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10% of preschoolers have an eye or vision problem that can affect success in school. During this entry we are going to discuss some of the most common vision conditions that affect children of preschool age.

During preschool, a child is developing at a rapid rate and so is their visual system. they are refining the visual skills they already have and are developing new ones as well. Vision plays a major role in eye-hand-body coordination, fine motor skills, and overall development and learning.

Conditions present in the preschool population that should be evaluated by a pediatric optometrist include:

• Refractive error: Uncorrected nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism can all lead to blurry vision and difficulties in preschool.
• Strabismus (eye turn): An eye-turn may occur constantly or intermittently so it may not always be noticeable.  Not all eye misalignments need to be corrected with surgery either, some types of strabismus can be fixed by wearing glasses or with vision therapy.
• Amblyopia ("lazy eye"): Amblyopia is a condition where the eye cannot be corrected to 20/20 with glasses initially.  Early treatment leads to a better prognosis for improved vision.
• Accommodative dysfunction: Difficulties with eye focusing can lead to fluctuating vision and increased effort to maintain clear and comfortable vision during near tasks.
• Binocular vision deficits: Inefficient eye teaming requires a child to work harder during tasks such as reading and may lead to headaches, eyestrain, or the avoidance of near tasks
• Visual perceptual deficits (agnosia): Interpreting visual information presented in school is crucial for the learning process to occur.  20/20 vision is NOT a measure of how a child makes sense of the information they receive.

Check in for our next entry, which will outline some of the signs of a vision problem in preschoolers.