Many optometrists, and Australian parents, are missing a very important factor when testing children’s eyes, according to Australian behavioural optometrist Gary Rodney. By focusing exclusively on eyesight and eye health and ignoring vision skills in scheduled screenings at schools, hospitals and eye clinics, this vital part of the total vision experience was being lost, and this…
Vision is much more than just seeing the ball flying at your face clearly. It is much more than seeing the ball, ducking and hoping for the best. Vision is the ability to see the ball, locate it in space and coordinate yourself to catch it. It is the ability to understand where the ball…
Three behaviours generally associated with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, did you know that these same three behaviours are very commonly the results of a vision problem? Impulsivity. Hyperactivity. Distractibility. Research tells us children with a vision problem like convergence insufficiency (CI) are a whopping three times more likely to be diagnosed with…
With our newest Smart Vision team member now being 11 months old, we thought it was time to update you on her vision skills. Just like Riley has needed to learn to crawl, walk and talk, she has also had to learn to see. EYES ON RILEY Like all babies, Riley was born with fuzzy vision,…
We are proud to announce that our head optometrist and founder of the Smart Vision Group, Gary Rodney, has sat his exams and successfully been awarded a fellowship by the International Academy of Orthokeratology and Myopia Control (IAOMC) through the Orthokeratology Society of Oceania (OSO). The international meeting with the latest research from around the world in orthokeratology…
Are you concerned that your child’s eyes keep getting worse year after year? It’s not without a reason. But there is something you can do to change this pattern and escape the statistics. THE MYOPIA BOOM – ARE YOUR GLASSES MAKING YOUR EYES WORSE? Myopia (also known as shortsightedness or nearsightedness) is reaching epidemic proportions…
The transition from preschool to big school is exactly that…BIG. It is a significant change for the child and the family. It is an achievement to be considered, conquered and celebrated. It is a new beginning for the child and the start of their schooling career. YOUR CHILD IS READY FOR SCHOOL? School readiness is…
At the end of a long day, after hours staring at a computer screen, your eyes are exhausted. You try your best to step away from the screen, but it doesn’t take long until you find yourself checking Facebook while watching TV. Sound familiar? WHAT IS SCREEN TIME DOING TO YOUR EYES? If you’re reading…
Colour blindness is not something many of us think about much. In fact, it seems a pretty harmless and basic thing to have. I mean, if you are going to have something “wrong with you”, then colour blindness isn’t a bad one! MAKING THE WORLD A MORE COLOURFUL PLACE When my son was around 4…
As if the day to day trials and tribulations of parenthood aren’t challenge enough, let’s add another into the mix – choosing glasses for your child AND getting he or she to want to wear them. CHOOSING CHILDREN’S EYEWEAR: ANNALISE’S STORY With technological advances, there are now more choices than ever before for children’s eyewear…
Having watched my two young daughters become obsessed with the iPad has given me a very clear understanding of the insidious danger that technology presents for our children’s eyes. They seem so drawn and motivated by anything that they can devour on the iPad. This simply transfers to computers and other screens as they grow…
Today I lined two chairs up across the room directly facing each other. I then asked my patient to sit on one and look at the other. I asked him what he could tell me about it. He told me, in a wonderfully detailed response that “the chair [was] yellow”. Helpful. “Yes”, I said, “but…
When reading or doing close work, a child’s eyes must turn in together (converge) for the words to be clear and single. This usually happens naturally. But for some children, the eyes do not turn in easily. As a result, extra effort must be used to force the eyes to converge, causing a number of…
Vision therapy entails a set program tailored to each individual child to help them develop efficient and automatic vision skills, enabling them to perform to their truest potential. Our behavioural optometrists and vision therapists combine their knowledge of the child’s functional and perceptual skills based on optometric and learning assessments to target the specific skills…
There is research to suggest that a therapeutic goal should be to teach the child to acquire correct eye-hand coordination, as this represents a fundamental prerequisite for sensory integration [1]. Bilateral integration skills, spatial awareness, motion and depth perception, and tracking are further skills that come into play when eye-hand coordination is promoted and encouraged….
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