Your Child's Visual Development is Happening in Full Swing Now

At this stage, your preschooler's visual development is happening rapidly and this is a vital part of their growth since they use their vision to guide other learning experiences.

What you need to know

From this age, your child will be fine-tuning the visual abilities gained during infancy and developing new ones. Stacking building blocks, rolling a ball back and forth, coloring, drawing, cutting, or assembling lock-together toys all help improve important visual skills.

They depend on their vision to learn tasks that will prepare your child for school. They are developing the visually-guided eye-hand-body coordination, fine motor skills and visual perceptual abilities necessary to learn to read and write. They are eager to draw and look at pictures. Also, reading to young children is important to help your child develop strong visualization skills as they "picture" the story in their minds.

Vision problems

This is also the time when you need to be alert for the presence of vision problems like crossed eyes or lazy eye. These conditions often develop at this age. Crossed eyes or strabismus involves one or both eyes turning inward or outward. Commonly known as lazy eye, there is a lack of clear vision in one eye, which can't be fully corrected with eyeglasses. Lazy eye often develops as a result of crossed eyes, but may occur without noticeable signs.