Proper Eyesight is Essential to Performance in School

An average of twenty percent of children of school age struggle to read. Even though many of these cases are a result of learning disabilities or dyslexia, a sizable number of children with reading problems have completely fine language and phonetic skills. While professionals may be busy looking for learning disabilities, a vision impairment is often to blame.

Eyesight has a vital role in the reading process. First off, children must have adequate eyesight or visual acuity to be able to see clearly from far away. Most vision checks done through the school are designed to check this using the familiar 20/20 eye chart. Although problems with distance vision are often detected at an early stage because of such tests, more subtle eyesight and processing issues often go unchecked.

In order to perform optimally in school, additional visual abilities must be up to par. For children to read properly they need to be able to synchronize their eye movements, follow a line of text without getting lost, keep focus during reading and instantly change focus. Students also need to be able to interpret and correctly process the stimuli presented to them. An impairment in any of these visual skills can cause great problems with school, especially with reading.

Clearly children with vision problems often struggle unnecessarily when a simple pair of glasses would fix the problem. Too often adults look for more serious developmental issues before looking into vision.

Some of the specific vision skills needed for learning include:

Tracking: the capability to track along a line of text. Children with tracking problems often lose their place, skip words and have trouble understanding what they are trying to read.

Convergence: the eyes must be able to simultaneously focus on one image sending a unified, focused image to the brain's vision center. As much as 10% of young students suffer from convergence insufficiency or excess (two types of eye teaming problems) which can lead to double vision, scrambled sight and fatigue. Eye teaming problems can be treated by a qualified optometrist.

Vision Perception : there are a variety of cognitive functions that require the ability to give meaning to and decipher what is seen. Such skills include visual distinction and memory capabilities that are necessary for recognizing words, spelling and spatial processing skills.

When a child is experiencing problems in school, have a vision test done immediately. Visit our optometry website http://www.northridgeoptometrist.com to learn more about eye health or to book an eye exam.