Children's Eye Exams in San Rafael & San Francisco

You should be booking your child for their next eye exam somewhere between 6 months and a year after they’re born. Most eye diseases and conditions haven’t developed for long enough around this age, so this eye exam is to determine if your child’s eyes are working as expected.

Their next eye exam should occur when your child is around 3 years old. At this age, conditions like amblyopia and strabismus can develop and could lead to permanent vision problems if not managed by a professional.

Your child should have an eye exam before they start school, and then annually until they’re 18 years old. Issues like myopia, hyperopia, amblyopia, strabismus, and more tend to develop around these years, and eye exams can help detect them.

Depending on what is discovered during your child’s eye exams, we recommend and prescribe a range of treatments, medications, and prescriptions to help manage their issues and make the most of their vision throughout their life.

Vision therapy is a curated treatment program that acts like physical therapy but focuses on the eyes and vision. Through a range of different exercises, we can help treat deficiencies in your child’s vision, including, but not limited to convergence insufficiency and focusing insufficiency, tracking problems, amblyopia, strabismus, myopia, and more.

Some of the skills we focus on developing include:

• Eye tracking (smooth pursuits and saccades, reading eye movements)
• Near focusing
• Convergence (ability to cross the eyes, and uncross them)
• Binocular eye coordination
• Depth perception
• Visual perception
• Eye-hand coordination
• Amblyopia or “lazy” eye
• Strabismus (an eye or eyes that tend to wander in our out)

Before starting vision therapy, your child will have an initial assessment that includes a visual efficiency evaluation. This evaluation will look for deficiencies in their eye coordination, fusion, near focusing, and visual tracking.

Exercises are designed to be engaging and fun, and often involve tools like:

• Therapeutic lenses, prisms and filters
• Computerized vision games and exercises
• Free space tracking, focusing, and convergence/divergence exercises
• Exercises that promote improved eye-hand coordination, balance, gaze stability, depth perception, and visual motor integration

Vision therapy can also improve deficiencies related to how your child processes information. These issues, known as learning-related vision problems, can include:

• Eye tracking (smooth pursuits and saccades, reading eye movements)
• Near focusing
• Convergence (ability to cross the eyes, and uncross them)
• Binocular eye coordination
• Depth perception
• Visual perception
• Eye-hand coordination
• Amblyopia or “lazy” eye
• Strabismus (an eye or eyes that tend to wander in our out)

With the help of our curated program designed to match your child’s needs, vision therapy could improve your child’s vision for school, sports, and more!