Proper Eyesight is Crucial for Success in School

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About 20% of school-aged children struggle to read. While many of these children suffer from learning disabilities or dyslexia, a large percentage of kids with struggling to read have perfectly fine language and phonetic skills. While educators may be busy assessing for learning disabilities, a vision impairment is often to blame.

Adequate eyesight is essential to the ability to read. First of all, children must have adequate distance vision to be able to see the board from the back of the classroom. Most school vision screenings are designed to check this with the familiar 20/20 eye chart. While impairments seeing at a distance are often found more readily through these quick eye exams, less pronounced vision and processing issues often go unchecked.

For children to be truly successful in reading, additional visual skills must be functioning adequately. For children to read properly they need to have the ability to coordinate their eye movements, stay on a line of text without getting lost, maintain focus while reading and quickly shift focus. Children also need to be able to interpret and correctly process the images presented to them. An inadequacy in any of these visual skills can cause marked difficulty in school, particularly in language and comprehension.

Sadly children with visual impairments commonly struggle without reason since their vision can quickly be corrected. Too frequently adults fail to make the connection between reading issues and eyesight.

Some of the specific vision skills needed for reading properly include:

Tracking: a child's capability to follow a line of text engaging fine eye movements. Children suffering from tracking problems frequently lose their place, transpose words and have trouble comprehending what they are reading.

Convergence: the two eyes' ability to work together and focus on one image reporting a single, clear picture to the brain. About 1 out of 10 of young students suffer from eye teaming difficulties which can result in double vision, scrambled sight and headaches. Eye teaming problems can be treated by a qualified eye doctor.

Visual Perception : a category of cognitive capabilities that involve the ability to analyze and decipher the images that are viewed. Such skills include visual discrimination and memory skills that are necessary for differentiating between letters and words, spelling and math abilities.

When children are experiencing problems reading or writing, the first thing to check is their vision. To schedule an eye exam for your child or read further about children's eye and vision health, check out our website at http://www.proeyekc.com.

Professional Eyecare is conveniently located in Overland Park, and offers a wide range of eye care services. Find out more about Professional Eyecare, visit our website at http://www.proeyekc.com/

SOURCE : http://goarticles.com/article/Proper-Eyesight-is-Crucial-for-Success-in-School/5483486/