Presse

“The precious Eyes of your Child”

It is a seminar where parents can learn to protect their children’s eyesight. This is particularly important in this day and age, which is characterized by Internet, TV, and computer games, smart phones, which are an enormous challenge for the growing and delicate eyes of children. If the child uses already glasses parents can learn how to help their child to cope with the glasses and to use them in a more intelligent way. 

Interviewer: Is it possible to improve the eyesight of children?

As long as your child is still growing, the eyesight is not yet fully developed. It can still advance for the better. Scientists say that we have obtained our full vision about the age of 15. Until then, it is subject to many variations and even after vision faults developed they can be fully corrected. 

Seeing is something very precious, very individual and sensitive. If poor eyesight is found in a child a lot of questions emerge for many parents. And is a pair of glasses prescribed, this is for most children for the first time a shock. This seminar supports parents to understand the vision problem of their child and to learn how to deal with it. We address how mental tension and school- or family stress is affecting the eyesight. Parents learn how to protect their children eyes from damage or deterioration through television, computer games and preventing computer vision syndrome in their children. The playful exercises shown in this seminar help eyes and mind of the child to relax and to strengthen their vision power too. It supports a positive attitude towards vision recovery exercises and if necessary to spectacles as well. The seminar provides information on the most common forms of childhood poor eyesight and their holistic treatment options. 

The most important for the development of vision is, the child has to be happy and satisfied with himself, with his eyes and his seeing. A pair of glasses alone brings eye sight seldom into balance. 

Question: “Is there a particular time for the development of nearsightedness, the most common vision problem in children?

With shortsightedness the eyeball is too long and the image is not properly focused onto the retina of the eye and becomes blurry. The reason for this is much discussed in professional circles. Observations of the Eye Universities of Beijing, Sydney and Glasgow have shown that the development of myopia is often inferred with an excess of close work. Learning, reading, homework force the children eyes to look into the near, just like the look on the computer, tablet-pc, game consoles and smartphones. This hour-long obsession with short-range is much more strenuous for a child's eye than looking into the distance. 

The emotional and hormonal balance plays an important role for the growth of vision. Critical periods of life when many children become nearsighted, are more or less the times around the 7th and the 14th year. At this time it comes to major growth steps, to maturity processes, often accompanied by hormonal changes. Entering school and adolescence are the outstanding events of this life stages. This goes together with changes in the self-image and the image of the world. Boys and girls often develop nearsightedness with schooling. This brings a big change in their life. They need to get accustomed to fixed times, to sit for hours, to listen to the teacher, to stare at the black board and to do homework or receive tuition. 

Research shows in many industrial countries like Taiwan, with entering school only a few children have vision problems; but then 25% of primary school children and 60-70 % of the intermediate and 80-90 % of all high school children develop poor eyesight. The question is WHY. It seems school brings for many children lots of stress. And they receive little understanding and less help to deal with these stressful situations. As we know, short sightedness often develops with mental tension, with cramped body positions, with limited movement, with long hours working in the close area and is often accompanied with the feeling of restriction and fear. Parents could be of a great support for helping their child to protect their vision and prevent their deterioration. 

Question: “Are these the main reason for the development of faulty vision?”

Well sometimes it’s the family stress or the conflicts the parents have with each other, which are the source of the visual stress of their children. If a child gets confronted with uncertainty, imprecise, with unspoken conflict, it becomes doubtful and easily can lose its inner balance. The eyes reflect this conflict. They interrupt or blurry the contact and protect the soul from the unclearness. Its like a protective fog, or buffer to guard us from too strong feelings and unclearness. 

Or someone beloved and very close to the child is leaving or even dying; or the whole family is moving to another town and the child has to leave his friends and the entire familiar environment; or to move to another school or a boarding school. To be confronted with something painful is often easier to bear or to take, if the eyes don’t see it so clear. 

If the vision of the inner and outer world gapes too much apart, this stress can be brought in the child's vision and manifest as a visual problem. A pair of glasses does not resolve this tension. It rather fixes the visual problem, especially when wearing glasses becomes a habit and the child becomes dependent on the glasses.

Question: Any suggestion you have for parents or for our readers?

If your child wears glasses support him, particularly in sports and playing, to keep the glasses off. Advocate your child to play outdoors or provide outdoor activities i.e. on the weekends. Encourage your child to talk about the stress in school or other situations. Allow him in his daily life to choose between fully corrected glasses or a weaker prescription. Share with your child the experience of being with and without glasses. Limit the time of computing and internet for your child and explain why. 

If you know some eye exercises practice together with your child until it can continue alone. Eye exercises can become a resource and can activate the self-healing power. It can support the self-esteem as the kid sees changes in its vision. And vision can change in children very fast and often much more easily as in adults. After exercising we feel good. We notice our own body and feel its aliveness. We experience that we are able of helping ourselves. We come in contact with our eyes and with our eye-condition and with our way of seeing. We learn to appreciate our eyes and what they have done for us and still doing for us.  

Interviewer: Can children also participate in the workshop? 

The seminar is not for children, but for parents, for school- and kindergarten teacher and for anyone interested. Parents then share their new understanding and their experiences with their children. And in this way both will benefit.

Interviewer: Thank you George