Studies have shown that a lack of vision care can have harmful effects on a child’s growth. According to recent surveys, over half of all parents overlook their child’s eye health, which can impede their learning and increase their risk of developing diseases.
It’s especially important that young children be taken to receive eye exams. A child’s intellectual development is deeply connected to their senses, with over 70% of learning to happen through eyesight. That means anything that interferes with this process can affect their learning ability. Vision problems affect 25% of all school-age children – that’s a big fraction of kids who are learning at a disadvantage, especially if their needs haven’t yet been discovered. This can have a serious impact on academic performance, creating further issues down the line.
Eye exams do much more for a child’s health than just checking for vision problems, however. A comprehensive eye exam can now detect over 250 diseases throughout the body, making them helpful for maintaining one’s quality of life. This is because the body is interconnected in ways that allow an eye exam to discover conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. While we often associate these diseases with adulthood and advanced age, these same symptoms can also be found within younger patients.
Studies say that over 60% of parents do not take their kids for routine eye exams – that means their eyesight could be declining for months before anyone realizes. This statistic is especially alarming because studies say that 60% of kids with learning disabilities have an undetected vision impairment. Some vision issues, called “functional vision problems”, aren’t even related to how clear one’s vision is, meaning that a child can have trouble focusing on their work without any obvious signs. In cases like these only an eye exam can uncover the problem.
The best way to stay on top of your child’s eyecare is to use the vision plan offered by your union. This can ensure that you are able to detect and treat vision issues before they become a problem, not after.
