August is Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month, so it’s the perfect time to focus on protecting your child’s vision. It’s vital for parents to start scheduling eye exams at a young age and stay consistent with them to help prevent serious complications. This attention to eye care will also enable early detection and treatment before serious vision problems arise.

Why Annual Eye Exams Are Important

Yearly comprehensive eye exams are as beneficial to your child’s well-being as routine medical checkups are. When eye conditions go undiagnosed or untreated, they affect the development of academic, social, and athletic skills. For example, children with uncorrected vision problems may struggle with making eye contact and developing good hand-eye coordination. Amblyopia, colloquially known as “lazy eye,” is a common disorder in children. While early intervention can correct it easily, the condition becomes more difficult to treat the longer it progresses, because the child’s brain eventually conditions itself to ignore images from the weaker eye. Annual eye exams give your optometrist the opportunity to identify conditions that require correction.

Add Eye Care to Your Back-to-School Checklist

With the start of the new school year around the corner, now is the ideal time to schedule your children’s eye exams and have them fitted for new glasses if necessary. This will make their school days as comfortable as possible and eliminate vision issues that will hinder their learning capabilities. School-age children who experience eye strain may struggle with poor academic performance. Therefore, appropriate eye care and vision testing is one way to help them start the new term on the right foot.

Eye care is important at every age, but particularly for youth whose bodies are still developing. Matthew H. Lipparelli, O.D. will help keep your children’s eyesight development on the right track. This optometrist based in Elko, NV, works with kids of all ages and understands their unique needs as they grow and change. Call (775) 753-5353 to schedule an exam or visit his website for more information about the services he offers.