Proper and consistent eye care are very important parts of your child’s successful growth. Developments during childhood have the potential to affect your child for the rest of his/her life. It is extremely important, therefore, that your child’s eyesight receives proper attention from a very early age to be sure that everything is developing correctly and to detect issues before they lead to more serious complications.

Why it’s important to schedule an eye exam in Glendale or Peoria, AZ for your child?

Because many conditions may show symptoms even while your child is still an infant and become much harder to correct the longer they go untreated, it is very important to have regular eye exams for your child.

Dr. George K. Johnson of Advanced Eyecare Center in Northwest Phoenix, Arizona says, “Many eye conditions that can cause difficulties later in life can be easily detected and treated in childhood if parents are cautious to have eye exams early and often for their children. Beginning from the age of 6 months, children should have comprehensive eye exams at least every year to assess any conditions that may hinder a child’s development.”

Common Eye Conditions Which Require Professional Eye Care in Childhood

Strabismus and Amblyopia are two conditions which are usually easy to detect in childhood, and can cause a great deal of damage if allowed to develop into adulthood.

With Strabismus the eyes are not aligned properly, meaning one eye looking straight while the other may look inward, outward, up or down. This results from the muscles that control eye movements being misaligned or underdeveloped. In healthy, properly aligned eyes, each eye sees essentially the same image, with only slight variations and the brain combines these two slightly varied perspectives into a single interpreted image, in a process known as Binocular Fusion. With strabismus, the misaligned eyes send entire different images, causing Binocular Fusion to be unusually difficult or impossible. Eventually, your child’s brain will react to the differing images sent by the misaligned eyes by eliminating images coming from one of the eyes. This can cause a condition called amblyopia, or “lazy eye.”

Amblyopia, sometimes known as the lazy eye is a condition in which a person has exceptionally poor sight in one eye as a result of that eye not developing healthy sight during development. Several problems can develop that can seriously affect vision from childhood into adulthood if amblyopia is not diagnosed and treated in a timely manner. The weaker eye may develop a serious and permanent visual defect and depth perception may be lost.

Your child’s success in school also relies heavily upon proper vision. In eye exams aimed at checking your child’s readiness for school, the doctor will check for less serious conditions such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. “Eyesight is your child’s front line in the struggle for knowledge. Sending your child to school without this essential tool is likely to sentence your child to failure before the battle has even begun.” cautions Dr. Johnson. “Your eye doctor also needs to check early for basic skills related to good eyesight for learning. These include eye movement skills, Peripheral awareness, and hand-eye coordination.”