Children’s Eye Exams | Modesto | Children’s Eye Exams

Healthy Vision Starts Young

From the time they’re born to the time they reach adulthood, your child’s visual system is constantly changing and growing. Seeing an optometrist regularly helps to know if your child’s eyes are developing properly.

Regular eye exams help us assess your child’s entire visual system, check for vision issues, and detect eye diseases. All of this helps us get your child the treatment they need.

Book an eye exam for your child today!

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How Often Should Your
Child Visit Us?

How often your child needs to get an eye exam depends on a few factors. We can recommend an appropriate schedule based on family history, medical history, and your child’s individual vision needs.

Generally, we follow the recommended eye exam frequency outlined by the American Optometric Association (AOA), which suggests your child should:

Get their first eye exam before they turn 1 year old
Receive a second eye exam between 3 and 5 years of age
Begin seeing their optometrist annually from ages 6 to 17

What Do We Look For During an Eye Exam?

A children’s eye exam at Valley Optometric Group is designed to be fun and feel comfortable while keeping their eyes healthy.

During your child’s appointment, we’ll take the time to get to know your child and their unique needs. This helps us determine if they’re at risk for any vision or health problems.

Next, we’ll run through a series of tests to assess the following:

Visual acuity
Depth perception
Color vision
Eye muscle movements
Peripheral vision
Refraction
Overall eye health

These tests help us create a treatment plan tailored to your child’s needs. At Valley Optometric Group, we offer many treatment options, from something as simple as glasses or contacts to more specialized treatments such as myopia control or dry eye therapy.

Common Vision Issues in Children

We’ll check your child’s eyes for signs of common conditions and diseases during every eye exam.

Refractive Errors

Refractive errors are a prevalent type of eye disorder. If your child has a refractive error it means there is an issue with how images focus on the retina at the back of their eye. This can happen if the lens in the eye is too thin or the eye grows irregularly.

The 3 most common types of refractive errors that affect children are:

Myopia, or nearsightedness, causes difficulty seeing distant objects
Hyperopia, or farsightedness, causes difficulty in seeing close objects
Astigmatism causes distorted vision at both near and far distances

Refractive errors can be treated with glasses, contacts, myopia control, refractive therapy, or a combination of these.

Digital Eye Strain

Digital eye strain is a condition that can affect your child’s eyes if they spend a lot of time exposed to blue light from digital devices. Blue light can also affect sleep cycles, interrupting when our eyes heal and rest. Digital eye strain can lead to eye discomfort, fatigue, blurred vision, and headaches.

At Valley Optometric Group, we can help your child find relief from digital eye strain through lifestyle adjustments or computer glasses.

Amblyopia (Lazy Eye)

Lazy eye, or amblyopia, is a condition in which vision in one eye doesn’t develop properly, leaving it weaker compared to the other eye. Amblyopia can be caused by other untreated eye conditions such as refractive errors or strabismus.

Lazy eye can be treated in several ways, including glasses, eye patch therapy, eye drops, and in some cases, surgery.

Strabismus (Crossed Eyes)

Crossed eyes, or strabismus, occur when muscles that control the direction of the eyes don’t develop properly. This condition can cause one or both eyes to turn inwards, upwards, or to the side, which can cause symptoms such as double vision and poor depth perception.

Strabismus can be treated using glasses, contacts, vision therapy, and sometimes surgery. However, if left untreated, strabismus can lead to other vision problems such as lazy eye.

Conjunctivitis (Pink Eye)

Pink eye, or conjunctivitis, is an eye condition that occurs when the white of your eye becomes inflamed and irritated, causing the eyes to become red, swollen, and itchy. There are 3 main types of pink eye:

Viral conjunctivitis
Bacterial conjunctivitis
Allergic conjunctivitis

Depending on the type of pink eye your child has, treatments may include eye drops, antibiotics, and antihistamines.

Book Your Child’s Next Eye Exam Today

We can’t wait to help your child realize just how great their vision can be! Visit us at Valley Optometric Group for an eye exam to help your child’s vision stay healthy as they grow up.

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