Does my child have Convergence Insufficiency?

Do you ever notice your child straining her eyes when she reads? Does she say she has headaches from time to time? Or maybe she complains about blurred vision or says things like “I can see the words, but they seem to jump when I look at them.” Maybe she has a short attention span, or she has the tendency to cover one eye in order to read better.

Like most parents, your initial reaction to these symptoms might be to get your child a vision test. But you might also remember that at the beginning of school your child was probably required to have one, and she scored 20/20 on it. What do you do?

One of the tricky things about Convergence Insufficiency, a frequently occurring vision disorder, is that it’s not as easily diagnosed as other vision disorders. That’s right, even though your child got a perfect score on the vision test, he/she may still have this disorder. Diagnosing it requires a special kind of test. Luckily, here at the Washington Vision Therapy Center, we are very familiar with the symptoms of this disorder, and we will be more than happy to help you diagnose it.

We believe that it is worth getting tested for. Currently, it’s reported that 2-13% of children and adults in the US have this disorder – a rather high percentage. Essentially, it occurs when the eyes try to focus together at near. Both eyes struggle to maintain their focus on what they are pointed at. The resulting symptoms usually do not completely inhibit the person from being able to read or see near, though they usually involve blurriness, double vision, and fatigue when focusing on things up close.

Additionally, it should be noted that even if you or your child does not experience these symptoms, it is possible to have Convergence Insufficiency. Many times it is so much work for the eyes to do near work, that people often just avoid near work all together. These children often get mislabeled as having attention issues because they never sit still long to focus on anything at near for any length of time that would cause symptoms to present.

Have you recently checked to see if you have Convergence Insufficiency? If not, please know that we will be more than happy to treat you or your child, as well as answer any of your questions!