5 Ways to Protect and Improve Your Child's Eyesight

Your child's vision is their primary window into the world around them. Keeping their eyesight healthy is an important part of allowing them to experience life to the fullest.

Here are 5 tips on how to protect and improve your child's eye health:

1. Take them to the eye doctor for routine eye exams

One of the most important take-aways from any article you read on the subject of keeping your child's vision and eyes healthy, is the need to keep up with routine comprehensive eye exams.

Although your kid's school may perform vision screenings, these tests can only detect the most basic issues, such as myopia or severe amblyopia. They are not equipped to check for eye diseases that can affect your child's long-term ocular health, or binocular vision disorders that can hinder their ability to learn.

2. Limit their screen time

Screens are an ever-present part of our lives. Children can spend hours every day texting, playing video games, watching television, and more. Excessive blue light, like the kind that comes from these screens, interferes with sleep and is also thought to increase the risk of macular degeneration later in life. To prevent symptoms and protect your child's long-term vision health, limit their screen time to approximately one hour, and devices should be turned off a few hours before bedtime.

3. Encourage them to eat healthy foods and get exercise

Eating foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids is a great way to promote eye health. Good sources include fish such as salmon and herring. For vegans and others who don't eat fish, flax seeds, chia seeds and walnuts are also a great option. Leafy greens and fruits are also important, as they're high in vitamins A, C and E.

Bonus points if you can get your child outside, as sunlight and outdoor play have been shown to slow or even prevent the development of myopia. Just make sure your child wears sunglasses and a sun hat — UV rays have a cumulative effect that could lead to eye diseases like macular degeneration later in life.

4. Help them avoid eye injuries

Eye injuries are an all-too-common occurrence, especially among children. If you have little ones at home, make sure that paints, cleaners and other dangerous chemicals and irritants are put away somewhere safe. For contact and ball/puck sports, ensure your child wears the right eyewear to protect their eyes from accidental impacts.

5. Reduce eye infections

Your child should learn not to touch their eyes with their unwashed hands, as this is the primary way of introducing germs to the eye. If you have contact lens wearers, be sure to teach them to wash their hands each and every time they put in or take out their contact lenses.

For more information on how best to protect and improve your child's eyesight, contact Eyecare Professionals of Gahanna in Gahanna today.

Q&A

Can I rely on the vision screenings at my child's school to catch vision and eye health issues? No. School-based vision screenings check for basic visual acuity. Even if your child has perfect 20/20 vision, there may still be issues with visual skills or undetected eye diseases that these types of screenings are not equipped to catch.

Can vision problems be misdiagnosed as ADHD/ADD? It is unfortunately common for learning-related vision problems to go undetected and mimic the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. As many as 1 out of every 4 school-age children suffers from some form of visual dysfunction.