Double Vision in Children

In today's blog we are going to talk about double vision. The most common cause of double vision is that the eyes are misaligned, which then causes two different images to be sent to the brain. Typically, the images are either side by side or overlapping.

When I have a student comes into our office for an assessment, one of my first questions is, "do you ever see two of whatever you are looking at?" And when they say "yes", it is almost like they are wondering, "How on earth did this lady know?"

When I am sitting in the room with just the parents discussing the assessment results and I tell them “your child has double vision,” often those parents feel terrible or guilty for not knowing. I have had parents in my office with tears in their eyes saying, "you must think I am the worst mother."

Of course, these parents aren’t awful at all! Let's break it down; a child is not aware that what they are seeing is abnormal. Therefore, they are unable to communicate their double vision to their parents--children think everyone sees the world as they do. It is not uncommon for parents to be unaware of their child's double vision.

If you suspect your child may have double vision, here are some signs to look out for:

• Reading problems
• Skipping or repeating words
• Overlapping letters when writing 
• Lots of headaches
• Poor depth perception

The good news is, we can treat double vision through vision therapy and/or prism lenses. Since the problem is that the eyes are misaligned we can help alleviate the issue by getting to work on eye teaming exercises.

While hearing your child having double vision is alarming, there are solutions!