Question about my 3-year-old son's vision

[HighFlyingBird]

Originally Posted by rrah

While I respect your stance on this, and agree that a pediatrician is not qualified to make a specific diagnosis, a pediatrician is often the first doctor that notices an issue with regular vision screenings. It was my daughter's pediatrician that alerted me to the fact she might have a vision problem. He recommended we see an ophthalmologist which we did. He identified the problem and the solution.


My suggestion to the OP was that her pediatrician should be regularly performing vision screenings/tests. Since she said she doesn't have insurance coverage for eye exams the pediatrician makes sense as the first course of action. Children see pediatricians frequently and the OP does not see a problem in the child's vision.

I find it hard to believe that you would be against pediatricians performing regular vision screenings given that insurance coverage for eye exams is not common or not on the radar of many parents.

I have very bad vision.

I was born with the eye condition that causes this.

I was never diagnosed as a child. I had schools and doctors tests but I could "fake it".

So I never was taken by a parent (depending on those sources)

When I was in my 30s I went and got an exam and found out how bad my vision was. (bad enough contacts don't work, I can't get the surgery).

My education was impacted. As was my social life.

Just go to an eye doc. Do dilation a couple times in childhood (or more)

[GraceKrispy]

I wouldn't assume his vision is fine. I'm also wondering if the ped did the general eye screening. If not, maybe you can ask for that. I have glasses and my vision isn't terrible, but I can't function without glasses (got them at 8yo- like another poster said, I was surprised to realize my teacher was writing things on the board and that trees had individuals leaves on them). Both my parents had good vision without the need for glasses until they got reading glasses when much older.

I discovered my toddler had some vision issues when I accidentally covered one eye and he freaked out on me. We went to an opthamologist and discovered he was legally blind in one eye. He's now 14 and has been wearing glasses since before age 2. As a side note, the opthamologist kind of sucked, but I didn't know it at the time. He didn't patch, and at an appointment when my son was around 8yo, the optometrist (we had switched by then) said she would have patched him. When he was 13, a different optometrist said that we should try patching him at that age, since there was a chance it might improve his vision in the poor eye (and that he should have been patched at age 2). We did patch him (using clear contact paper over one side of his glasses- almost invisible to those looking at him, but impossible to see clearly through the contact paper). His vision in his bad eye showed great improvement, even at that age.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd get his eyes checked sooner rather than later, with your family history of vision issues. And it's not a bad idea to get a second opinion at some point as well, just to cover your bases. I wish we'd had another option for opthamologist and he had gotten patched as a toddler. I wonder how much better his vision could have been.