Category: Children’s eye health

Myopia, otherwise known as nearsightedness or shortsightedness, can impact a child’s eye health and their ability to clearly see distant objects. This condition—where distant objects appear blurry, while close objects remain in focus—can significantly impact a child’s learning and development. Early detection and management of myopia are therefore fundamental in ensuring that your child maintains good eye health so they can continue doing all the things they enjoy—including playing with friends, learning at school, and all their other fun activities.

There are a few signs to look out for if you believe your child has myopia. There are also a number of strategies you can implement to prevent and mitigate myopia from developing, including booking an appointment with your local optometrist. For more information on myopia, how you can spot it, and how you can help your child if you believe they are developing myopia, continue reading.

What is myopia?

Myopia is an eye condition characterised by blurry vision when looking at distant objects. This condition occurs when light rays entering the eye do not focus directly on the retina but instead fall in front of it. Essentially, this is due to the elongation of the eyeball or changes in the natural lens of the eye, affecting the way light rays are refracted within the eye. With a better understanding of myopia, what causes it and how it can be treated in children, you can begin to seek treatment for your child so they can see the world around them more clearly.

Types of myopia

There are two types of myopia: refractive myopia and axial myopia.  These classifications are each based on different underlying causes of the condition:

• Refractive myopia occurs when the cornea and the natural lens inside the eye have too much focusing power compared to the length of the eye. This imbalance causes light rays to converge before they reach the retina, resulting in blurry distance vision.
• Axial myopia, on the other hand, is caused by the elongation of the eyeball itself. In this type of myopia, the eye grows longer than normal from front to back, causing light rays to focus in front of the retina rather than directly on its surface. This type of myopia is more closely associated with progressive myopia, where the elongation can continue over time, potentially leading to high myopia.

Beyond these two classifications of myopia, there are other types of myopia that fall within these categories:

• Simple myopia: This is the most common type of myopia. It is often caused due to a minor refractive error and can be easily corrected with glasses or contact lenses.
• High myopia: This severe form of myopia increases the risk of eye health complications, such as retinal detachment. It often requires more specialised intervention to manage effectively, beyond glasses or contact lenses.
• Degenerative myopia: Also known as pathological or progressive myopia, this rarer form of myopia worsens over time, potentially leading to vision loss. It’s important to monitor closely due to its association with various eye health issues.
• Induced myopia: Certain environmental factors can result in or exacerbate myopia, such as diabetes. Induced myopia may fluctuate over time, and in some cases can be reversed.

What causes myopia in children?

The development of myopia in children can be attributed to both genetic and environmental factors.

If one or both of a child’s parents have myopia, then the child is at a higher risk of also developing myopia. Environmental factors that can also affect myopia, such as spending excessive time reading, using smartphones or tablets, or spending little time outdoors, have been shown to contribute to increasing rates of myopia in children.

Understanding these risk factors is crucial for parents and caregivers to take preventive measures and seek early intervention for their children’s eye health.

Genetics

Family history can play a big part in child myopia. Children with one or both parents who are myopic have a higher chance of developing myopia themselves.

Prevention: While you can’t change your child’s genes or what traits you pass down to them, regular eye exams can help detect myopia early on. This allows for a timely intervention.

Limited outdoor activity

Spending little time outside has been linked to an increased risk of children developing myopia. This is because natural light and focusing on distant objects outdoors can affect eye development for children.

Prevention: Encourage children to spend more time outside each day to support healthy eye development. Of course, it’s also important to make sure you’re taking factors such as sun safety into account.

Excessive near work

Activities that require focusing on close objects for prolonged periods, like reading, and using smartphones or tablets, can strain the eyes and may contribute to myopia progression. Close work can increase the demand on the eye’s focusing system, potentially leading to the elongation of the eyeball, which is a characteristic of myopia.

Prevention: It can be tough to get your child off their smart device. But ensuring that your child takes regular breaks during near work to take the strain off their eyes can help to prevent myopia.

Poor lighting

Insufficient lighting requires the eyes to work harder to focus, causing the eyes to strain. Playing on a smart device or reading in poorly lit conditions can cause eye strain and may contribute to the development of myopia in children.

Prevention: When your child is reading or doing their homework, make sure they have plenty of lighting to help reduce eye strain. This could be from a natural light source or from a lamp or room light that gives them plenty of visibility.

Signs and symptoms of myopia

Myopia in children can manifest through several observable signs. Recognising these symptoms early is vital for prompt intervention, ensuring that measures can be taken to support the child’s eye health.

These are just three common signs and symptoms that your child may have myopia.

