5 Ways to Protect Your Child’s Eyes
Our eyes are known as being the second most complex organ in our body after only the brain, and we only get two of them. Taking care of them starts in childhood but our kids sometimes need a little help doing that. Here’s 5 things you can do now to make sure they have lasting, clear vision the rest of their lives.
Discourage chronic eye rubbing.
Kiddos who rub their eyes regulary (especially those who rub them really hard, like digging-in-with-their-knuckles-at-the-corner-of-their-eyes hard) put themselves at an increased risk for developing a condition called keratoconus. When they rub their eyes hard while their adolescent eyes are still developing it can actually affect the collagen structure that keeps our eyes in their nice round shape and allow them to become more “cone” like on the front - leading to extremely high amounts of astigmatism (not the normal kind) that even glasses cannot fix. This can cause kids to need specialty hard contacts throughout their life or even surgery to stop the keratoconus from worsening. If your kiddo is a chronic eye rubber, do your best to discourage them from doing it, and consider if there is another reason they are rubbing that may need treated. If they have seasonal allergies an antihistamine eyedrop like Pataday can be great to try (approved for kids 2 years of age and older), otherwise they may need a visit to their eye doctor to dig in more (no pun intended). If it is just habit, do your best to distract them when you see the rubbing start!
Encourage outside play time to decrease their chance of becoming nearsighted.
Myopia, or near-sightedness, is now at “epidemic” levels in the US. This deserves a lot more than a paragraph in information, but briefly… while genetics play a role, we are finding more and more that the environment our kids grow up in play a huge role as well. Unfortunately, devices are a big part of our culture and with the use of tablets and computers in schools, it is almost impossible to avoid them completely, however; there is a correlation to time spent indoors focusing on devices and an increase in nearsightedness. Luckily, you can do a lot of good by encouraging your kids to be outside other times of day. 2 hours outdoors daily seems to be the magic number research has shown as being beneficial to stabilizing glasses prescription. When our eyes are looking 20 feet or further away, they are “fully relaxed” and being outside allows for that most easily since they are often looking across a yard or field while playing. On days going outside just isn’t an option, make sure they are taking breaks from staring at their devices to allow their eyes to relaxed from a focused state.
Take care of their contacts.
It is becoming more common for kids younger and younger to have contacts. While the “tween” and teen ages are the most common to start wearing contacts, even kids under 10 are starting to wear them more commonly. This is usually because they are either 1) already in competitive sports and their glasses are getting smashed against their face or 2) they are being used as a treatment for the above-mentioned myopia (more on that soon!). While contacts can be an option for kids, I usually have a “come to Jesus” sit down conversation with the child and their parents that it is a group effort to make sure they are responsible with them. While most of the time contacts that are taken care of well don’t cause problems, it only takes one bad infection, known as a contact lens related corneal ulcer, in the right spot on the eye, to cause permanent vision loss. Any guardians involved and the child have to be on the same page about taking care of them, cleaning them, NOT SLEEPING IN THEM, and changing them when directed (most of the time daily, especially in the case of kids, monthly lenses have a lot higher infection risk). For the love of everything, please don’t allow them to take them out, put them in their mouth to rewet them and put them back in. :)
Have their eyes checked, even if you don’t see a problem.
Often when we first find a vision problem with a little kiddo there weren’t any signs the parents noticed. I have had countless parents get emotion in the exam room watching their child struggle to see the letters because they had no idea there was a vision issue. I always tell them, “you wouldn’t know there is anything wrong, because THEY don’t even know anything is wrong, this is just how they have seen and its normal to them”. Smaller kids, especially under 7 and prior to really getting in to more advanced reading and writing in school, often truly won’t realize things are blurry. Unfortunately by this age, if there are certain underlying conditions such as amblyopia (the medical term for a weaker seeing eye or sometimes in layman’s terms known as a lazy eye), by the time we find it in an older kid it become harder to remedy. Finding problems sooner is often a lot easier to fix and allows us time to ease little ones in to glasses if needed.
For the newborn and baby parents: an eye that turns occasionally the first 4 months of life can be normal.
The little eye muscles that hold our eyes straight are some of the smallest and most fine motor muscles in the body. Little newborns just don’t have the control over them to keep them perfectly straight at this age. By 2-4 months you will start seeing this line out more and more and see less of their eyes turning. You can promote their ability to control this and focus on things by getting down on their level and talking to them, or by showing them high contrast pictures such as these or these, just make sure you are staying within 8-12 inches of their face, as they can’t see further than this at that time. This all being said, even under 4 months if your baby has a constant eye turn, it can be worth a call to your eye doctor to have a baseline evaluation done to make sure they aren’t developing strabismus, the medical name for an eye turn that can also lead to amblyopia.
The American Optometric Association recommends a baseline eye exam as an infant between the age of 6-12 months (check to see if you have InfantSEE providers in your area that provide no-cost infant eye exams for this age group!), followed by an exam between 3-5, and before they start first grade.
