As we gear up to back to school, besides the clothes, backpacks and lunch bags we’re all buying, there’s one big thing that you may not thinking of– has your child had an eye exam recently?
Eye exams are important for everyone in your family – from babies to adults, and everyone in between. They’re important to your overall health. They allow eye doctors to detect eye conditions as well as early signs of health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. While my husband and I get checkups every year, we didn’t think to do it for our kids. Because my oldest child started getting special education services at 3 1/2, we took him to get his eyes checked when he was turning 4, but we didn’t check him again until he was 7. We also decided to get my daughter (who was two months away from turning 5) checked also.
Turns out she was the one who needed glasses. Suddenly, it all made sense. Why she would fall down so much when we’d go on walks, why her teachers had complained she wasn’t paying attention…. She couldn’t see and didn’t know it wasn’t normal not to see things. It wasn’t caught in her pre-K class the year before (during the regular vision screening) or during the first two months of her Kindergarten class (the first year, she repeated Kindergarten again last year).
But we did catch it at the beginning of her school career, so we consider that lucky.
A month after my daughter got her glasses, in her first year of Kindergarten.
Since then, we make it a point to get all 3 kids checked every year. As you get your kids ready to go back to school, don’t forget that getting them an annual comprehensive eye exam can help them learn and experience life to the fullest.
Some Facts:
- Many experts believe that 80 percent of what we learn is through our eyes, making a comprehensive eye exam one of the most important ways parents can give their child the best chance at success this school year.
- One in four children has an undetected vision condition.
- A child doesn’t know what good vision is if he or she has never experienced it.
- Because eye health plays a major role in academic growth, it’s common for a vision problem to be mistaken as a learning disability.
- Undetected vision conditions can negatively impact learning development and contribute to frustrated students, poor grades and behavioral issues.
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Comprehensive eye exams can detect what school vision screenings cannot.
- While in-school screenings do help identify some vision problems, such as near and farsightedness, they do not test for all of the problems that a comprehensive eye exam does, like diabetes and hypertension – both growing health concerns for children.
- Two of the most common vision problems a screening can miss are eye coordination and lazy eye. These conditions can usually both be corrected as long as they identified and treated early!
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Children’s eyes develop rapidly until about the age of seven – making early detection essential in correcting potentially permanent vision issues. >
Find out how in school screenings match up to comprehensive eye exams here — http://bit.ly/VSPexam2F.
Learn about your eyes page here – http://bit.ly/VSPeduF
As the largest national not-for-profit in vision care, VSP Vision Care reinvests in the things its nearly 66 million members value most – the best care at the lowest out-of-pocket costs. With a network of 30,000 eye care providers, VSP members have the freedom to choose the provider, location and eyewear that’s right for them. It’s easy to see why VSP is consumers’ #1 choice in vision care.
SeeMuchMore.com is a one-stop site for all the information you need about enrolling in vision benefits. The site includes a virtual savings calculator to estimate your savings with VSP vision benefits. There is also helpful information about maintaining healthy vision that can be found at the Learn About Your Eyes section of the site. You can even play an interactive game for a chance to win prizes!
Nancy, A looks so cute and smart in her glasses. Eddy and I both had glasses so really hope this is not in a our future. Every doctor check up and eye test I hold my breath.
It’s so important! We do regular eye exams once a year in the summer in prep for back to school. ALL four of our kiddos now wear glasses so it’s a must.
So important and that statistic concerns me – 1 in 4 children have undiagnosed eye problem. Eyes are so important – my husband had a detached retina last year and his vision could have been lost had he not acted quickly. A great reminder to us as parents! Thank u!
Great reminder. My kids haven’t had eye exams outside of their regular pediatrician appointments. I should do something about that. Thanks!
Love this post — and I love VSP. My son wears glasses and we had NO CLUE for SO LONG that he needed them. Thank goodness for that annual eye exam. They switched out letters for shapes because they didn’t believe he knew his alphabet. He couldnt see a single THING. I felt guilty for SO LONG because I let him run around half blind!
Now we know.
And now he can see thanks to glasses!
Thanks Vera. I thought it was so odd that my oldest didn’t need them and my middle child did (and she wasn’t even 5 at the time). Good idea about the letters for shapes, I will ask for that when we get my youngest tested this month.
I totally agree – eye exams should belong to the back to school routine. Our daughter needed glasses last year and we didn’t realize until she had been suffering half the school year already, would have made such a difference if we had realized it before.