Squinting

When children squint, they are trying to minimise the amount of light entering their eyes, which can temporarily improve their focus on distant objects. Squinting is a common sign of myopia and indicates that the child is struggling to see clearly. Parents might notice their child squinting when trying to focus on the television, the blackboard in school, or when attempting to identify distant objects during outdoor activities.

Frequent headaches

Regular headaches can often accompany myopia in children. These headaches typically result from the strain of trying to focus on images that appear blurry. The eye strain puts continuous pressure on the eyes, leading to discomfort around the forehead and temples. If your child frequently complains of headaches, especially after reading, watching TV, or spending time on the computer, it might be time to schedule an eye examination with your local Eyecare Plus optometrist.

Difficulty seeing distant objects clearly

A clear indicator of myopia is when a child has trouble seeing distant objects. They may struggle to read signs or see details from far away that others with normal vision can see easily. As a parent, you may notice that your child is having difficulty paying attention to distant details or needs to sit closer to the television to see clearly.

 

Myopia treatment and management options for children

Myopia can significantly impact a child’s eye health and quality of life if it’s not addressed soon enough. In certain severe cases, such as high myopia, there’s an increased risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma and macular degeneration—all of which can potentially cause blindness in middle age. This is why it’s so important to monitor your child for signs of myopia and intervene if you notice some telltale symptoms.

If your child does develop myopia, then there are a number of ways you can help mitigate its progression and still ensure your child is not missing out on any of the essential parts of their childhood by using specially designed spectacle lenses, contact lenses and eye drops.

Glasses and contact lenses

For children diagnosed with myopia, contact lenses and glasses are the primary methods for vision correction. Depending on your child’s age, they may feel more comfortable with a pair of glasses or contact lenses. At Eyecare Plus, we have a wide range of different styles of glasses to choose from, so your child is sure to find a pair they love. We also have different types of contact lenses available, including daily contact lenses and monthly contact lenses.

Lifestyle adjustments

Incorporating lifestyle adjustments, such as increasing outdoor activities and taking regular breaks from close work, can play a significant role in managing myopia. These simple changes are recommended to help slow the progression of myopia, offering an easy and non-invasive approach.

Monitoring symptoms and seeking professional care

Regular eye examinations are crucial for monitoring the progression of myopia and adapting treatment plans as needed. At Eyecare Plus, we recommend that children have their first eye test at the age of one. Then, it’s recommended for them to be tested again at ages three and five. It’s important to make sure your child has their eyes tested before they start school so they can get the most out of their education.

With regular eye tests from a trusted professional, you can effectively monitor your child’s eye health and ensure they’re not showing any signs of myopia. And if they do begin to show symptoms, there are many ways you can begin to address these issues. Consulting with a trained Eyecare Plus eye specialist is a great place to begin, as they can advise you on the most suitable treatments for your child.

Find your nearest optometrist today and book an appointment with Eyecare Plus.

One of the most common questions parents ask of their optometrist is, “how much screen time is too much for children?”

When Optometry Australia surveyed parents about their children and screen time they discovered that 44 per cent of Australian parents are worried about the effects of screen time on children’s eyesight whilst nearly 75% believe that too much screen time can damage our vision.

Today, nearly 25 percent of school children have a vision problem significant enough to impact their learning.

Your child’s eyes are critical to both their learning and development. Most of their learning comes from what they see, so it is important that they understand how to look after their eyes.

One of more tangible areas we can help look after the eyes of our children is with screen time.

Too much screen time has an impact on children’s eyes and has been associated with vision problems such as eye strain (sore eyes) and myopia (short-sightedness). Not only this, it also contributes to poor physical, social and intellectual development.

Green Time

Whilst screen time has become a way of life for most school aged children, it is important for their development that they have the right balance between screen time and green (outdoor) time.

Australian research shows that increased exposure to outdoor light will help reduce the early onset of myopia in children, whilst a study from overseas confirmed that time outdoor in natural light can slow the progression of myopia.

Myopia (short-sightedness) is growing rapidly among children and predicted to reach epidemic proportions with half the world’s population forecast to be impacted by 2050.

It becomes a greater problem the longer children spend in front of their screens, reducing the time they spend outside.

Research indicates that being outdoors in natural light for less than an hour a day can increase the risk of myopia; whilst for those with myopia, if they increase time outdoors myopia progression can be reduced.

Therefore, it is important that whenever a child is using a screen, they need to have a proportionate amount of green time.

To help prevent myopia from developing and progressing, it is recommended that children should spend one to two hours a day outside.

It is important for a child’s health, learning and emotional development to help them find the right balance between screen time and green time. To do this, follow three simple digital device tips for better eye and general health.

