Taking Your Baby In For Their First Eye Exam

About Me
Vision after Forty

Hello. My name is Lori Frank. I’m fifty-two years old. I had perfect vision until I turned forty-one years of age. It’s funny; you often hear how one's vision starts to change at forty. Well, I can tell you that statement sure has held true for not only me but friends and family too. I never worried about going for yearly eye exams until I noticed that it was getting harder to read road signs when driving. I got my first pair of glasses when I was forty-one, and I’ve been averaging a new prescription at least every other year since. I want to share some of my experiences when it comes to eye exams. I was frightened and wanted to put it off, but there’s really nothing to be afraid of. Moreover, to make things better, eyeglasses are a trend these days!

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Taking Your Baby In For Their First Eye Exam

30 November 2014
 Categories: , Blog

Some people forget that taking care of their eyes should be a part of their health regimens. In fact, you should have yearly visits with an eye doctor to make sure your eyes have no underlying problems and to make sure you are able to see properly. If you have a small child, you will want to start taking them to an eye doctor early to start a routine of good habits. Here are some guidelines that you can follow about when to take your child to the eye doctor and what to expect at the first visit..

A Child's Eye Care Schedule

You may wonder when you should first start taking your child to see an eye doctor. Your child's pediatrician does checks of your baby's eyes at their doctor's appointments, so isn't that enough? According to aoa.org, your baby's first official trip to an eye doctor should be around six months of age. After this, they recommend another visit around three years of age and then one around five years of age. If there are changes in vision, your visits should be yearly to make sure your child is always seeing at their best. If your child has any problems, it's best to catch them earlier rather than later.

What Will Happen At The First Visit?

If your child's first visit happens when they are still under a year old, the doctor will be limited in being able to correct the vision, as your baby still cannot express displeasure in blurriness. They will still be able to do a thorough check on the health of your baby's eyes with the use of lights and a visual inspection. You will arrive at the office and the optometrist will do a series of tests to make sure the functions of the eyes are working properly. They will look for possible problems like strabismus, in which eyes don't coordinate and move together, and Nystagmus, where eyes have uncontrollable movements.

The doctor will have your baby follow a light with their eyes to check for eye movement. They will check peripheral vision by holding up a blank card next to the baby's face and then flipping it to a card with a picture upon it to see if the eyes will move to the direction in which the card is being held. These kinds of tests will show the doctor if the baby is able to see, and the results will act as a guideline for the next appointment.