the day-to-day lives of adults and children, especially at school.
Traditional eye chart exams alone do not check such skills as:
Eye Teaming
Tracking Proficiency
Ability to shift focus from near to far accurately
Visual Processing
These are problems glasses alone cannot correct, even someone with 20/20 vision can have serious problems in these areas.
Vision in the Learning Environment
As children grow and mature, over 80% of what they learn is processed through their eyes.
The only eye tests most children undergo is a brief screening at school which only checks their distance vision using the eye chart. Each year thousands of children suffer from undetected vision problems that can make school and life difficult. Children with crossed/wandering eyes and lazy eyes face especially demanding challenges.
Leaving these problems unaddressed may cause:
Reading Difficulties
Short Attention Span
Poor Sport Performance
Low self esteem
There are many factors that can contribute to learning problems. Some children experience difficulty in school because they are not visually ready to learn. If a child’s visual abilities are underdeveloped, they may mistakenly be labeled as learning disabled or as having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
In fact, the underlying problem for many of these children may be an undetected and untreated vision problem. Studies have shown that at least 20% of school-aged children suffer from eye teaming or focusing issues that make it difficult to remain on task for long periods of time.
Patients who struggle using their eyes together face unique challenges such as double/blurry vision or perceiving stationary words as “jumping around the page”. These symptoms cause a great deal of eyestrain and children with these symptoms often are unaware that what they are experiencing is not normal. Oftentimes this means children try to adapt to the challenges imposed by these conditions alone rather than bringing them to adults or doctors. The most common way this adaptation presents is through avoidance which can include daydreaming, getting a drink, going to the bathroom, being disruptive, talking to others around them, etc.

Unfortunately, parents and teachers are not trained to recognize the differences and many children are misdiagnosed.
That is why it is critical if your child has these symptoms or have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, that they have their vision evaluated by a developmental optometrist. Sign up for a consultation that includes a free eye screening at learningbeyondletters.com.
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