Children’s Eye Exam in Vancouver
Our mission is to make sure your children experience the highest quality eye health exam, with absolute peace of mind.
We encourage Vancouver parents to ensure that your child’s eye health is on track. Through regular kids eye exams, starting at a young age, our optometrists are able to detect early signs of vision problems. Early detection is the most effective way to treat conditions and prevent them from worsening. A comprehensive children’s eye exam is an aspect of preventative health care for children that is too often overlooked. The Canadian Association of Optometrists reports that “...only 14% of children under 6 years of age receive professional eye care”. This is especially unfortunate since many children may not even realize that their vision is impaired. And if they do, they have a hard time communicating it. As a result, 25% of children have vision problems by the time they start going to school.
Test Your Knowledge With Our 10 Question Children’s Eye Exam Quiz
Eye Health And Your Child’s Early Development
Basic visual skills are required for a child to learn hand-eye coordination. In fact, vision plays a major part in your child’s early development. Our optometrists will assess the following six areas when examining your child’s eye health:
Eye health: Our eye doctors will check for signs of eye disease. If any concerns arise, they will provide a diagnosis and advise on treatment.
Visual acuity: Most parents don’t realize that eye doctors can assess a child’s sharpness of vision well before they have even learned their ABC’s and 123’s.
Eye teaming: Eye teaming determines vision comfort and depth perception. We’ll check to see if your child’s eyes are working together with precision.
Eye focusing: Our eye doctors check your child’s ability to focus at various distances. They assess for speed of focus, accuracy and duration.
Ocular motility: We’ll check the twelve extraocular muscles that work together to allow your child’s eyes to smoothly follow moving things.
Visual integration: This allows your child to learn to perform actions that require all their senses to work together, like picking up and tossing a ball.
Eye Health And Learning Disabilities
An undiagnosed vision problem often masks itself as a learning disability.
According to the BC Association of Optometrists, “80% of a child’s learning is based on vision”. And if school-aged kids can’t see properly, it ends up becoming more than just a reading problem.
Children become frustrated when they aren’t able to focus on the visual details involved in a task. So they act out because they have trouble following through. On top of that, they appear to be “behind” in their learning abilities when the actual problem is their eye health.
School-aged kids require an examination of the same six arefas of eye health that are assessed in infants, toddlers and preschoolers. These areas need to be functioning well in order for them to keep up with the learning requirements and visual demands at school.
Myopia (Near-sightedness) Control Therapy
Myopia is a condition in which the visual images come to a focus in front of the retina of the eye resulting especially in defective vision of distant objects. Another word for myopia is simply put, nearsightedness. This can also affect the pediatric population, as evidence shows myopia is not just an older adult problem.
MiyoSmart is an innovative spectacle lens for myopia control, developed by Hoya in partnership with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Based on results from a two-year clinical trial, MiyoSmart is proven to curb myopia progression by an average of 60% 1 using its award-winning DIMS (Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments) technology.
Upon visiting Della Optique, your child can expect to receive a comprehensive eye health exam, and then go on to discuss family myopia management with the optometrist who will present treatment options. At Della Optique, we now offer both MiyoSmart lenses as well as Misight soft contact lenses to our patients to slow down myopia progression.
What Our Clients Are Saying:
When To Schedule a Children’s Eye Exams
Our Doctors of Optometry recommend toddlers to have their first eye exam at 6 to 9 months of age and one eye exam between 2 and 5 years of age.
RELATED: Read our article on How Often Should a Child Get an Eye Exam?
Following the initial examination, it is recommended that children have their eyes examined yearly once starting school.
Book Your Kids Eye Exam
At Della Optique, we are passionate about children’s eye health. We ensure that their visit with us is a comfortable, educational and positive overall experience. We find few things more rewarding than knowing that children enjoy their eye examinations with us.
All exam techniques are adapted to be suitable for your child’s age. We are always extra careful yet thorough with your little ones.
Book an appointment for your child with Vancouver’s optometrists at Della Optique.
