Pediatric Optometrist

Smart parents always tell their kids: “Do as I say, not as I do.” That’s because children, they insist, see everything — and then promptly imitate it in a classic game of “monkey see, monkey do.”

It’s funny. Unfortunately, however, it’s not entirely true: Not all children see everything. In fact, some children see very little, in which case they should see a Pediatric Optometrist.

When you’re a Pediatric Optometrist, you’re an Optometrist, or Eye Doctor, who specializes in juvenile patients. Like Optometrists, your job as a Pediatric Optometrist is diagnosing and treating vision problems, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, cataracts, astigmatism, and amblyopia, or “lazy eye.” Like a Pediatrician to a Physician, the only major difference is your patients, most of which are children.

That means you might work for a school district, testing students’ vision at school, although you most likely work for a private optometry practice or clinic. Regardless, your main responsibility is diagnostic vision exams, which have several components.

The first is physically examining the eye for signs of damage, such as squinting, redness, or swelling. The second is testing pupil functioning with a penlight. Next are a series of checks that test eye alignment, color vision, peripheral vision, and vision depth. Finally is the standard Snellen test, which tests visual acuity with an alphabetic chart.

As with adults, treatment options include glasses, contact lenses, and visual therapy, which you can prescribe, or medication and surgery, which must be prescribed by your Physican counterpart: an Ophthalmologist. The stakes, however, are often much higher than with adult patients, as healthy vision is crucial to children’s physical, mental, and social development.