Monthly Archives: September

5 Easy Eye Care Tips for Student Athletes

For student athletes, proper visual skills are essential to be able to play safely and perform at their best. Athletes rely on their eyes to track moving objects, judge distance, react quickly, maintain balance, and coordinate their movements. But, as important as it is, proper eye care can get overlooked when the busy season starts. Here are some important suggestions to keep in mind to maintain healthy vision and strong performance.

Schedule Regular Eye Exams

This tip actually applies to everybody, but student athletes should pay particular attention. Because athletes rely so heavily on their visual skills, a comprehensive eye exam is the easiest way to monitor any changes in vision and take action quickly in order to correct any issues. Even if the scoreboard looks clear, a vision exam can detect underlying issues that are not as obvious, such as depth perception, tracking or eye coordination.

Wear Protective Eyewear

Getting hit in the eye with an 80mph fastball is not only painful, but it can lead to a scratched cornea, bleeding inside the eye, a fractured eye socket, retinal damage, permanent vision loss, or even loss of the eye itself. Student athletes face these risks in baseball, softball, basketball, racquet sports, hockey, lacrosse, and other activities where balls, equipment, elbows, or collisions can happen without warning. Protective sports eyewear made with impact-resistant polycarbonate lenses helps shield the eyes from direct blows and flying objects while allowing students to see clearly and play confidently.

Make Sure Eyes Get Needed Breaks

Between practice time, homework and daily use of personal digital devices, student athletes may experience extra stress on their vision which can result in tired or uncomfortable eyes. Fortunately, there are easy ways to combat this. For example, taking short breaks after focusing on screens or close-up work, occasionally looking at an object in the distance in order to relax focusing muscles, using adequate lighting, staying hydrated and getting enough sleep can all help to give your eyes the rest they need to stay healthy.

Don’t Ignore Vision Changes

Blurred vision, headaches, eye strain, double vision, dizziness, difficulty focusing, or trouble tracking objects shouldn’t simply be blamed on a long practice or a busy school schedule. These symptoms can sometimes indicate an underlying vision problem. If something about your vision doesn’t feel right, call us to schedule an exam so we can help determine what may be causing it.

Student Athletes Should Explore Vision Therapy for Performance

Competition for the top spot on the team, or even a college offer, can be fierce, so any added advantage can make a significant impact to student athletes. Vision therapy is an effective way to sharpen the visual skills needed for better performance on the court or field. This personalized program uses structured activities to retrain the way the eyes and brain work together. It can help improve skills like eye tracking, focusing, depth perception, peripheral awareness, visual processing, and eye-hand coordination. These essential skills are used to follow a moving ball or opponent, quickly shift focus between near and distance, coordinate eye and body movements and efficiently respond to what is happening in the game.

Family Vision Development Center Helps Athletes Succeed

Healthy vision is the base of strong athletic performance, as well as an advantage in daily activities like reading, writing and driving. At Family Vision Development Center, we care for our student athletes by providing comprehensive vision exams that allow us to monitor and quickly detect and treat vision issues that can impact both athletic and school success. In addition, we have advanced training in vision therapy techniques that can strengthen visual skills and vastly improve game performance. Reach out to our Aurora office by calling 630-862-2020 to learn more and to schedule an appointment for an exam.

Family Vision Development Center is a full-service vision center offering innovative vision therapy services, sports vision therapy services, post-concussive vision rehabilitation, comprehensive vision exams for eyeglasses and contact lenses, management of ocular diseases including glaucoma, diabetes, macular degeneration and cataracts, and a state-of-the-art optical center offering the latest designs in eyewear.

Back to School: 4 Warning Signs of a Possible Vision Problem

As the new school year resumes, it brings the opportunity for students to tackle new challenges and set fresh goals to work toward. When a student starts the year with high hopes and ambition, it can be extremely discouraging if vision issues impede their progress.

Having good vision means so much more than simply seeing clearly at a distance. Children rely on their visual systems for reading, writing, focusing, tracking words across a page, copying from a board and more. When these skills aren’t working properly, school can become much more challenging. Because of this, parents and teachers can try to watch for certain warning signs that a student may be experiencing trouble with their vision.

They Complain of Frequent Headaches

When a student regularly mentions headaches while doing homework, or says their eyes hurt or feel strained when working on a computer, that can mean their eyes are working harder than they should be in order to maintain focus or work together.

Difficulty Copying from the Board

Copying notes from a classroom board, smartboard, or school presentation requires students to shift their focus repeatedly between far and near distances. If a child has a vision issue, they may copy more slowly, make frequent errors, leave out words or lose their place when looking back and forth. Also, they may seem to understand material when it is read aloud but struggle when they must read and write on their own.

Losing Their Place While Reading

Reading requires the eyes to move smoothly and accurately from one word to the next. Children that frequently lose their place, skip words or lines, or reread sentences might have issues with eye tracking.

These challenges can make reading slow and frustrating, so they may begin avoiding reading altogether.

Avoiding Homework, Reading or Other Close-Up School Work

When a student starts avoiding their work, they may get labelled at lazy or unproductive. But, if you really pay attention to their actions during these activities, you might learn a different truth. If they seem interested to start, but then quickly become frustrated when the task involves close-up visual skills, they may be experiencing a vision disorder that they just don’t know how to explain.

Vision Therapy Can Correct These Visual Disorders to Improve School Performance

When a student faces these frustrating visual challenges, they can start to become easily discouraged in school. They may get incorrectly diagnosed with behavior or attention problems, as the symptoms are often similar, and therefore they do not get the proper help they need. Regular vision exams can help detect these issues and allow us to accurately treat the problems.

The vision therapy programs at Family Vision Development Center are extremely effective for improving these visual skills that are so essential to classroom success. Through these customized programs, we work on eye tracking and teaming, focusing, and eye coordination to refine the skills, which often leads to better performance in school and greater overall confidence both in and out of the classroom. Contact us at 630-862-2020 to learn more about our vision therapy options and to schedule an appointment.

Family Vision Development Center is a full-service vision center offering innovative vision therapy services, sports vision therapy services, post-concussive vision rehabilitation, comprehensive vision exams for eyeglasses and contact lenses, management of ocular diseases including glaucoma, diabetes, macular degeneration and cataracts, and a state-of-the-art optical center offering the latest designs in eyewear.  We are dedicated to keeping our patients comfortable and well-informed and we will explain every exam and procedure and answer all of your questions.  We accept both scheduled and emergency appointments, and offer convenient financing and insurance options to ensure that high-quality vision care is available and affordable to all of our patients.