What to Expect In Your First Eye Exam

Hi I’m Dr Selena Friesen and today I’m going explain what happens on your first visit to an optometrist for your first eye exam.

A first eye exam for children is recommended at 6-9 months and then another great time for an eye exam is 3 years old.

We will welcome your parents or your grandparents or someone with you if you’d like and I’ll come and invite you in the room with them and you could either sit by yourself here on the chair or you could sit on their lap if you prefer. Otherwise I have a spot for your audience so you can keep eye contact at all times.

So what we would do is I usually start with a toy to see how your eyes work together and I have a little favourite puppet here that I like to use for that. So I’m just going to move to the position I would be in and introduce you to my puppet. This measures they eye muscle movement, looking for signs of strabismus or turned eye. There are 6 muscles that control each eye.

So what we are looking at here as I would talk to you about my interesting puppet here and get an idea of how your eyes move together. So all I need is eyes open and I would talk about the silly guy with eyes on the top of his head who’s quite blue and I would also check to see how well you cross your eyes.

Another test that we do is check to see your depth perception, so I had to check your 3D Vision. I have different sizes of 3D glasses and we just figure out what either looks the best or what would fit the best for you and then I have a couple of interesting books here. So this one here you can see has a dinosaur and some animals going in and out of the page and this one here is going to have some circles and shapes for you to identify. Depth perception or stereopsis tells optometrists how well the two eyes work together. I can give clues on eye disease or strabismus or Amblyopia.

If you do know your numbers already before you start kindergarten I do a vision test to evaluate if your vision is normal or deficient. I’m also very curious what you can see and what you can’t see this is the tricky part because a lot of parents like to answer for you and a lot of parents want you to give me all the correct answers. I’m actually more curious to know what you can’t see or I’m also kind of curious on the wrong answers too. So some of the pictures that I would show you: one is a birthday cake because I love birthday cakes, a hand, and then we decide if this is a bird or you know it can go either way and this stylized picture we call a horse. I also have another set of pictures that I like to show you and we decide that’s a ball, we decide this is a box or a square, this one is kind of interesting… it is all over the place and I get a lot of creative great answers. This one here is pretty straightforward most of us agree that this is a house.

Visual acuity is an important test to look for signs of Amblyopia, or lazy eye, which occurs in about 5% of the population and has no symptoms. It is important to diagnosis amblyopia at a young age because it is much easier to treat.

The last important test that I do what is measure what your prescription is. I’m curious if you’re farsighted nearsighted or have astigmatism. I would bring it in front of you and ask if you’ve ever used binoculars before and then I stand quite far away and use my light to measure what your prescription is. I’ll be showing you a video just to distract you from the fact that I shine a light your eye. If this is a little bit bothersome and you’re worried about losing eye contact with Mom or Dad I do have lens options so that when measuring your prescription you can still see all around the room and not feel blocked behind there. We use a phoropter to measure your refraction. The doctor will do retinoscopy and can measure you glasses prescription even if you don’t say anything.

Visual acuity is important but there are many eye diseases that can be present even if you have 20/20 vision. The last test that I reallywant to get in besides my bonus test at the end is to take a look at the health of your eyes and so I can use a light like this. Also I use another light and kids love this and laugh like crazy but I put it on my head and I stand quite far away and take another look at the health of the eyes.

So it’s pretty straightforward and kind of fun.