Why Your Child’s Eye Exam Is Significant

Look who is all smiles for his professional eye examination!

As I prepared for my son’s eye exam, I had a few questions brewing that I wanted to ask the optician since this was my son’s first eye exam. Once we arrived at the optical department we met with the optician to go through a few preliminary things.

J sat down with the optician, Jen. She had him place his head in the auto refractor which gives the optician an idea of what his baseline prescription is.

Once the initial check was complete, she gave the info to the optometrist who called us into his office to continue the exam.

J was a little apprehensive at first as there were a lot of different machines in the room that were unfamiliar, but I reminded him that I was sitting there with him and he would see how “cool” the whole process was.

DID YOU KNOW? Optical Departments at the Real Canadian Superstore have a program that provides kids with free glasses? Should your child need prescription glasses, they can receive any frame valued up to $49 with single vision, polycarbonate “kid safe” lenses for free once per year with the Kids See Free Program!

The optometrist sat him down and began the process of his full comprehensive eye exam. He explained each step of the process to J, from reading the letters, to explaining the bright light he had to shine in his eye to see “ALL” of his eye from front to back.

As he was conducting the tests, we spoke about screen time. The optometrist said that kids J’s age should have a maximum of 1.5 hours a day staring at small screens. Why? Because the brain then starts to think that those small screens are all you need to see (i.e. creating near sighted vision).

During the appointment we discussed family history as it related to vision and eye health, and then he also did a 3D review with J. He explained that 3D vision happens in the brain and there are different types of tests to assess it.

Next up was assessing his colour vision – and this was the surprising part! As the optometrist did the colour vision test he noticed that J has a colour vision deficiency called Deutan. It’s a deficiency where he cannot see the colour green very well! I was in shock, but was comforted by the optometrist who stated that it’s just colour perception. As an example, for a traffic light sequence, J might not be able to see green well, but he would know based on the timing/sequence that the light has changed.

He also did the colour test on me as well. I could see all colours, so I asked how did this happen, was it genetic? The optometrist advised that it’s paternal, meaning it comes from my dad! Crazy, huh?

Regardless, he advised that J will lead a normal day to day life and it won’t affect him in the future. Had we not gone to see the optometrist, we wouldn’t have known that! It’s through these types of experiences that make it easy to see why a regular eye exam for children is so important.