Guide to good vision

Guide to good vision
Vision is a dominant process in the growth, development and daily performance of children. Good vision includes healthy eyes, age appropriate visual acuity, visual integration and visual skills such as eye teaming, eye focusing and eye motility. Optometrists can evaluate these components and help ensure your child reaches his or her potential.

Visual acuity: Visual acuity is the ability to see objects appropriate for your child’s age. It can be measured by your optometrist long before your child can read or recognize letters.

Eye health: Eye disease can impair vision or lead to vision loss if not diagnosed and treated. Most conditions can be treated best if caught early.

Visual integration: The ability to process and integrate visual information, which includes and coordinates input from our other senses and previous experiences so that we can understand what we see. The eye-hand coordination involved in tossing a ball, or a game of patty-cake, requires a great deal of teamwork between the senses.
Visual skills your baby is learning:

Eye teaming: The ability of the eyes to work together.

Eye focusing: The ability of the eyes to focus clearly at different distances quickly, accurately, and for sustained periods of time.

Eye motility or tracking: The ability of the eyes to smoothly follow moving objects and to move accurately from one object to another.

Common terms about eye health

Common terms about eye health
Amblyopia:
Also known as “lazy eye,” amblyopia is reduced vision in a healthy eye. Vision must develop, and development is impaired when eyes do not focus equally or maintain proper alignment. The brain ignores the information from the less favored eye. In either case, if this condition persists, the weaker eye will not develop normally. In babies, who are learning to use their eyes as a team, it’s easier for an eye doctor to distinguish between appropriate development and delays that could signal the need for intervention. Early detection of amblyopia is important because treatments such as patching and eye drops are most effective the earlier they are started.

Astigmatism:
Astigmatism blurs vision at all distances because the optical parts of the eye (cornea and lens) do not focus light onto the retina clearly. This condition is quite common, and results from an unequal curve of the cornea when comparing the horizontal and vertical planes. For descriptive purposes, imagine half of a tennis ball, squeezed at the top and bottom; the ball is now curved unequally. In the eye, this results in inaccurate focus on the retina. Lenses are often used to help focus the light to eliminate blurriness from astigmatism.

Hyperopia:
Often called farsightedness, hyperopia is when the eyeball is too short for the normal focusing power of the eye. Depending on severity, it can cause blurred vision, eye fatigue and sometimes amblyopia or crossed eyes.

Myopia:
Often called nearsightedness, myopia causes distant objects to appear blurred. The eyeball is too long for the normal focusing power of the eye.
Strabismus:
Strabismus occurs when one eye does not aim at the same object being viewed as the other eye. The “eye turn” may be present continuously or only occasionally, and the turn may be inward toward the nose (esotropia) or outward (exotropia), up or down. There is a common misconception that a child will outgrow crossed-eyes. This is not true. Untreated, this condition can lead to amblyopia.

Optometrist:
American Optometric Association doctors of optometry are highly qualified, trained doctors, on the frontline of eye health and vision care, who examine, diagnose, treat, and manage diseases and disorders of the eye. In addition to providing eye and vision care, optometrists play a major role in an individual's overall health and well-being by appropriately detecting systemic diseases. Doctors of optometry provide more than two-thirds of all primary eye care in the United States. The American Optometric Association represents more than 33,000 doctors of optometry, optometry students and paraoptometric assistants and technicians in nearly 6,500 communities across the country. For more information, visit www.aoa.org.

The iris, or the colored part of the eye with the pupil in the middle, contains most of the pigment cells that determine the color of the eye. Most Caucasian babies are born with bluish eyes because the pigment that determines eye color is scattered thinly in newborns. As the child grows, the pigment is distributed throughout the iris, and the brownish pigment begins to dominate. The process can take several months, and is determined by genetics, with brown eyes the dominant trait.
Your baby's developing eyes

Prenatal care: A bright start

When you are expecting, proper prenatal care and nutrition are very important to the development of healthy eyes and the related nervous system. Researchers are continually discovering more about the link between nutrition and eyesight.

At birth: Opening to a new world

It might take a moment or two for your baby’s eyes to open. His eyes should be examined for signs of congenital eye problems. These are rare, but early diagnosis and treatment are important to your child’s development. Health professionals typically administer an antibiotic ointment, such as erythromycin, to prevent infection. Within a short period of time, he will begin to focus on objects less than a foot away, such as mom’s face when nursing.

The latest research shows that complex shapes and high contrast targets best stimulate the interest of infants. When setting up baby’s room, include décor that is bright, contrasting and varied. Babies’ eyes are drawn to new objects, so be prepared to change the location of items. Also have a nightlight, to provide visual stimulation when the baby is awake in bed. While children should be put down to sleep on their backs to reduce the chance of SIDS, they should have supervised time on their stomach. This provides important visual and