If you have a child in elementary school, you know that at the beginning of each school year the school nurse will do a basic eye examination on each child. This is to help catch eye problems that are not often observed in the home. If there is a problem, the nurse will send home a note requesting that you take your child to the eye doctor for a check-up.
Neither you nor your child needs to be nervous to go to your first visit to the eye doctor. He is highly trained and skilled in his profession and knows how to help children be comfortable with the examination. After you check in at the office, you will be taken to an examination room. Usually, there is a chair that raises up and down that the patient will sit in. The doctor will have an eye chart at the proper distance from the chair and will probably begin by asking the child to read the letters on a given line. As the child reads the letters, the eye doctor may have her cover one eye and look with the other, and then switch. This helps him to know if the eyes are seeing in a similar fashion to each other.
He will physically examine the eyes by shining a light in them. There are also machines that enlarge the eye and put it on the screen for the doctor to look at for a close up. There are many machines and computer screens that help the doctor know what to look for and what he is looking at.
Once he has made this initial determination, he will have the child look through a machine that looks a little crazy. Many round glass lenses are connected together with a variety of knobs. The child will be asked to place her chin on a chin-rest and look through the lenses. He will turn knobs and ask questions as he tries to determine the prescription that will help the child to see better. This process is gone through with each eye individually, and by the end of it all, the eye doctor will have determined a prescription for glasses that should help your child see more normally.
Other tests may be performed, such as for glaucoma, and then you and your child will be able to select the pair of glasses frames that you like. An assistant will help your child with the way the frames fit and make sure they are comfortable. The frames will then be sent to the company for the new prescription lenses to be put in them. When they come back, the eye doctor will let you know they are in and your child will soon be seeing better than ever.