Children’s Eye Tests

Children who are short‑sighted find it easier to focus on objects when they are close up, but those further away will be blurred.

About one in three people are short‑sighted.

The condition is usually first diagnosed at around the age of 12, but younger children can also have it.

In children, short‑sightedness is easily corrected with glasses and/or contact lenses.

Children who are long‑sighted find it easier to focus on things which are further away than those which are close to them.

Long‑sighted children may experience blurred vision or tired eyes when reading.

Most children are slightly long‑sighted but often will not require glasses to correct it unless it is causing a problem.

If your child has a significant amount of long sight, it can be corrected with glasses and/or contact lenses.

A squint is a condition where one of your child’s eyes points in a different direction when they are looking straight ahead. Most commonly an eye will be turned towards the nose, but sometimes an eye can turn outwards. It can cause blurred vision and double vision and lead to lazy eye.

Around 1 in 20 children have a squint. It usually appears before the age of five and is picked up in routine eye checks. They can be treated with glasses and eye exercises. If these don’t work, surgery may be needed to move the muscles that control the eye.

Astigmatism can cause blurred or distorted vision.

It occurs when the cornea or lens isn’t a perfectly curved shape (more like a rugby ball than a football). It is very common, many people who wear glasses will have some degree of astigmatism.

However, if left untreated, astigmatism can cause headaches, eye strain and tiredness, particularly after focusing on something for long periods, such as reading or using a computer. In most cases, astigmatism is easily corrected with glasses or contact lenses.

If your child is diagnosed with an amblyopic or lazy eye, it usually means that one of their eyes is weaker than the other, causing them to rely more on their ‘good’ eye.

Around 1 in 50 children develop an amblyopic or lazy eye. It can usually be diagnosed at about the age of four during routine eye checks with a qualified optician, or at their developmental screening.

Glasses will be prescribed to correct the vision in the weaker eye and often no further treatment is required. If the weak eye does not respond fully then a patch can be worn over the good eye for part of the day to force the weaker eye to work.

Treatment is usually effective but may take a while.