Sight refers to what you see.

Vision refers to how you are able to use and manipulate what you see.

Vision perception refers to how you use your sight and vision skills to interpret your surroundings.

Each of these three key pillars of our visual symptom are incredibly important in equipping your child with the best tools to learn and thrive.

In a well-functioning visual system, ‘20/20 vision’ certainly isn’t everything. A child with perfect sight may have poor vision or poor vision perception, leading to trouble concentrating or even to thrive in the classroom environment. Considering 80% of what we learn is through our vision, very often in our clinic we see a number of children struggling with their school work - not due to a lack of intelligence, but simply because they are struggling to interpret what they are reading on the page or the board. Sometimes these children can be perceived as having learning delays when really they do not have the necessary processing skills to read and perform written language tasks.

Our visual perception assessments consider your child’s sight and vision, tracking eye movement and function, but also go a step further to identify how well this information is being used, processed and stored.

Your child may have visual processing delays if they:

• Are strong at maths, but struggle with English and written tasks

• Loss their place on the page whilst reading

• Are slow to learn new words or phrases

• Can sound out words but struggle to recognise them when they appear again

• Copy inaccurately

• Reverse their numbers and letters and

• Struggle with their writing skills including lack of spacing, poor sized writing

If you are interested in a vision perception assessment, we do require an initial eye examination with one of our optometrists to first assess your child’s sight and vision. You are welcome to discuss you concerns and interest in a visual perception assessment, and our optometrist will discuss this with you accordingly.