With our children spending so much time on computers, it is important to think about how that is affecting their vision. Even if they are back in school, the use of white boards and computers may be adversely affecting their eyes.
This information is intended for children in the early grades but these problems may affect children throughout their entire school career.
Signs of distress can include: yawning, eyes watering, squirming in the seat, and rubbing the eyes. If these occur, it is important to provide a break.
If these continue for long periods of time, you may want to schedule an appointment with a child optometrist. Make sure to have these areas checked during that exam: acuity, binocular coordination, convergence, tracking, dominant eye and crossing midline. You can check several of these on your own. Have your child hold a book up at eye level and read a page. See if his eyes are moving smoothly across the page. Do his eyes wander or seem to go back often? These may be signs of problems with binocular coordination and tracking. Also, hold a pencil in front of his nose and bring it to the nose. Do the eyes meet at the center or does one stay forward? This may mean convergence difficulty. The eyes should converge at the nose. Convergence is critical to reading. The eyes converge and then focus.
You may also want to check for dominant eye. Take an index card and cut a small hole in the center. Have the child fold his hands in front of him. Tell him to bring the card to one eye so he can see an object in the room. Repeat three times. Then note if he uses the same eye as his dominant hand. Right-eyed, right-handed pupils often having an easier time in school because they have easy access to the left (logic) hemisphere of the brain. Many children who are mixed or cross dominant tend to have struggles in school because of confusion in transcending hemispheres. Children who are left-eyed often display reversals of numbers and letters because they pull to the right. The brain works on opposite sides, so the left- eyed student will naturally pull to the right therefore seeing was for saw, and 27 for 72. It is important to note that reversals are common up until age 7 or so, but may be a concern if they continue after that.
Pay attention to your child’s vision and get professional help if you feel they are developing problems due to too much screen time.
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