Your child’s eyesight is precious. Without good vision children can suffer enormous setbacks to learning and the development of all their life skills.
Many parents do not realise that eyesight can be tested from a very early age and that it is recommended that children should have an eye examination at least by the age of three, or earlier if you think may be a problem. Special tests have been devised for very young children and the earlier a problem is detected, the more effectively it can be treated. The great thing to remember is that eye examinations don’t hurt! For en information leaflet please click here.
It’s never too early to take your baby for an eye examination. Any defect - such as a squint - will cause problems later on unless treated at an early age.
Vision screening checks are often carried out by doctors, health visitors and other medically trained personnel, but these are not as comprehensive as a full eye examination carried out by an optometrist.
Our St George’s Road practice is dedicated to helping children with learning difficulties who may also have vision problems. To date we have assessed over ten thousand children with reading difficulties, who have attended the practice from all over Britain - and from over 50 countries abroad!
We offer in-depth assessments of vision and learning that go well beyond the conventional eye sight test, and probe visual perception; co-ordination, handwriting; spelling; visual thinking and maths abilities as well. We are also often able to help patients with squints, and with amblyopia (sometimes called "lazy eye").
Where we identify visual factors that may be affecting learning, we can provide spectacles, vision therapy exercises and occupational advice, and normally follow this up with comprehensive reports on what has been done for parents, teachers and allied professionals. Further information can be found here.
Meanwhile, our St Pauls Medical Centre practice offers conventional eye tests for children of all age - our youngest patient being 3 months old!