80% of what children learn before 12 years of age is through their vision.  This fact explains the importance of having your child’s vision checked on an annual basis besides having your child’s vision checked as a toddler.   Only 4% of vision problems are detected through vision screenings at school and at the pediatrician’s offices when 25% of children have a vision problem.  A simple comprehensive eye exam with dilation is recommended to rule-out any refractive errors, ocualr pathologies, and binocular vision disorders.  Our eyes reveal a lot about our general health and help reveal systemic diseases and/or autoimmune disorders that can otherwise go undetected until far later when the condition has worsened. 

Some states have all ready passed laws that mandate eye exams for children before starting school.  This is a great thing since it helps us rule-out right away if vision is hindering the ability for a child to learn with the rest of his or her peers.  For instance, a lot of these kids are mislabeled with ADD/ADHD for instance when all they needed was a pair of glasses or a little vision therapy.  This would save our education system millions of dollars in unnecessary “IEP’s” and special needs therapy at school since all it was to begin with was a vision problem.

The message here is to take your children and even yourself to an eye care professional to rule-out any vision problems let alone any systemic conditions that might be going on that you were unaware of at that time.  Preventive medicine is a great concept, which can save you a lot of money in medical bills in the long run let alone one’s life when catching a potentially life threatening disease in its early stages.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Eye Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.