Vision, The Brain and Learning Problems in Children – What's the Connection?

It may come as a surprise to hear that up to 80 percent of everything your child learns in the classroom comes through visual presentation. Needless to say, any type of vision-related problem can greatly affect your child’s academic potential.

Conditions like nearsightedness and farsightedness are easily identified and corrected, however, problems that affect communications between the eyes and the brain can be harder to spot. Read on as a vision therapy optometrist in Annapolis, MD talks about vision-related learning problems and signs to watch for in your child.

Vision Problems That Affect Sight vs Vision Problems That Affect Learning

The standard vision exams your child receives at school can let you know if your child is nearsighted or farsighted, which is how most standard exams work. Another, lesser-known aspect of vision has to do with how well your eyes and your brain work together, also known as functional vision. While it’s easy to see how conditions like nearsightedness and farsightedness can hamper your child’s performance in the classroom, functional problems are not so readily apparent.

Functional vision has to do with the visual pathways that run from the eyes to the brain. These pathways deliver incoming information from the eyes to the brain. Your brain’s ability to process this incoming data relies heavily on how your eyes work together to receive it.

Vision problems that affect learning are caused by abnormalities in the way the eyes work together, including:

Eye-tracking
Fine eye movements
Hand-eye coordination
Focusing

Signs that your child may be experiencing vision-related learning problems:

Staying focused on a task
Experiences frequent headaches when reading or gets tired easily
Sloppy handwriting
Often loses his place when reading
Needs to use his finger to track words across the page when reading

In effect, these difficulties not only make it hard to learn but also make it hard to integrate new information with what’s already been learned.

Treatment Options

If your child has vision-related learning issues, standard prescription-based glasses or contacts will not correct the problem. The type of treatment that works best for your child will depend on the types of abnormalities that are present.

We can design specialized glasses that will help your child’s eyes work together as they should. Vision therapy is another effective treatment option to consider. Vision therapy is another treatment option, which works to strengthen the visual pathways that lie between the eyes and the brain.

If you have more questions about vision-related learning problems or wish to schedule a consultation, please don’t hesitate to call us, your vision therapy optometrist Annapolis, MD.