Vision Screening - Morning Meeting

Andrea B. was our guest speaker Tuesday at Morning Carelink. She is an optomistrist in Wichita and attends First MB. She shared about various free screenings, symptoms of vision-based learning problems and just what she does to check children's eyes.

FREE SCREENINGS with some optometrists are available for infants ages 6-12 months. Go to www.infantsee.org for details and an optometrist listing. There is also a three-year old free screening that most optometrists perform. Go to www.seetolearn.com for details and an optometrist listing.

Here are some various points made in the presentation:

• Don't be overly concerned if your baby still crosses eyes up to the age of six months. If continuing to do so past six months, should probably have his eyes checked.
• Hats are recommended over sunglasses to keep the sun out of babies' and toddlers' eyes.
• Color vision testing isn't very accurate until age five.
• By 3rd grade, kids shouldn't be mixing up their "p", "b" and "d". If they are, it might be vision related.
• Also around 3rd grade, is when vision problems MIGHT start to cause problems with academic success at school.

Vision problems fall into these categories: focusing issues, teaming issues (eyes working together), tracking problems, and visual prcessing skills (brain's ability to analyze). If you want your optometrist to check these specific areas during an eye exam, be sure to request it specifically, because focus, teaming & tracking are not always evaluated. Visual processing is not done in routine eye exams.

Andrea said, the best thing we can do is look for symptoms in our children from the list below and have regular eye exams. This is a scanned image of the back of a brochure she handed out from Wichita Vision Development Center (her optometry office).
Symptoms of Vision Problems

Andrea shared three websites to go to for more on vision:
www.childrensvision.com, site for the group Andrea works for
www.covd.org, College of Cptometrists and Vision Development
www.oepf.org, Optometric Extension Program Foundation