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Dr. Haefs Featured on TMJ 4
Dr Haefs stresses the important link between vision and learning and recommends complete eye examinations for children every year starting in the first year of life.
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Healthy Eyes And Normal Vision Development Can Help Your Child Learn
By Christina Haefs, OD

Millions of children struggle through school and their key developmental years with undetected vision problems. Childhood vision problems can impede the learning process, creating frustration, boredom, poor self-esteem, and disruptive behavior. Insufficient study skills can be the result. Most people view inadequate learning as an educational problem, not a vision problem. The reality is that 80 percent of what we learn is through the vision system. As the body grows and develops, a child’s eyes and vision can also go through a great amount of change.

A screening is a procedure designed to identify those children who may need further examination. However, the screenings that many schools and pediatricians administer often fall short.

The American Foundation for Visual Awareness reports that school vision screenings identify only one out of four children who have vision problems. So for every child’s vision problem detected, there are three other children unable to see the chalkboard or focus on the materials he or she is reading and writing.

The full scope of the problem is difficult to pin down. There is no single large-scale study that has determined the percentage of U.S. children who have visual problems. But to get a general grasp of the lack of complete vision care for children, consider the following:

• Some schools administer periodic vision screenings while others don’t test at all.
  
• Parents think screening equals an exam. They receive an “everything was okay” note from the school’s vision-screening tester and then postpone scheduling a comprehensive eye exam for their child.
  
• Screenings that test chart distance vision, or Snellen visual acuity, identify only 30 percent of children who would have failed a professional exam.
  
• Snellen screening alone doesn’t catch eye problems relating to alignment, coordination, and tracking, all of which are vital abilities for efficient reading and note taking.
  
• Screenings do not assess the health of the eye.
  
• As many as 25 percent of 10-year-olds have vision problems significant enough to affect school performance, the Eye Care Council says. That statistic increases to 30 percent of 15-year-olds.
  
• In some underserved areas, the number of children who fall through the cracks is staggering. Optometrists volunteering through the Lions Club found that 47 percent of children had vision problems in some U.S. schools.
  
• According to the Better Vision Institute, only 14% of children have had a comprehensive vision exam by first grade.
  
• In Wisconsin, children are not required to have a comprehensive eye exam upon entering kindergarten.

The American Optometric Association recommends that by first grade, all children should have had at least three comprehensive vision exams, one at 6 months, one at 3 years and again before beginning school, to ensure that their vision is developing healthy and normal. A qualified doctor of optometry or ophthalmology can perform a comprehensive pediatric eye exam.

For more information, please ask your eye doctor. Or, contact the American Optometric Association at 314-991-4100 or www.aoa.org. The Vision Council of America’s website is www.thevisioncouncil.org.