The Importance of Good Visual Development For Educational Success

"It takes my son a long time to get dressed on his own. He gets very frustrated if he has to button his shirt or zip his jeans."

"Our son did not creep on his hands and knees, but pulled himself across the floor by his arms."

At first glance these descriptions may not seem so out of the ordinary but these statements and those that follow in this article paint a picture of what a preschool aged child with poor development of functional vision may look like and the difficulties they may face.

Let's take a deeper look at the development of vision. As you read this article you'll begin to understand that how we move, how we think, and how we develop is important for later learning skills.

When vision develops and matures as it should, both simple and more complex life skills become automatic. Eye movement control is necessary to develop good visual perceptual abilities. When balance and motor coordination are guided by vision we are better able to integrate what we are seeing with what our body is doing. When our eyes, body and mind work together our quality of life increases. The preschool years are the best time to guide and help your child with perceptual skills that will help them during their school years.

"My child is very clumsy, always tripping over her own two feet and running into corners. She falls down a lot and has many cuts and bruises."

What is Involved in the Development of Vision and Why is it Important?

The visual system begins to develop in the womb and continues to mature throughout infancy and into early childhood. There are many important things for your child to learn in the years between birth and entering school. A child learns more and at a faster rate during these years than at any other comparable period in their life.

This is a time for developing the basic skills of walking, talking, and learning how to learn. It is a time when your child is developing control of their body, their feelings, thoughts, and actions. We develop in a sequential, yet integrated way, using other sensory inputs as part of visual processing. You may hear the phrase "vision is movement", meaning movement guides our visual process and our visual process directs our movements.

Research tells us that the development of gross motor skills (skills that involve the large muscles of the body which help with functions such as crawling, sitting upright, walking, jumping, kicking, throwing, etc.) are extremely important to the development of visual perceptual skills (a set of skills we use to gather visual information from the world around us and integrate them with our other senses; they enable us to make sense out of what is seen). Therefore, the motor system is critical in the learning process.

"Ball games are the least favorite activity of my child. He avoids games that involve catching or throwing a ball."

What Causes Delays in Visual Development?

Vision is learned through a developmental sequence of movement and processing skills which starts in the womb. Many different factors can interfere with the development of the visual system. Complications during pregnancy or with the birthing process, childhood illnesses, head trauma or injury, inherited traits and environmental factors are all examples of factors that can contribute to visual-related learning problems in the future.

"When I ask my daughter to do a few things in a specific order, she can't seem to remember more than one or two and then asks, "What was I supposed to do next?"

Why Is Our Visual System Important for Learning?

What do we mean by "visual system"? Many think that how clearly we see an object is the answer; however visual acuity, or 20/20 eyesight, is only one part of our visual system. Vision involves much more than the sharpness of an image. We need many visual abilities in order to succeed in school and life in general. These include:

- the ability to change focus when shifting attention from near to far (as in copying from the board at school)

- the ability to keep things clear at various distances, to track or move our eyes as we follow a moving target or read across the printed page

- teaming, or using both eyes together (binocularity)

- the ability to judge depth

- visual-motor integration (the ability to guide our pencil or catch a ball)

- good visual-spatial skills (coordination, laterality and directionality, crossing the mid-line)

- perceptual skills, which are the brain's interpretation of the images taken in by our eyes, such as figure ground, visual closure and form constancy

- the ability to remember what we see (visual memory)

- the ability to create mental images--learning how to "see" visual concepts--(visualize) from the words we read or hear

All of these skills are learned and are necessary for reading and learning.

"My child doesn't make eye contact. I am constantly saying, "Please look at me when I talk to you!"

How Do I Know If My Child Needs Guidance in These Areas?

By the age of three (approximately) a child should have coordinated movements, begin to alternate feet when walking down steps, hold eye contact at near and by age four, from several feet away. They should be visually interested in simple pictures, hold a crayon and draw or color, follow a moving target with just their eyes without whole head movements.

If there is a lack of coordination and balance (clumsy), if the child does not cross the midline of their body (switches objects from hand to hand) when performing tasks, or if they have trouble learning the alphabet, these can all be symptoms of difficulty in the area of visual gross motor skills.

"My child has a hard time with body coordination. Activities like riding a bike, hopping, skipping, and even running are a challenge."

How Can I Help My Child's Functional Vision Develop Correctly?

There are many things that parents and caretakers can do during this time of early development to enhance and improve how the visual system functions. When there is a delay in one area of development, there is often a delay in other areas as well. School-aged children with visual disorders often face a lifetime of learning difficulties and frustration in the classroom and in everyday life.

We know that play affects visual development and visual development affects play; motor skills and perception are interdependent. Delays in gross motor skills skew our perception which reduces our ability to explore and learn from the environment. This will eventually affect other visual abilities.

Play helps children learn about their environment. While a child plays, he is strengthening not only his muscles, but also strengthening his perceptions, he is learning new skills, letting off excess energy, trying out different solutions to problems, and learning how to interact with others.

Therefore, it is important that your child spends at least one hour per day in play that involves visually-guided movements such as ball games and other eye-hand activities. Playing games that involve movement and imagination are very important, especially now that more children are sedentary while playing video games or working on a computer.

Dr. Lori Mowbray is the director of the Minnesota Vision Therapy Center ( http://www.minnesotavisiontherapy.com ), one of the most successful vision therapy centers operating today. To learn about her new home programs Primitive Reflex Training, Visual Development, and Vision Therapy at Home, go to. http://homevisiontherapyprogram.com.

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