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How to Help the Development of your Infant’s Eyesight

As a follow-up to my last blog post on normal vision development in young children, I’m going to share some strategies you can use at home with your baby to encourage proper vision development. Infants are not born with complete vision, good vision is developed through looking, touching, and exploring as your baby grows. This means that you, as the parent, can make a big impact on their vision development.

Online eye exams – a step forward or backward?

Have you heard of online eye exams? At-home, self-administered online tests are now able to give patients prescriptions for glasses and contact lenses. And while it sounds great, it poses some real problems.

Should eye exams be mandatory for Canadian children?

Why would vision be so important that vision tests might be considered mandatory? It’s because 80% of learning at school is done through the visual system, meaning that vision problems can play a huge role in struggles at school. Having good vision can set your child up for successful learning to reach their full potential.

Behavioural & learning problems may actually be undetected vision problems

80% of learning at school is done through the visual system, meaning vision problems can play a huge role in struggles at school. But most vision problems don’t have easily detectable symptoms, and the symptoms presented can be mistaken for various learning and behavioural problems in kids.

Vision Therapy: Correcting More Than 20/20

As an Optometrist, I know that many visual processing problems can be corrected using Vision Therapy rather than just lenses. I’ve had countless patients come to me having been told that “it’s too late to fix your vision problems” or that they’ll “have to learn to live with these issues.” But with Vision Therapy, so many of these patients have been able to improve their vision problems. So what is Vision Therapy? Vision Therapy improves the way vision is processed in the brain. These are some of the problems I’ve helped to correct in my clinic with Vision Therapy:

Children’s Vision & Learning Month

August is Children’s Vision and Learning Month, for the 20th year in a row! The goal of this month is to help educate parents and educators about the critical link between vision and learning. This year, the College of Optometrists in Vision Development is focusing on the link between concussions and visual-learning symptoms. The story of Kelsey Ransom is a perfect example of this link:

How vision therapy can improve reading ability

At Family Eyecare Centre, we currently have a 10-year-old boy in our Integrated Vision Therapy Program who has completely blossomed from his shell. His boost in confidence has given him the ability to do activities that were previously difficult in many parts of his life, including his social life.

Computer use and visual stress

Sustained computer use can cause visual stress, blurred vision, eye strain, headaches, and even vision-induced stomachaches. Work that is visually tiring can lower productivity, increase errors…

Vision Therapy can help stroke survivors

After suffering a stroke, patients can have a variety of problems, including vision. Some vision problems that might arise after a stroke are…

Can Vision Therapy help you skip rope?

In my practice, we recently treated a young girl who, in addition to her vision-related reading problems, was upset that she could not skip rope like her friends. Jumping rope is a gross motor skill highly influenced by the quality of your visual processing. This type of vision problem had nothing to do with her 20/20 eyesight. Giving her glasses wasn’t going to help her jump rope, but a vision therapy treatment could!