Children and behavioural optometry
“Behavioural Optometrists are fully qualified optometrists who have a special interest in patients with reading & learning difficulties, traumatic brain injury, and binocular vision dysfunction.”
Is your child struggling at school? An eye test may provide some answers for you!
When assessing your child, we provide a series of vision tests that are designed for children. We assess many aspects of vision including how well the eyes work together and the accuracy of their eye movements. This allows us to check if your child is using their eyes easily and effectively. Many problems can occur with school work because children’s eyes get tired too easily and then they lose concentration. Vision training or glasses may be used to support and improve children’s vision.
PRE-TEST VISIT You are welcome to bring your children in to look around the practice and see where the eye test will occur and get familiar with the environment. Some parents practice a simple vision test at home first and teach their child how to look with one eye covered. Your child doesnt need to know letters to get a good eye test - our computerised charts allow for shapes or numbers.
GLASSES for children are safe and easy to adapt to and are often not permanent. For your child to perform at their best at school they may need to improve their vision with glasses, or they may also need improvement in eye-focusing and eye-tracking, or they may need to work on improving their visual information processing with training. Or they may need a combination of these.
SCHOOL PERFORMANCE If your child is not performing to their potential at school, we may do some Visual Information Processing tests such as visual memory, eye hand coordination, speed of information processing or visualisation. The tests assesses how your child perceives the things in their visual world and why they may have messy writing or difficulty completing work on time.
vision training
VISION TRAINING for children is safe and easy to perform.
Children find eye training fun. Most adults find it fun too. We use in-office training mostly because it gives the best results - 30 minutes training per week. We include lots of in-office hands-on Vision Training to really get the mind, body and eyes working together. Some people need just a couple of exercises. Many will need a full 20-40 week training program to really get the improvements that they want.
Vision Training can help eye-tracking, processing speed, memory and more. Some people with prior head injury or concussion, have vision problems and training can be of assistance to them too.
CONCUSSION
After graduating, our optometrists received further training from the Australasian College of Behavioural Optometrists ACBO and Optometric Extension Program Foundation OEPF. This includes assessment of people of all ages who have head injury, stroke, vertigo, motion sensitivity, dizziness, post concussional syndrome etc. and how their vision may be affected by these issues. Special glasses with prism or neuro-filters can often reduce symptoms. An eye check in the first month after a head injury is important for faster recovery. But its never too late - some symptoms can last for years and can still be managed by the optometrist.
Signs that your child may need an eye test include
One eye turns in or out whilst the other points straight ahead
Eyes blink frequently
Eyes water
Holds book very close to read
Loses place when reading
Rubs eyes frequently
Tilts head
Covers or closes one eye
Poor handwriting speed or poor handwriting neatness
Complains of intermittent blurred vision
Squinting or sitting very close whilst watching television
