It’s not always easy to tell if your child needs glasses to help them see better. Because children’s eyes are constantly growing and developing, many visual problems can go undetected if an optometrist doesn’t evaluate them.

Our optometrists use a variety of tests that go beyond vision checks used in schools or at your family doctor’s office. These tests are performed with specialized equipment that helps determine if your child needs glasses or other types of correction to achieve their best vision.

Some signs your child may require glasses:

• Squinting
• Complaints of blurred vision
• One eye is drifting in or out
• Difficulty focusing
• Poor binocular vision (two eyes working together)

Your child may require glasses to see if they have:

• Myopia or “nearsightedness” — affects the shape of the eye, causing images to appear blurry the further away they are
• Hyperopia or “farsightedness ”— affects the shape of the eye, causing images to appear blurry the closer they are
• Astigmatism — affects depth perception and the way images are viewed at variable distances
• Amblyopia — the eyes are not developing at the same rate and glasses may be needed to help them work better as a team

If detected early enough, our optometrists can control myopia and prevent its progression. Your child may require glasses to correct poor vision.

Proper vision development is essential for learning and participating in sports and recreational activities.

You child may be experiencing a vision problem if they:

• Complain their eyes feel tired or uncomfortable
• Rub their eyes or blink a lot
• Can’t spend a lot of time on one task
• Avoid reading, and other activities performed up close
• Experience headaches often
• Cover or close one eye to see
• Tilt their head while looking at an object
• Hold objects, like books, too close to their face
• Have one eye that looks to be in a different direction than the other
• Complain about seeing double
• Lose track of where they are reading
• Have difficulty remembering what they’ve just read

Visual problems a child may encounter during their developing years could include:

• Strabismus—when the eyes are not properly aligned, they may turn in, out, up, or down, resulting in double vision or the suppression of the image in one eye
• Amblyopia—often referred to as “lazy eye,” amblyopia is described as weak vision or vision loss in one eye due to an uncorrected prescription during early development