The more a child needs to accommodate, the more their eyes will converge too. When we accommodate, our eyes naturally "converge" or point inwards, towards the nose. If your child is long-sighted their eyes will need to focus harder to make their vision clearer, particularly for close up vision. Long-sightedness in children is the most common cause of esotropia.Ĭhildren's eyes have a lot of focusing power, which allows them to make the things they look at clear in the distance and up close. Long-sightedness in children may cause a squint to develop where the eye turns in (esotropia). Astigmatism is very common and most people have some degree of astigmatism. It is caused by the front of the eye not being quite spherical (round). Astigmatism, which can cause blurry vision up close and in the distance.Myopia (short-sightedness), which causes your vision to be blurry in the distance and clearer when looking at things closer up.
Hypermetropia (long-sightedness), where your eye focuses better in the distance than when looking close up, and causes the eye to work harder to see things clearer close up.The most common types of refractive error are: Refractive errors are very common conditions where there is a problem with the focusing power of the eye. Some common causes of squint can include: Refractive errors (focusing problems) This is known as "idiopathic", meaning there is an unknown cause. For some children there will not be a particular cause for their squint. There are many different types of squint. This is why it’s important to treat childhood vision problems before this age. This allows a good level of vision to develop in each eye separately as well as allowing the two eyes to work together as a pair to allow you to see in 3D.Īfter the age of about eight years old, the visual pathways and the "seeing" parts of the brain are fully formed and are difficult to change. The eyes and brain use your visual experiences to improve their coordination and allow your visual pathway to develop as fully as possible. During this time it’s important that your eyes send clear and similar images to your brain. The visual pathway develops throughout your childhood and up to the age of about seven or eight years old. This connection between the eyes and the brain is known as the visual pathway. As you grow you use your eyes to collect information which is sent to the brain to process and this builds up a connection between them. When you are born, your eyes and brain have to learn to work together. The muscles for one eye also work and coordinate with the muscles from your other eye so that they can work together. The movement of each eye is controlled by six muscles that move your eyeball in different directions. This allows you to have depth perception (also known as stereopsis) and to judge how far away things are. Your brain will receive similar but slightly different pictures from each eye so it can join them together to allow you to have binocular and three dimensional (3D) vision. When you look at an object your eyes will be pointing in the same direction and focusing at the same point. Most people have eyes that work together as a pair.
Squints may be more noticeable when a child focuses on a small object or is tired although in some children the squint is noticeable when they are NOT focusing directly on something. Squints are common, affecting around 2-3 per cent of children in the UK.
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This information will focus on childhood strabismus.įor the purpose of this information, we will refer to the medical terms, strabismus for squint and amblyopia for lazy eye.įor further information on this topic, please download the full factsheet by clicking the link.ĭownload or save this information in Word Strabismus can also develop in adults, but an adult will develop strabismus for different reasons than a child will. Most strabismus develops in young children. The eyes do not work together as a pair all the time. This means that while one eye looks forwards to focus on an object, the other eye turns either inwards, outwards, upwards or downwards. Strabismus, often referred to as a squint and sometimes as a ‘turn’ in the eye is an eye condition where the eyes do not look in the same direction as each other. WARNING: This page may contain potentially outdated information.