Know About Lazy Eye In Young Children

The thought of writing an article today about effective parenting of young children makes me share some of the information about lazy eye or amblyopia that is more a brain condition where the brain favors one eye and refuses to use the other; one of the eyes has a blurred vision and it is very difficult to cure it even with the best of glasses.

How does the lazy eye develop? 

Children with normal vision learn to use both their eyes together within the first few months of life and their brain develops a capability to fuse the pictures coming from both eyes into a single image. In contrast the brain of the children with a lazy eye have not learnt to use both their eyes and the picture coming from one eye is blocked; these children  lose the ability to see clearly with the lazy eye, with the loss of vision depending on how early the visual development of the brain shuts off the eye.  

Lazy eye or amblyopia could be caused due to various conditions; in some cases it is also inherited. It is best to understand here that understanding parents as well as teachers could help children with a lazy eye to overcome it.

Treatment for a Lazy Eye

The treatment for lazy eye lies in stimulating the blurry eye to work to develop clear vision; corrective glasses may be prescribed to provide support to the lazy eye. In case the lazy eye is strabismus or wandering this issue is also to be addressed. In addition to glasses treatment for lazy eyes could be done by patching alone, patching and surgery and patching and vision therapy.

Patching the clear eye for about 2 to 8 hours and forcing the blurry eye to work improves its vision. But it may be difficult to enlist the cooperation of the child for extended periods of time; it could also lead to the skin around the eye becoming irritated and raw. The child as well as parents may also give up as sometimes the eye with clear vision could suffer from loss of vision.

It may be recommended that the child go in for surgery along with patching. Surgery is more of a cosmetic fix and neither cures vision nor the improper habits the brain learnt and it does not train both the eyes to work together.

The most successful of therapies is vision therapy that stimulates and guides vision development and trains the brain to develop visual functions that it did not develop on its own. This treatment is best accomplished by behavioral pediatric optometrists who specialize in children’s vision. Used along with patching for much shorter intervals, much less patching time would be necessary when the child's visual system is also being trained how to use the weak eye properly. The child's patching time is eliminated completely at the end of this therapy.

A final word; lazy eye is not always easily recognized and could be overlooked by both parents and children. However good sharp vision is needed for children to not only excel in school, sports or any other activity that requires clear vision, good hand-eye coordination, and strong depth perception.