Tell-tale signs that might suggest that your child needs

glasses

For preschool children, it’s a bit harder to pick an eye condition or

eye problem, especially as children this age aren’t given to

reading books much.

However, if you are in the habit of reading to your children (which is

something we strongly recommend parents to do with children of any age as it has so

many benefits), you might be able to pick the problem earlier.

So what are the tell-tale signs that might suggest that your child

needs glasses or at least needs a visit to the optician?

While some of the signs might be caused by other issues (e.g.

squinting may be caused by bright lights), if you notice your child doing some of the things listed below, he or she might have a

vision problem.

Talk to the staff at Friday’s Child Montessori about any of these concerns and things that you’d

like us to look out for. After all, a Montessori teacher’s job is to

observe children and gauge their abilities.

Squinting:

Squinting reduces the amount of light entering the eye and thus makes it easier to focus.

If your child squints all the time when looking at things (pictures, TV) or while doing tasks, this might indicate a problem with vision. This is especially the case if you notice him or her squinting when the light isn’t bright.

Getting too close to things:

If a child is short-sighted, he or she will often try to compensate by getting closer to the object or getting the object closer to them.

For example, he or she might hold a book very close to his/her face to see the pictures properly or sit

too close to the TV.

If your child is playing a matching game using plastic animals or laminated cut-out pictures, he or she might have to pick that object up and hold it very close to the eyes to identify it properly.

Children with short sight may also bend down over work so they

can see it properly.

Getting far away from things:

The reverse of the above with far-sightedness. Here, your child will get further away from things to see them properly, holding objects at arm’s length and leaning back away from things.

Rubbing eyes:

The muscles of the eyes will work overtime to try to get things in focus, so they get pretty tired and sore.

As well as making your child rub his/her eyes a lot to ease the

soreness, your child may also get headaches a lot, especially

headaches in the eyebrow area, where a lot of these

muscles attach.

This symptom, of course, has to appear alongside others, as

headaches and rubbing eyes have a lot of causes.

Covering one eye or tilting the head a lot:

Sometimes, the problem is in one eye but not the other, or your child may have double vision at certain angles.

Children often try to compensate for this by holding their head at an awkward angle or by covering the

wonky eye and making do with just one.

If you notice that your child is always covering one eye – and it’s

the same eye every time – then this could be a bit clue.

If you can see any of these symptoms in your child, it is

important to bring him or her to an eye specialist.

This presentation is brought you by:

Gold Coast Montessori