Kleoe (F/8) my younger girl is wearing myopia control lens. Why did I prescribe myopia control lens to her?
Kleoe shows distinct sign in which myopia will be expected to progress in her case.
- She always holds her story books or sees her phone very near despite constantly reminding her to hold further away. When I remind her, she will pull away. Shortly, she will be back holding it near back again. We know that when we see our phone so near, our eyes need to work extra hard to auto focus helping to see clearly at near. This is stressful to her eyes if she continuously studies or sees her phone this way, power will likely to increase. Since she started primary school, her power has increased 025 to 050 in primary one. I put her on myopia control to control her power progression.
- She also has weaker eye muscles with poorer eye stamina as compared to her peers of the same age. By wearing myopia control lens, a lens that incorporates additional power at bottom part of lens to help relax her eyes as well as to support her eye muscles when doing near work or studying, this lens works well for two purposes for her. And this is great!
Many parents are hesitant to start their children with glasses, fearing that the power will then start increasing after wearing glasses. It is actually the other way round. Uncorrected eye power may cause 3 things:
- Increase of eye power even faster
- Vision deprivation or lack of stimulus of clear image to our eyes leading to lazy eye (lazy eye means no matter what power we give or optimum power is given, the eye also cannot see the smaller alphabets that other kids can see)
- Headache – your child may complain of headache to you frequently
What we want to do is to closely monitor his/her vision and to take proactive myopia control approach to control power progression. We may not be able to stop power progression completely, but we want to do all we can to slow the progression of power. Myopia control can be in a few different forms of approach as we go along this myopia control journey & we will advise according to your child’s indication.
Learning is a big part of all children in their everyday life. Adventurously exploring, fulfilling their curiosity, absorbing many things.. a long journey of learning through the senses of eyes. Back to basic and nature, many studies have shown that outdoor play two hours a day can help to slow the progression of myopia & that’s awesome! As outdoor play puts your eyes looking at far, at which eyes are most relaxed, this is one of the ways incorporating myopia control in daily life. Of course, restriction of time playing with phone is crucial too especially now that children in primary schools are not expected to be back to school soon. One hour a day on leisure using gadget seems to be a good deal to strike with our children.
Simply bring your child for an eye examination every 6 months, to monitor for changes in his/her vision. Close monitoring of her vision is a continuous journey at least until they finish secondary school.
When we put our eyes the most relaxed state possible, eyes are happy, power is stable, you are happy, I am happy & everyone is happy!
#MyopiaControl #OutdoorPlayTwoHourADay