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I've Got an Eye on You
Keeping Check on Your Preschooler's Peepers
By Jenn Director Knudsen
So what should you do? Take in your 3-year-old now to a specialist, or wait until she's in school full-time to have her vision screened? Bottom line? Trust your instinct. If it feels right, have your preschooler screened now, or even opt for a comprehensive exam.
Vision screening, a more cursory exam, includes testing a child's ability to see objects close up and far away and for correct eye alignment. A comprehensive exam, on the other hand, takes nearly two hours and includes everything in a screening, plus dilating the child's eyes so the doctor can see into the eye itself to ensure good eye and optic nerve health. Vision screenings are conducted at well checks by primary care providers and in most elementary schools for school-age kids, while comprehensive exams are performed by pediatric eye-care specialists.
Laura Luthi is glad she and her husband trusted their gut and took their middle child, then 2 1/2-year-old Mia, to see a pediatric ophthalmologist. The Portland, Ore., resident says she'd observed her daughter as young as 21 months of age crossing her eyes while doing close-up activities, such as eating and scribbling. So Luthi addressed her concern to two pediatricians, who "kind of pooh-poohed us," she says.
A few months later the family went on vacation to North Carolina's sunny Outer Banks. There, Luthi and her husband were with Mia inside a store that had huge, metal-framed, filthy floor-to-ceiling windows.
Mia saw something outside that attracted her attention and too off running "full-boar" and smacked into the glass "like a bird would into a window," her mom says. Thankfully, Mia was only stunned and not otherwise injured. But the experience made Luthi realize her daughter wasn't seeing normally.