A Guide

Your Child's Visual Development

Your child’s vision plays a very critical role in their development, ability to learn, and overall health. When your child was born, their vision was a constant flow of light and dark patterns. Through interaction and experience, their vision empowered them to see a whole new world, reach important milestones, grow in social interactions, and find success in school, sports and more.

 

While vision is a fundamental component to the sensory system, it is very much a learned skill that needs appropriate stimulation and support to continue to develop.

 

Two thirds of the brain’s functions are associated with vision.

 

As your child’s biggest advocate, you undoubtedly want them to thrive. This guide will help you understand where your child’s eyes are at, depending on their age, and how you can help develop their vision.

Vision Development

Birth to Age Five & Beyond

Research shows that approximately 75% of what children learn during the early years of life is processed through their vision.

 

Sight is ever-evolving, and it’s important to remember that every experience is an opportunity for your child to use what they see as a guide for future learning.

Your Child's First Year of Life

Birth - 4 months

It’s astonishing how much growth happens in the first months of life. Your baby’s vision starts out very blurry, but becomes stronger by the day. In the first four months, your baby’s hand-eye coordination begins to develop. They should start to follow things that move in front of their eyes and, perhaps, even begin to reach for objects.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Decorate their room in visually stimulating and high contrast colors and patterns.
  • Hang a mobile above their crib.
  • Show them objects within their area of focus, which is about 8-12 inches from their eyes.
  • Talk to your baby as you approach them and move around them, so they can follow you with their eyes.
  • Keep the room they are in well lit.
  • Place a small, low watt night light in their room at night for stimulation if they wake.

4 - 6 months

As your baby’s vision becomes more in focus, their eye control and movements should further develop during these months. Additionally, through play and interactions, hand-eye and eye-body coordination will strengthen.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • When feeding, slowly move the bottle from side to side to encourage them to track the bottle with their eyes.
  • Hand your baby toys that are different shapes and have different textures, so they can feel and learn with their fingers and eyes.
  • Play patty-cake with your baby.
  • Place shimmering toys or materials in front of your child as fun, visual stimulus.

6 - 8 months

Your baby’s eyes should be able to focus equally now.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Play peek-a-boo with your baby using your hands and visually-appealing toys.
  • Provide toys and stuffed animals to play with that are detailed and engaging.
  • Encourage your child to crawl and explore.
  • Allow your children to watch older children play. This will boost your child’s development by showing them how they can move and function.

8 - 12 months

As your baby becomes more mobile, they will begin utilizing both eyes simultaneously to gauge distances and depths with greater precision.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Continue to encourage crawling for eye-hand-foot-body coordination.
  • Allow your baby to play with stacking and age-appropriate puzzle toys.
  • Hand your baby new, stimulating items they can hold, touch, and study with their eyes.

Your Child's Vision as a One-Year-Old

During this year, your child’s eye-hand coordination is becoming strong, as it’s almost fully developed. Your child will begin to see and want to explore things out of arm’s reach, which is a big reason why the development of walking happens in the first year. Your child will also start to grasp the fact that objects have different sizes, shapes, and forms, significantly boosting their perception skills.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Allow your baby to move and roam freely, in a safe environment, inside and outside.
  • Play with your baby and show them how to build with blocks, construct puzzles, etc.
  • Introduce toys that develop eye-hand-foot coordination, such as riding toys.
  • Introduce toys that deliver a visual response when your child touches it.
  • When appropriate, encourage your child to touch, taste and hear objects they see.

Your Child's Vision as a Two-Year-Old

Your two-year-old should be a completely independent mover and very eager to explore and see new things in various surroundings. Allowing your child to safely explore is an exceptional opportunity for them to learn on their own terms, and will allow you to observe them from a distance to further understand how they see the world.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Encourage outdoor play in various settings, even with other children.
  • Read to your child and point to the words and pictures as your go.
  • Provide art supplies for coloring, drawing, painting and sculpting.
  • Tell your child the name of objects as you point to them or hand items to them. This will help promote language development as well as vision.
  • Play games that involve matching or putting items in order.

