This week was our bi-annual optometrist visit. We go twice a year for two reasons. The one has to do with medication my children take that has been known to affect the macula of the eye and must be checked every 6 months. The second reason is that the correct glasses stop the decline of visual impairment.
This is something many people don’t know. For some reason, we think glasses are just for enabling sight. Of course, this is the main reason, but they also stop the eyes from straining and causing further damage.
My husband should have worn glasses but never did and eventually, his actual eyeballs were oval-shaped and glasses were useless.
While there, the optometrist noted that the decline in nearsightedness was something they have seen a lot of this last year. They put it down to online schooling. I did not ask about the light from the screen, so I cannot comment on that, but she spoke about how children’s eyes are not used telescopically (my word). Their lengh of vision is fixed to the distance between their nose and their screen, not looking further or nearer much at all.
I wonder whether there is a way to solve this. I wonder if these changes in eyesight in children is reversal or not. I am grateful that out school is a low-tech school. The kids get 6 – 8 hours without a screen in sight, every school day.
