Dr. Lambright shares on Patch that eye exams are an important part of back to school planning.
It’s back to school time, and parents are making sure that their children have everything they need for success-the school supplies, books and healthy lunches. But there is one thing that most parents probably overlook: a comprehensive eye exam. Eighty percent of learning comes from vision and, unfortunately, nearly 1 in 4 children suffer from an undiagnosed vision problem that impacts their learning. This is no surprise as 30% of children’s vision problems go undetected during routine school eye screenings and visits with their pediatricians. Even a child with 20/20 vision may suffer from an undetected vision problem.
“Children with uncorrected vision conditions or eye health problems face many barriers academically, socially and in athletics. Even a child with 20/20 vision may suffer from an undetected vision problem such as farsightedness, lazy eye, convergence insufficiency or accommodative insufficiency”, says Dr. Melissa Lambright, Doctor of Optometry and Founder of SIGHT in West Hartford. “When a child can see properly, they can learn to his/her greatest potential.”
Dr. Lambright says that, “acuity is only the first step in helping a child learn. Visual function, visual perception, visual motor integration and visual imagery are essential visual components for academic success. These skills keep words clear and single on paper and on the board, enable an individual to accurately process, organize and implement visual information, guide a pencil when writing, picture a story in their head or visualize the next step of a mathematics problem.”
Dr. Lambright says there are common signs to look for that may help to identify a vision-based learning issue such as:
Frustration of not preforming at full potential
- Homework takes longer than expected
- Headaches
- Attention related conditions (ADHD)
- Excels in verbal assignments but struggles with visual
- Struggles with higher levels mathematics
- Constantly rubbing or squinting their eyes
- Holding reading material too close or too far
- Interest in reading drops off after a couple of pages
- Words run together and pull apart on a page or chalkboard
To remedy this, Dr. Lambright and her staff create individualized treatment plans for each patient that follow the body’s natural developmental process, based on a series of tests that assess a patient’s functional vision. The goal is for patients to perform to their full potential comfortably, finding success in mathematics, reading comprehension and writing. SIGHT Vision Therapy [SIGHTvt] is the only office in the area that evaluates and treats functional, perceptual and motor based visual skills.