Does Your Child Have a Lazy Eye? Here's What to Know

As a parent, you want to give your child the best start in life, so you spend a good deal of time monitoring their health. Of course, vision should be included, and the good news is, many childhood vision issues respond well to early intervention.

This is especially true of lazy eye, which affects about 5% of kids aged 15 and younger. 

As neuro-optometrists, our team at DeyeNAMICS has extensive experience helping kids overcome lazy eyes, medically known as amblyopia. Here’s what we want you to know, including recognizing early signs of lazy eye, which can be tricky to spot.

Lazy Eye Basics

As we mentioned, a lazy eye isn’t about low energy. It’s a neurodevelopmental issue that interferes with the messaging between the eyes and the brain.

When one of your child’s eyes doesn’t function well, their brain can start to ignore any information sent in from the affected eye. As a result, their brain relies on the “good” eye to do most of the work, rendering the affected eye somewhat “lazy.” Conversely, if the brain doesn’t utilize both eyes appropriately, this will also disrupt the visual information sent by the eyes to the brain, resulting in a lazy eye.

This issue usually affects only one eye, though it can affect both. It also starts early, which is why we recommend vision screening between the ages of 3 and 5.

The longer your child’s lazy eye goes undiagnosed and untreated, the more their vision issues can compound. As the brain continues to favor the good eye, the vision in the lazy eye can get progressively worse. So, early intervention is key, as we can take steps to improve visual function in the lazy eye.

Signs of a Lazy Eye

A lazy eye is often tricky to diagnose, which is another reason to bring your child in for early vision screening.

Early signs of lazy eye can include:

• Squinting with both eyes
• Closing one eye
• Tilting their head
• Poor depth perception
• Bumping into objects on one side of their body
• A drooping eyelid
• Holding books, school work, or video devices close to their face

Crossed eyes, known as strabismus, can also lead to a lazy eye in some cases.

Often, parents don’t know their child has a lazy eye. This is because the brain is remarkable at adapting by temporarily shutting the vision from one eye off to allow for sharp, clear vision with both eyes open. But the longer the condition goes undiagnosed, the more the brain favors the other eye, making the other eye weaker.

Treating a Lazy Eye

Early intervention gives us the best chance to correct a lazy eye. Sometimes, we use an eye patch over their stronger eye to make the lazy eye work harder. In other cases, we can prescribe eyedrops for the unaffected eye to temporarily make vision blurry. This also forces the weaker eye to work harder. More often, we can use special lenses to get your child’s eyes to coordinate better and to improve the brain-eye connection.  We will often also recommend therapy services to improve visual functioning and allow for the two eyes to work together more effectively.

With this type of early care, you can go a long way toward helping your child overcome their lazy eye and move forward with stronger vision.

For expert diagnosis and treatment of lazy eye, contact us at one of our offices in Sacramento, Bellflower, or Valencia, California; Guildford, Connecticut; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; or Plano, Texas, to schedule an appointment.