When Children Have Eye Problems By Brenda Williams At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

If children are performing well in school, and do not show symptoms of eye problems, such as squinting, or frequent eye rubbing it is usually assumed that they have normal eyesight. However, when children have reading problems, teachers first suspect vision problems. Some schools have routine vision checks for all students but many do not.

There are three types of eye problems that are common both in children and adults.

A child may have hyperopia or far sightedness which means that their distance vision is normal but their close vision is poor. Children with hyperopia will have problems reading and will encounter eyestrain. This might result in headaches, eye pain, fatigue or nausea. These children will also start to tend to avoid and dislike reading. Signs that children have hyperopia are holding the reading material close to the nose and squinting. In moderate to severe cases, these children will need glasses for reading and close tasks. However, they will not have to wear glasses on the playground.

When children have close vision that is superior to their distance vision, they have myopia or nearsightedness. These children do not see distant objects clearly and may complain about not being able to read the whiteboard from their desks.

When children have astigmatism, they have blurred vision regardless of the distance involved. Astigmatism results from an irregularly shaped cornea. Squinting, frowning, and holding reading material close to the eyes are also symptoms of astigmatism.

When children have amblyopia, they cannot see equally with both eyes. This is almost always identified in eye screening programs as one eye might measure 20/40 while the other eye will have 20/20 vision. It is very important that this condition be discovered early in life as blindness can result in the amblyopic eye if not treated.

Due to the seriousness of some eye problems and the effect on school performance, it is crucial that vision screening begin at an early age.

However, when corrective lenses are prescribed and fitted, it is also important to be sure that children use them. Many children are embarrassed by having to wear glasses. Young children can be cruel and often tease and invent nicknames for children who wear glasses. So to avoid this situation, many children leave home with glasses on and then hide them during the school day preferring to suffer the physical consequences rather than the emotional ones.

Contact lenses offer a solution to this but there are also problems associated with wearing them. Although these problems usually arise because children do not know how to care for them.

Some contact lenses must be removed each night. Others can be worn anywhere from a week to three months. All contact lenses require that the wearer follow the doctor's instructions implicitly. This includes observing proper cleaning and disinfecting procedures using prescribed sterile cleaning and disinfecting solutions. Failure to do so will result in infections. One such infection is an amoeba infection. This one is extremely serious as it is highly resistant to antibiotics and can cause partial or complete blindness.

Some eye problems cannot be corrected by contact lens and the child will have to wear glasses. In this case, parents may need to network with teachers to be sure the glasses are worn in school and to impress upon the child the long term consequences of neglecting to do so.

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