How to tell if your child has a learning related vision problem

It is easy to tell whether or not your child can see the blackboard at school from across the room. This will be caught by the school nurse during a routine eye screening with the eye chart. If necessary, your child will be referred to an eye doctor to be assessed for glasses. It is a lot harder to recognize and address learning-related vision problems. Few teachers have been trained to observe when students have difficulty with their eye movements, eye teaming, or visual perceptual skills. <br><br>These very skills, when delayed can restrict a student's academic performance in reading, writing, arithmetic, art and even physical education. Developmental optometrists administer normed tests to evaluate these learning related vision problems. Often developmental optometrists enroll the students in a program of vision therapy during which the missing skills are strengthened or acquired after a program of 8 to 32 weekly sessions. The American Optometric Association recommends that every child have an annual eye exam.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Observe your child when she is trying to find something. Perhaps she has some small toys scattered on a table at which she is seated. If you ask her to hand you a certain toy from the array, does she use her eyes to find it or does she seem to rely on touch? Do you find yourself reminding her to "Look!" with her eyes? Children who rely on touch or sound to navigate through their environment may have poorly developed visual attention skills. Often a developmental optometrist will discover that these children have poor eye movement skills which can be helped by eye exercises in a program of vision therapy.
2. Think about how easy it was for your child to learn to read. Perhaps you were surprised at how difficult the task has been. Perhaps it remains very challenging. When your child reads aloud does he skip little words or lines of text? Does he need to use his finger or a straight edge to keep track of where he is on a page? When he does math problems on worksheets does he think he has completed all of the problems when really he has left several of them undone? This can also be a sign that his eye movement skills need to be evaluated by a developmental optometrist.
3. Consider whether it is difficult, fatiguing, or painful for your child to read for long periods of time. Does she complain that the words on the page are blurry, wiggling, or double? This can be a sign that her eye teaming skills need to be checked by a developmental optometrist.
4. Listen to your child read aloud. Look at some of his writing. Does he reverse b's and d's when he writes them or have trouble deciding whether "bab" is the word "dad," or not? Does he mix up "saw" and "was?" Does he know his left from his right and is he is close to seven years old or older? Before you jump to the scary conclusion that he is suffering from dyslexia, get him evaluated by a developmental optometrist for a delay in the development of laterality and directionality. This is just one of a series of visual perceptual skills that are needed for success in learning.
5. Schedule an annual eye exam for your child with a developmental optometrist who is experienced with binocular vision care and perception. The doctor will check for ocular health, acuity (rule out any need for glasses), eye movement skills, eye teaming skills and visual perceptual skills. If more tests are indicated, you can arrange for them then. Don't let a learning related vision problem go undiagnosed. When fixed, your child's performance at school will improve along with her attitude.