Please have your child's eyes checked every two years until they turn six years old, and then once a year after that. After your child's first eye exam at six months, eye doctors recommend that your child get their eyes checked regularly as indicated.

A newborn's eyesight is mostly fuzzy but grows over time and fully develops in the teenage years. During those years, children's eyes change often and unpredictably. Regular eye exams help ensure that your child's eyes and vision are developing properly.
 

Eye Exams for Infants (Six Months to Two Years)

The eye doctor tests your baby's eyes for eye-focusing skills, depth perception, and color vision from six months to two years of age.
The test will examine how your child's pupils respond to light and how the eyes focus on and track an item as it moves. A child develops eye-focusing skills within the first month, while eye-tracking skills develop after three months.

The eye doctor also performs a preferential-looking exam. The exam assesses how your child's eyes respond when they see something fascinating next to something that is not attention-grabbing. The goal of an eye exam during this time is to check for healthy eyes and vision growth.
 

Eye Exam for Preschoolers (Two- to Five-year-olds)

From ages two to five, children learn to read, write, draw, color, make crafts, play with friends or toys, and more.

An eye checkup for children within that age bracket involves a series of exams for:
 

• Visual acuity

• Eye focusing and tracking

• Eye-hand coordination

• Three-dimensional (3D) vision or stereopsis

• Eye convergence

• Color vision

• General eye health

All these skills are vital for the healthy development of your child's eyes. They are also crucial for learning at home and school and supporting academic success.
 

Eye Exams for Older Children (Six- to 18-year-olds)

Eye exams for children between the ages of six and 18 are similar to those for younger children. But the exams include further assessments of specific visual skills related to reading, learning, and athletic performance.

In addition to checking visual acuity, eye focusing and tracking, eye-hand coordination, and color vision, the eye exams will test the children’s visual perception. Visual perception is the brain's ability to interpret what your eyes see and make sense of it. It also helps to understand and memorize the text.

Visual perception involves:
 

• Recognition:
  
  The skill to distinguish between letters such as b and d It also refers to the ability to tell objects apart by perceiving their physical properties, such as size, shape, texture, or color.

• Understanding:
  
  The capacity to imagine or mentally visualize a story's scenes

• Retention:
  
  The ability to remember and recall information in detail
   

To Conclude

Regular eye exams help keep your child's eyes healthy. They can help your child's eye doctor rule out common pediatric eye problems, such as refractive errors, infantile cataracts, tumors, and glaucoma.

If the doctor diagnoses your child with an eye problem, early treatment can help reverse or delay its progression. Book an eye exam with your child's eye doctor to ensure your child's eyes and vision are in good shape.