Top 3 Digital Device Tips

1. Screen Time: Monitor and Reduce

It is recommended that school-aged children limit sedentary leisure screen time to two (2) hours per day. For children under five years of age it should be under one hour per day.

2. Green Time: Outdoor Fun

Balance your child’s screen time by encouraging them to spend more than one, preferably two hours a day (or at least 11 hours per week) doing activities outdoors, having fun!

3. 20-20-20 Rule

To help restore some life balance and limit the large amount of exposure children have to their screens apply the 20-20-20 rule.

Every 20 minutes your child spends looking at a screen, ask them to look at an object in the distance, 20 feet away, for 20 seconds. This is a simple eye exercise that will give their eyes a much needed break.

Green time is both available and beneficial for all children. We need to encourage our kids to put their screen down after 20 minutes and look into the distance for a count of 20, or better still head outside and enjoy fun unstructured outdoor activities.

Good vision is critical to your child’s development and performance at school.

According to Optometry Australia’s 2020 Vision Index report, almost 80% of Australian parents believe their children have great eyesight, however, alarmingly, nearly 32% of parents have never taken their child to an optometrist for an eye test.

Of the 68% of children who have had their eyes examined by an optometrist, 35% have required prescription glasses.

Optometry Australia is urging parents to take their children to have their eyes tested regularly and certainly at least before they start back to school.

“The first test of the year should be an eye test,” says Luke Arundel, Chief Clinical Officer, Optometry Australia.

One in five children will be going back to school with undetected vision problems which can affect their ability to learn, problems which can easily be picked up by your local optometrist.

Early Intervention

Having an eye test at the beginning of the school year is crucial in being able to uncover eye problems early, well before your child mentions that the words in their book look blurry or they cannot see the school board.

An optometrist can test, diagnose, and manage any visual dysfunction that may co-exist with a child’s learning difficulty diagnosis. Vision, either poor sight or poor efficiency in skills, may affect a child’s cognitive ability and interfere with their learning.

Without knowing, your child could be struggling with vision problems which can impact their ability to read, their speed of reading, fluency, concentration, and comprehension well before you know they have a problem. Early intervention by your local optometrist is important in helping them remove this significant obstacle to their learning.

Vision problems such as poor focusing, poor eye teaming, poor eye tracking and uncorrected refractive error (one of the leading causes of amblyopia or lazy eye) can interfere with learning and potentially result in in poor school performance.

Whilst vision problems may not always be the direct cause of learning disorders, they can have an impact on your child’s ability to perform to their potential. Students with learning challenges may require a multidisciplinary approach from a team of people including teaching staff and health care professionals.

Warning Signs Of Child Vision Problems

How do you know if your child has good or poor vision?

 There are some important signs of possible vision problems in your child that parents should look out for, including:

• Difficulty reading, such as skipping and confusing words or using their finger when reading
• Holding a book very close or sitting too close to the television
• Tilting or turning their head to one side when looking at something
• Complaints of headaches and blurred or double vision
• Squinting, or having difficulty recognising things or people in the distance
• Difficulty focusing on a moving object such as a ball being thrown in their direction
• Eyes turning inwards, outwards, or sidewards

It can be hard to tell if your child has good or poor vision especially when they are very young and nonverbal.

It is important to not assume that your child has good distance and near vision. Your optometrist can do age appropriate vision tests for your child so they can diagnose ocular health problems, refractive errors, and/or binocular dysfunctions early.

Screen Time

As extended near work on digital devices have been associated with eye strain (sore eyes) and myopia (short-sightedness) a common question asked by parents is how much screen time is appropriate for children.

You can break it down into two simple guidelines:

• Monitor and Reduce screen time: it is recommended that school-aged children spend less than two hours per day of leisure screen time
• Spend 11 plus hours per week doing outdoors activities: Balance the child’s activities with lots of outdoor sport such as soccer, cycling, walking, etc

Regular Kids Eye Tests

A comprehensive eye test by an optometrist will assess visual efficiency skills which can have a direct impact on learning and your child’s potential in the classroom.

Kids will often not complain about vision problems because they will feel that that what they are living with is normal. By getting their eyes checked you will be able to discover a problem if one exists well before it becomes a bigger problem.

No child is too young to get their first eye test!

Contact your local Eyecare Plus optometrist to book an eye test for your child at the start of the school year. A Medicare rebate is available for all infants and children.

 

Thank you to Dr SooJin Nam for her direction and input with this article.

Dr SooJin Nam has a special interest in children’s vision, myopia control and learning difficulties, in particular, the impact vision has on learning and concentration. She understands the concerns parents have when told that their child has poor vision. She understands that selecting the first pair of spectacles for your kids can be a daunting experience. Dr Nam and her practices have been the recipient of many business awards over the years.