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.