Your Child's Vision as a Three to Five-Year-Old

This is a crucial age range, as your child will begin to acquire pre-writing and pre-reading skills. There are many aspects of your child’s vision that play a central role in the development of these skills, such as:

  • Eye tracking – The ability to visually follow a moving target or switch attention from one object to another.
  • Eye fixation – The ability to look directly and steadily at a specific object.
  • Eye focusing – The ability to rapidly and accurately see clearly when looking from one distance to another.
  • Eye teaming – The ability to have both eyes move together in a coordinated way to allow single, comfortable vision, and deliver accurate depth perception.
  • Peripheral vision/awareness – The ability to see objects that are on the sides of your vision, as opposed to in your direct line of vision.

Best Practices to Support Vision Development

  • Practice top to bottom and left to right progressions with your child with activities like reading and writing on paper.
  • When reading aloud, place your finger on each word as you read it. You can also place your child’s finger on each word.
  • Engage in memory activities with card and word games.
  • Strengthen eye tracking skills by allowing your child to play with a pegboard, for example, and showing your child how to move pieces in a left to right pattern.

Vision Issues

Monitoring Your Child's Vision

Vision Issues Can Develop at Any Age

Your child’s vision will continue to develop and change throughout their entire life. Especially during early and middle childhood, and into adolescence, your child will grow and develop rapidly. Growth can cause vision to change quickly, and, often times, your child won’t even realize their eyesight has shifted.

 

This is why it’s crucial for parents to monitor their child’s vision on an ongoing basis.

 

Vision issues that are left undetected or untreated can lead to unnecessary learning problems, confidence issues, frustration, and an overall disinterest in certain social and learning activities.

Difference Between Vision Screening and Vision Examination

Did you know that a vision screening at your child’s school or an eye exam by their pediatrician is not the same as a comprehensive vision examination by an optometrist?

 

In your efforts to support your child’s vision development and monitor for any potential issues, it’s important to know that a vision screening will only deliver limited results.

 

Vision screenings only catch about 15-20% of vision problems, as they solely focus on checking your child’s distance vision and completely skip assessments for:
  • Near vision (critical for reading)
  • Binocular coordination
  • Eye movement skills
  • Focusing skills
  • Peripheral awareness
  • Color vision

 

For these reasons, a comprehensive eye exam by an optometrist who specializes in pediatric vision is vital starting at age three.

 

Note; however, that if you have concerns before age three due to family traits, such as lazy eye, high prescriptions or disease, your child can be examined as early as 6 months.

 

At such young ages, children with vision issues don’t know that what they are seeing (or not seeing) isn’t right. Additionally, they don’t yet have the communication skills to tell you eye issue symptoms they are experiencing.

 

Early intervention by an eye doctor is key and can make a significant different in your child’s development.

Vision Affects a Child's Development and Ability to Learn

Approximately one in four children have a vision disorder that interferes with their ability to learn.

 

When a child is displaying poor learning skills or learning difficulties, there is a 75% chance that they are caused by vision issues.

 

Because vision is a learning sense, children who contend with untreated vision issues may be delayed in early developmental skills, such as sitting, crawling, walking, and talking, not learn how to perform tasks as quickly as other child, and start their reading, writing and learning journey already way behind.

Signs of Vision Issues

Children who see well can still have vision problems that affect coordination, reading, comprehension, recognition, and recollection.

 

Here are the most common signs of a vision problem:
  • Squinting
  • Frequent eye rubbing
  • Eye focusing problems
  • Eye tracking problems (the ability to follow an object with the eyes)
  • Extreme light sensitivity
  • Abnormal eye alignment or movement
  • Chronic eye redness or tearing
  • Inability to see objects at a distance
  • Sitting too close to the TV
  • Unusual head positions or actions in order to see something, such as holding a book very close to their face or angling their head to view a page

 

If you notice any signs of vision issues, or if you want to ensure that your child isn’t experiencing any problems that you can’t detect, be sure to see an optometrist as soon as possible.

The Importance of an Annual Pediatric Eye Exam

To ensure your child’s vision is developing normally and will help your child achieve a head start every school year, an annual pediatric eye exam is imperative.

 

A licensed optometrist who specializes in pediatric eye exams will thoroughly assess your child’s vision and see to it that they find the experience fun and engaging. Dr. Dave Wineland and Dr. Sara Sanders both have received advanced training in pediatric care and practice many Behavioral Optometry methods which focus on therapeutic exercises to help visual systems process.

 

At iCare Vision, it is our ultimate goal to make sure your child’s development, advancement, and confidence is not hindered in any way because of their vision.

 

Schedule an appointment today to guarantee your child’s vision is supporting their exact living and learning needs.