Children's Vision and Learning Month Brings Awareness of Eye Exams
By Kelcie Huffstickler - 8/1/2009
Little Rock Family Staff

Luke Hankins’ parents first suspected a problem during one of his soccer games. The seven-year-old was playing like he didn’t know who was on what team, though they wore distinctly different red and green jerseys.

“Daddy, the shirts look the same to me,” Luke said to his bewildered parents. That experience, along with a few other suspicious signs, convinced the Hankins to have their son tested at James Eyecare Center for color deficiency, also known as color blindness. Sure enough, he tested positive.

“I can’t believe we went seven years with us not knowing,” Luke’s mom, Carrie, said. Her son had already been diagnosed as nearsighted after failing vision screenings in kindergarten and first grade, but because color deficiency is not detected in these screenings, many parents don’t discover the problem as soon as they should.

Screenings + Regular Exams = Full Diagnosis

Dr. Brian Guice at Kavanaugh Eye Care said that just because a child passes a vision screening or is told he sees 20/20 doesn’t mean he has perfect vision.

“Vision screenings are very important to catch kids who clearly need eye exams, but the problem is they set the bar too [low],” he said. “There are a lot of kids who make it through screenings who still need eye exams and need glasses, need correction, need binocular vision issues addressed.”

Binocular vision is the ability of both eyes to work together, and vision screenings also don’t catch binocular problems like focusing and tracking.

To raise awareness for these issues, The College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) is launching its annual “August is Children's Vision and Learning Month” Public Awareness Campaign. The goal of the campaign is to educate parents and teachers about the critical link between vision and learning. According to the American Optometric Association, 60 percent of students identified as "problem learners" have undetected vision problems.

“The most significant way that everybody learns is through their vision, and sometimes it’s as basic as needing to be able to read what the teacher writes on the marker board or being able to see clearly in books,” Guice said. “If kids can’t do that, they’re at a disadvantage, and the ramifications of not doing well in school can last a lifetime.”

For those with more common problems like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, Guice still emphasizes the importance of regular vision screenings.

“They’re basic visual disorders corrected with glasses, but you’d be surprised at how often they go undiagnosed in children,” he said, “partially because they don’t know how to articulate that they’re having blurry vision or they’re getting eyestrain or headaches.”

Guice said the following signs may be clues that a child has vision problems: reports of eyestrain, fatigue, headaches, eye rubbing, squinting, holding reading material closely, avoidance of reading or doing homework, frequently losing place while reading, skipping lines, re-reading lines and poor or slow reading comprehension.

Although the American Optometric Association recommends children start receiving eye exams around six months old, Guice said parents generally don’t bring in their children for eye exams often enough.

“It’s not as big of an issue when they’re little kids, but especially around first, second, third grade when children are really starting to use their eyes for the first time -- they’re learning to read; they’re looking at marker boards -- it’s pretty stressful on their eyes,” Guice said. “If they can’t see clearly, it’s just an added burden to the learning process that is completely unnecessary. A simple pair of glasses can fix that.”

To encourage parents to get a head start in taking care of their children’s vision, the American Optometric Association has designed a program called Infant SEE, in which doctors perform a complimentary eye exam for children between six and 12 months old. Guice is an advocate of the program and performs the comprehensive exam for babies at his office at 5600 Kavanaugh Blvd.

“It’s a great program that allows us to see kids early and pick up on a lot of these issues,” he said.

For Luke, there is no treatment for his condition. But his mom said knowing about her child’s color deficiency is important so she can make teachers and others who interact with him aware. For example, she said, a color deficient child can’t read green words on a red page or see red boundary lines on a green soccer field so teachers and coaches need to know these things up front. Once they know, they can accommodate the child and help him cope in different ways. Knowing that red is at the top of a stoplight and green is on the bottom, for example, might be just the clue a color deficient child needs to drive one day. And with mechanisms like this, Carrie said, children like Luke can get along without any major problems in life.

Dr. Guice will be performing free children’s vision screenings from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday Aug. 22 at Kavanaugh Eye Care, 5600 Kavanaugh Blvd. The screenings will be available for children ages 18 and under and will include balloons, stickers and candy.

September is Sports Eye Health and Safety Month. For more information about protecting your children from sports-related eye injuries, click here.