Understanding Vision and how it affects learning
Good vision and focussing is the key to your child’s learning development and school performance.
Vision is much more than 20/20 eyesight. Sight is merely how clearly we see. Vision is a result of the child actively interpreting and understanding the information made available through both eyes.
It addition to sight, Vision involves many ” foundation ” processes and skills These foundation skills need to be in place before children can successfully read, write, do math and learn. 80 % of what a child learns is through vision. A weakness in any one of these areas, often undetected by parents and teachers, will affect a child’s visual skills and can have a mild to profound effect on learning.
- Sharpness of Sight
- Eye coordination ( eye movement teaming )
- Focussing ( ability to sustain focus at near or change focus)
- Eye tracking ( accuracy of tracking lines of print, or moving objects)
- Perceptual skills
o Visual Memory ( recall of visual text and images )
o Visual Motor Integration ( coordination of vision and fine hand motor skills )
o Visual Perception ( how the brain interprets vision
Common signs of vision or focussing problems:
- Eyes not straight/turned
- Eyestrain or headaches
- Blurred vision or double vision when reading
- Words moving on the page when reading
- Losing place or skipping words or lines when reading
- Short attention span
- Holding book close to face to read
- Difficulty taking in and making sense of visual information
- Frequent reversal of letters and words
- Mistaking similar letters or words “there and then”, “ picture and picnic”
- Difficulty with spelling
- Good as responding orally, but not when required to write
Apart from sight, all the other vision and visual processing skills may be missed during a conventional eye examination or a school vision screening. If your child shows some of the above signs that are affecting their learning, then they require a comprehensive eye examination with a Childrens Vision Optometrist. A Childrens Vision Optometrist will examine sight, eye skills and uncover any problems that may be causing your child to struggle with reading or learning.
Help for struggling Children:
If your child is struggling and they have a vision problem, the following can help improve their learning skills:
- Glasses or contact lenses – will correct focusing problems
- Vision Therapy Training – a tailored program of in house and home brain -hand/eye training exercises that naturally improve fundamental visual skills such as eye coordination and tracking skills
When should children have an eye examination?
- As soon as possible if there is a family history of vision problems such as eye turn , lazy eye or high degrees of short or longsighedness
- At age 3 onwards, regularly every 2 years
- At the start of school, if their progress is significantly slower than expected.
Who can benefit from Vision Therapy and Visual Perceptual training?
In addition to preschool children, kindergarten children and school children, both teenagers and adults can also have chronic weakness of certain visual skills which can limit their learning and their performance at work. Vision therapy benefits all ages.
What next?
- Review the symptoms/signs checklist above
- If you suspect your child has a vision problem, book an appointment with our Optometrists, Caroline or Diana.
