Vision

I’ve joined a group of mums to answer a Monday question. I am answering a day late.

As this month is #downsyndromeawarenessmonth each Monday each of us will either write a fact or a myth about Down’s syndrome.

I went to an amazing talk about vision when Coraline was almost two years old. There was so much to learn. It was given by Dr. Maggie Woodhouse, Head of the Down’s Syndrome Vision Research Unit at Cardiff University, who had studied visual development in children with Down’s syndrome since 1992.

A fact is that people with Down’s syndrome have an auditory processing weakness and a visual processing strength. They are visual learners. Therefore if they have problems with their vision it will affect them more. Coraline has annual sight tests.

At primary school 6% of typical children will wear glasses whilst 60% of children with Down’s syndrome require glasses. The majority of those children with Down’s syndrome wearing glasses are long sighted and only a handful are short sighted.

Many children with Down’s syndrome often tend to focus behind the target so what they are looking at is out of focus. This can make near tasks feel blurred for them. So it is important to ask opticians to check “near focusing”. Bifocals can help with this.

Children with Down’s syndrome require larger print to read comfortably. Otherwise they are working harder than any other child in school. Their base size of font that they can read comfortably is different to that of a typical child.

There was much more in the talk and I gained so much knowledge! It also goes to show how much goes into learning, and how much is interlinked.

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