SeaView Eyecare provides the highest quality, compassionate Optometry care to ensure your family enjoy a long, happy, and healthy life.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends children have their first eye exam between 6 and 12 months old. At the age of 3, a comprehensive eye exam is recommended and then again at the start of school and every year thereafter. At SeaView Eyecare, our doctors examine children as young as 5 years of age. With 80% of learning involving vision, many learning disorders, including problems with reading, can be associated with eye disorders and vision problems.
Make annual eye examinations a part of your healthcare routine; don’t wait until a problem occurs. Constant headaches could be a sign of a vision or medical problem, not just for adults but for children too. With 80% of learning involving vision, many learning issues, including problems with reading, are caused by eye disorders and vision problems. Adults should also have eye exams every one to two years to maintain healthy eyes. The experienced optometrists at our family eye care center use sophisticated diagnostic equipment to accurately correct vision as well as detect and prevent eye disease. If you have a special hobby or interest that requires specific attention, we will be happy to tailor your exam and your prescription to meet those needs.
Vision and Child Development
Vision plays an important part in your child’s development. Many learning issues have been linked to undetected vision problems. Schedule an eye exam yearly to monitor your child’s vision. Early diagnosis and treatment are important to achieve the best visual outcome and to prevent delays in learning. Dr. Weiss completed a residency in Family Practice Optometry and Dr. Fiarman has a very calming demeanor when examining children, and these qualities make them both excellent at engaging your child and performing the necessary comprehensive evaluation to detect and treat vision and eye health problems.
Amblyopia
Around 80% of what we learn is done through our eyes and their visual processing. Therefore, it is critical that we provide our young ones with every advantage we can and a great place to start is with their eyes, helping them put their best “learning” foot forward!
Despite not having any visual complaints or even passing vision screenings at school, children can still have serious visual conditions that can impact them for the rest of their lives. One of these conditions is called Amblyopia. During the first 2-3years of a child’s life, their eyes are developing rapidly and then continue to grow at a slightly slower rate until around age 8. During this time, if the child’s eyes have significantly different prescriptions (i.e. one eye is far-sighted and the other is near-sighted), if one of the eyes turns in or out, if the child tends to tilt their head in one direction for prolonged periods of time, or if they have an undiagnosed condition that prevents images from reaching the back of the eye, this could impede the development process. Kids often go years without their first eye exam and during this time, one of the eyes will not develop at the same rate as the other and therefore it will never have correctable, 20/20 (“perfect”) vision!
This condition occurs in approximately 3% of all children and therefore, it is highly likely that there is at least 1 student affected by this condition in each classroom. Fortunately, if the child is seen early enough it is often treatable!
If prescription glasses are needed, our office has a wide variety of children’s eyewear (link to children’s eyewear) to meet your child’s needs. Our optical offers durable frames without small parts or screws, frames with straps to hold them in place, and frames that are fashionable and fun for your child. For children involved in sports, we offer sports glasses that are durable enough to last through a soccer season that provides both great vision and eye protection on the field. We offer lenses with features to protect against blue light and eye fatigue for screen time at home and at school. We also offer lenses that transition to provide sun protection. Parents also love our Perfect Protection Plan, which provides a replacement pair of frames and/or lenses should they break due to the manufacturer’s defect or should the lenses become scratched. Speak with our knowledgeable opticians for details.
Myopia is the result of an eye that grows too long, too fast. It causes blurred vision when looking at things that are far away. The number of children who are becoming myopic or near-sighted has steadily increased over the past two decades. Additionally, the age of onset has dropped. The result is a greater percentage of the population developing high amounts of myopia by the time they reach young adulthood. Fortunately, this worldwide epidemic of myopia development in children has brought about incredible progress in the management of this disease. There are now a number of different treatment options that have proven effective in slowing the growth rate of the eye and the progression of myopia in children. SeaView Eyecare offers Myopia Management for our pediatric patients. Click here to learn more about this treatment.