Eye Q. Do You?

Eyes are delicate organs of the human body that need to be cared for conscientiously. Your children’s eyes are, naturally, very important; while eye care for children depends on many factors, you can be proactive and ensure they are well taken care of, which includes shielding them from wounds and aiding the development of good eyesight.

Even if your child has “20/20” vision there are a few other important factors to look out for:

• Eye movement skills:  Do your child’s eyes move across the page in a book smoothly and accurately?
• Eye focusing abilities: Does your child change focus from near to far and back again – between reading text from a far-away white or black-board and writing on paper?
  
• Eye teaming skills: Are your child’s eyes working together as a focus unit – do they come together for proper eye alignment for reading?
• Binocular vision skills: Are your child’s eyes blending visual images from both eyes into a single, three-dimensional image?
  
• Visual perceptual skills: Does your child identify and understand what he/she sees, co-relating importance, connecting with previous visual memorized information?
• Visual-motor integration: Is the quality of your child’s eye-hand coordination balanced? Visual-motor integration is important not only for legible handwriting and the ability to efficiently copy written information from a book or board but also for sports. Deficiencies in any of these can be detrimental to a child’s learning ability and/or school performance.

Here are a few tips to help aid in the development of good eyesight:

If you have been able to help them maintain healthy eyes until their teenage years, it is likely that the same will follow subsequently.

1. Ensure a Balanced Diet

A well-balanced diet has green and red leafy vegetables like carrots, spinach, and beetroot. Their diet should also comprise of yellow fruits like papayas and mangoes that have carotene in huge quantities. Carotene is an antecedent to Vitamin A and is considered very well for healthy eyes.

2. Limit Screen & Gaming Time

Help your children develop the habit of NOT staring at screens for long hours. This causes eye exhaustion. To avoid this on computer screens, the monitor of the computer needs to be laid a little lower than the level of his/her eyes. Also, encourage limited access to mobile games; excessive indulgence in these games could cause signs seen in adult computer vision syndrome. Furthermore, it could also cause uneasiness in the eyes, hazy image, headaches, and exhaustion. We recommend anti-fatigue or blue control lenses to add extra protection if access to screens is a daily practice. Learn more here -> www.eyeqjamaica.com/protection-from-des

3. Create a Safe Television Viewing Distances

Do not allow your children to watch T.V. from a close distance, no matter how much they plead :). A minimum distance of three and a half meters should be maintained in a well-illuminated room to ensure safety. Moreover, they should not watch TV in a dim room.

4. Ensure the use of Sunglasses

All children MUST wear sunglasses when outdoors to reduce UV damage from the sun. Children typically spend more time outdoors than adults, have larger pupils, and less natural protection within their eyes than adults. This means that most of the damage from the sun to our visual system happens in the first 18 years of life. Be careful to ensure that the sunglasses chosen provide proper UV protection. This can be achieved by purchasing from us, our sunglasses provide complete UV ray protection.

5. Teach them not to Rub Their Eyes

Rubbing eyes frequently can cause germs to spread and lead to infections. Cleanliness of eyes needs to be given utmost priority and your children should practice not touching their eyes, under any circumstances barring an emergency, until hands are properly washed. Also, more and more children appear to suffer from allergies these days affecting their skin, sinuses, and eyes. These can be particularly irritating and the natural reaction is to rub our eyes for relief. Vigorous rubbing is to be avoided as it can cause the window at the front of our eyes, the cornea, to take on an irregular shape leading to a condition causing foggy vision which can’t be rectified by glasses. If you see your child suffering in this way please bring them in for an examination. Children with conjunctivitis especially should not rub their eyes as it can worsen the ill effects of the virus.

6. Stop use of unsafe toys

Always supervise children when at home and instruct them not to play with sharp toys, such as jagged-framed toys. Such toys are quite dangerous and can prove very harmful to them. You can eradicate this thing beforehand by not having any sharp-edged toys around.

7. Teach them about the importance of protecting their eyes

Keep an eye on your children when engaging in activities outside. Ensure that they wear goggles while swimming to protect them from infections and sports eyewear when engaging in sports or other contact activities. Do not let them come in contact with various chemicals and sprays. Children need to be instructed to be careful against certain dangers. Eye care tips for kids would be incomplete without remaining extra-cautious about your children. These tips are sure shot ways for you to protect their eyes and keeping them healthy.

8. Get an Eye Exam from Eye Q Optical

It is imperative that all children have their first complete comprehensive eye examination by a fully licensed and registered eye care practitioner at around age 5 years old. This is crucial to ensure the normal development of the visual system even if they’re not experiencing any noticeable symptoms. Some common issues if not detected before age 8 years cannot be rectified later and the earlier they are identified the better.

We will tell you everything you need to know. Book Your Appointment Today.