Keep an eye on your child’s health

This week is National Eye Health Week, when opticians would like to encourage us to think about eye health and especially how to protect our children’s sight.

Alison Johnson of Lindsay & Johnson opticians explains that making little changes can have a huge impact on eye health.

Each year SPECS network of opticians sponsor National Eye Health Week.

This year the emphasis is on the healthy development of children’s vision.

Spending time outside is good for their eyes.

Research shows playing outdoors for at least one hour, preferably two, each day helps prevent myopia (short-sight) developing and progressing.

Make sure in strong sunshine your children wear sunglasses to protect their eyes from UV light.

Other things to help are to make sure they have regular eye examinations and they eat healthily.

The regular eye examinations are very important; so often children and their parents do not realise anything is wrong.

When children are unable to see clearly in the distance it is usually picked up by their families as it is more obvious something is wrong, but difficulties in focus may not be apparent to either the children or their families or teachers.

Children need the eyes to be working together for proper vision to develop.

Quite often a child will see well with one eye but for some reason there is a problem in the other eye and the two eyes will not work well together.

In these cases, unless there is an obvious squint in the eye the problem will be missed without an eye examination.

Without treatment the vision of the “bad” eye will not develop properly, and this can cause difficulties in later life (and in some careers).

So, because some eye problems are hidden, particularly in children, take your children to an optician to get things checked out.

Picture: Getty Images. Children should get regular eye tests.