If your child’s vision is blurry, the chances are that they may be short sighted. Being honest, that short sightedness, or myopia, may have been developing for some time before you noticed that something was wrong. Children are adaptable and because myopia can develop at a slow pace, your child may have simply accepted the change as something normal. So it is only when they complain that they can’t see the whiteboard in school or you find them moving nearer to the TV at home that you might start to ask questions.
Myopia occurs when light focuses in the eye at a point before it reaches the retina. There is another condition called astigmatism which can occur in short sight. Astigmatism occurs when the front part of the eye, the cornea, is not spherical. One meridian is steeper than the other at right angles to it. As a result, scattered light reaches the retina, leading to long or short sight, or a combination of both.
In the majority of instances corrective lenses can be used to improve vision affected by both astigmatism and myopia. Lifestyle changes such as increasing the amount of time spent out of doors may also help to slow down the progress of myopia.
If you're a parent whose child has been diagnosed with myopia, or if they are struggling with their distance vision, we hope you found MyopiaFocus helpful. Please join our community or sign our petition to get the government and NHS to recognise myopia as an ocular disease/serious ocular condition and fund myopia management for children.