Poor eyesight: does your child need glasses?

When do you speak of poor eyesight?

One speaks of poor eyesight when one or both eyes of your child are restricted in their ability to see. So your child has trouble seeing properly or fully. In order for this visual impairment to be treated, it is important that it is recognized and corrected at an early stage.

Correction of a visual impairment before the age of 4

Your child learns to see like it learns to walk: through constant practice. Vision training begins immediately after birth. However, the period of time for learning to see is very limited. It is only possible to permanently compensate for a visual impairment in your child in the first four years of life. During this time, the interaction between eyes and brain is still developing. So this window of time should definitely be used to correct poor eyesight in children. After that it is no longer possible.

In many cases it is possible to train the brain sufficiently by correcting the visual impairment with a visual aid. This is why babies or very small children sometimes have to wear glasses. Later, many children, whose poor eyesight problem was recognized and treated early, no longer need glasses.

Early visit to the ophthalmologist advisable

For this reason, it is very important to see an ophthalmologist from an early age. Even if there is no acute suspicion, such a visit makes sense, since it is quite possible that a visual impairment in your child will not be noticed during the U-examinations . If visual disorders are common in the family or other risk factors are present, it makes sense for your child to see an ophthalmologist at the age of six to nine months. Such risk factors are:

• Premature birth : The ability to see is then often not fully developed.
• Eye diseases in the family : These are often hereditary.
• Severe visual impairment in parents and/or siblings : Even then, there is an increased risk that a child will have visual impairment.

Symptoms of poor eyesight in your child

If you suspect that your child has poor eyesight, you should definitely talk to the pediatrician about it. In Germany, according to estimates by ophthalmologists, 60 percent of children’s visual impairments are treated too late. Here are some signs that you can tell if your child may have poor eyesight:

• Your child squints very often and is already older than six months.
• It blinks remarkably often. Sometimes the eyes seem to tremble.
• He frequently rubs or squints his eyes.
• It often tilts its head.
• The cornea of ​​your child’s eyes is cloudy or discolored grey-whitish.
• Your child has larger than average eyes that are very sensitive to light.
• Your child’s songs look deformed or altered, e.g. they almost completely cover the eye.
• Your child behaves conspicuously clumsily or fearfully, eg it stumbles frequently.
• It has no desire to paint, do handicrafts or read.
• Your child literally reads ‘with their nose’. When reading, it must come very close to what is written.
• Your child has a reading and spelling disability .
• If he has to concentrate, he quickly loses interest and tires.
• Your child repeatedly complains of headaches.
• Your child’s grades at school suddenly drop.

Causes of poor eyesight in your child

Poor eyesight in your child can have various causes. Your ophthalmologist can tell you more about this. Here are possible causes for your child:

• Hereditary eye diseases, such as red-green color weakness or cataracts
• Strong squint
• astigmatism
• clouding of the lens in the eye
• damage from preterm birth
• Nearsightedness or farsightedness caused by a lengthening or shortening of the eyeball

Diagnosis of visual impairment in your child

In order to be able to determine the degree of visual impairment in your child, an examination by an ophthalmologist is necessary. The pediatrician cannot determine every type of visual impairment in your child in the U-examinations. This is because the tension in the inner eye muscles must be temporarily released. For this purpose, the ophthalmologist either prescribes drops that you have to put in your child’s eyes at home, or he or she gives your child a similar preparation in the practice directly before the examination.

The eye drops lose the ability to focus on different distances for a while. So your child can only see blurry. Depending on the preparation, this effect can last a few hours or even several days. However, this is completely normal and completely harmless.

During the subsequent examination, your child has to fix their eyes on a point or a light in the examination device for a short time. In this way, the doctor can determine the type and severity of your child’s visual impairment. He will then issue you with a prescription with the exact diopter values, and then you can go to an optician to choose a nice pair of glasses that will compensate for your poor eyesight. You can find more information on choosing the right glasses in our article “ Which glasses for your child ”.

It is important that you give your child a positive attitude towards the glasses. It does not only have to be a visual aid, it is also a piece of jewelry. Then your child will be happy to wear the glasses.