Myopia Management

Keeping Their Eyes Clear for the Future

Myopia, also known as nearsightedness, is a condition that causes distant objects to appear blurry. Although myopia is common, impacting more than 40% of Americans, it is not harmless.

Beyond impacts on your distance vision, myopia can also increase the risk of developing eye diseases such as cataracts, retinal detachment, and myopic maculopathy later in life.

Myopia cannot be reversed. However, we can help to slow its progression in childhood when changes to eyesight are most rapid. By detecting myopia early, we can determine a treatment plan and help slow its progression. This helps preserve your child’s eyesight and eye health for the future.

We check for myopia during your child’s eye exam. Through annual eye exams, we can monitor your child’s eye health and catch changes to their eyesight early.

Book Appointment

Why Is Myopia Management Important?

Up to 80% of learning is visual. For children, having a vision problem such as myopia can greatly impact their learning and development.

Whether they’re still developing hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills or if they’re interested in joining competitive sports at an older age, vision plays a crucial role. Children with undiagnosed vision problems may be misdiagnosed with learning disabilities or behavioral problems.

Children with myopia often experience their eyes growing too quickly or too long compared to the normal rate of growth. This causes a rapid and continual deterioration in their eyesight. These changes cannot be reversed after they occur, so starting myopia management as soon as possible is recommended.

Book Appointment

Our Myopia Management Methods

Traditional glasses or contact lenses can correct refractive errors such as nearsightedness to provide clear vision. However, they do not prevent myopia from progressing, which can happen rapidly during childhood. Specially designed eyewear made for myopia management includes specific treatment technology to address myopia progression while simultaneously correcting your child’s vision.

If we diagnose your child with myopia, we will discuss our myopia management options with you and your child to determine the right treatment plan based on your child’s preferences, prescription, and lifestyle needs.

Stellest Myopia Management Glasses

Stellest lenses by Essilor are specially designed to help slow the progression of myopia in children. The lenses include a central vision correction area that corrects your child’s nearsightedness, and an outer myopia management area that uses HALT technology to slow myopia progression by 67% on average.

HALT (highly aspherical lenslet target) technology uses over 1,000 invisible lenslets inside the lens to help peripheral (side) vision focus in front of the retina, rather than behind it, like traditional glasses. These lenses can be fitted to the frames of your child’s choice.

MiSight 1 day Contact Lenses

MiSight 1 day contact lenses by CooperVision are daily disposable lenses with special treatment areas that correct nearsightedness and help slow the progression of myopia.

These contact lenses are FDA-approved to slow the progression of myopia in children aged 8–12 years at the start of their treatment. Myopia management contact lenses can provide a great option for active kids and teens who prefer not to wear glasses.

Signs Your Child Has Myopia

Many children who experience vision problems cannot articulate them. Or, they may not have a baseline understanding of what clear vision looks like. A routine eye exam can help identify vision problems that your child may not be able to express.

Your child may also exhibit signs at home or school that indicate a vision problem. These signs may include:

Squinting or head tilting
Covering or closing one eye to see
Holding objects close to their face
Frequent headaches
Poor performance in school
Short attention span
Disinterest in near work such as reading, Lego, etc.
Delayed learning of the alphabet
Skipping words or letters while reading or writing

If you notice these signs in your child, we recommend bringing them in for an eye exam. You can also take our short quiz below to assess your child’s risk of developing myopia.

What’s My Child’s Risk for Myopia

Take our short quiz to learn about your child’s risk for myopia, or whether their nearsightedness may worsen over time. By answering these questions, you’ll find out the risk of progressive myopia in your child and how you can help them.

Preserve Your Child’s Vision Today

Whether your child is already nearsighted or has clear vision, we’re here to help you keep their eyesight sharp and clear for the future. We will monitor their eyesight and recommend myopia management techniques if necessary.

By protecting their eyes from rapid myopia progression today, you can help them preserve their eyesight for the future and reduce the likelihood of serious eye conditions later in life. There is no better defense against eye disease than prevention. Book their eye exam today.

Book Appointment