How Eye Defects Affect the Lives of Children
Society tends to see a vision defect as a mild health problem that brings discomfort to those suffering from it. The truth is that defects like nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism are more impactful than people think, especially in the lives of children.
If you’ve ever suffered from poor eyesight, then you’d have a better understanding of its impact than most people. If not, you may still be in the dark on the issue, through no fault of yours. In the rest of this post, we’ll discuss how eye defects affect the lives of the children who suffer from them.
1. IMPACT ON LEARNING
It’s a fact that 1 out of 10 children suffer from eye defects that are serious enough to affect their learning adversely. If you’ve ever tried to read under poor lighting or with most of your eyes closed, you can imagine how difficult it is for children with poor vision to learn.
Poor eyesight negatively affects comprehension skills during reading sessions. It’s difficult for a child with poor vision to differentiate similar words while reading a text. They tend to lose focus during lessons because they can’t read the words on the board properly. The result is that they fall behind the class during assignments, tests, and exams.
2. IMPACT ON COORDINATION
Vision defects are one of the major causes of poor hand-eye coordination. They make it difficult for kids to participate in sports and games. Children enjoy sports at school, in the streets, or at home. Eye defects take that from them.
When a child can’t see correctly, there’s a chance they’d avoid playing with their mates or enrolling for the sporting activities they love. For them, physical activities that involve vision-related skills are out of their reach. Of course, there are other sports they can excel in, such as swimming, sprinting, and judo, but their options are significantly limited compared to their peers.
3. IMPACT ON SOCIAL LIFE
Their inability to learn or play like their mates would adversely affect their confidence and self-esteem. It’s inevitable. When your grades keep dropping, and you always get picked last on the soccer team, you’ll begin to think less of yourself. Many of these children are undiagnosed and don’t know their problems have nothing to do with their intelligence.
Also, having poor vision in the early stages of life makes it hard to interpret facial expressions. Such children have trouble communicating and recognizing emotions from facial cues. This difficulty results in poor social interaction with the people around them.
Children who struggle to maintain social relationships with their peers fall prey to childhood depression, bad influence, and poor anger management. The list of possible complications goes on.
Eye defects are more than regular health complications, especially for children. They affect some of the most vital aspects of a child’s life. In the worst cases, poor vision could hinder a child’s future and leave emotional scars that may never heal.
At New Vision ES, we understand how hard it is for less-fortunate children in El Salvador to cope with eye defects. It’s a significant problem, and together, we can fix it. Let’s help these children see life anew.