Advice for taking care of your children’s eyes
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Your children’s eyes are important, they are essential to their everyday life and the idea of them losing their vision probably sparks feelings of great dread and fear. Given the importance of vision, you do not want to take any unnecessary risks when it comes to your children’s eyes, and you should take great care in helping them to maintain good eye health.
If your child has ever suffered from a serious eye infection or found a suspicious bump on their eye (this is called a chalazion, find out here how to treat Chalazion) then you might need some more education on how to reduce the occurrence of these common eye problems.
1. Avoid face cloth sharing – Children are notorious for sharing things like towels and face cloths, but these can be breeding grounds for bacteria. Sharing cloths can cause bacteria to spread amongst the whole family, so it’s best if everyone has their own. These cloths should be washed every few days, so make sure you have plenty on hand.
2. Encourage children to stop rubbing their eyes – Even if kids are washing their hands regularly, they will still be carrying germs. These germs can easily get into their eyes if they rub them during the day. This can cause infections and can also lead to corneal abrasions which are painful scratches on the surface of their eyes.
3. Nightly face washing – Ideally, kids should wash their faces twice a day, every night, and every morning, but washing at night is the most important. This is because dirt from your child’s face can transfer to their pillow or get rubbed into their eyes as they move around in their sleep. If your kids often wake up with dry, irritated eyes then it could be because they did not wash their faces the night before.
4. Limit screen time – This is easier said than done in the modern day where we rely on screens for most aspects of life, but it is important to try and limit the amount of time kids spend staring at a computer screen. Make your children take regular breaks and follow the 20-20-20 rule – for every 20 minutes of screen time, children should look away and focus on something at least 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
5. Always wear eye protection – When it’s a sunny day your children should be wearing sunglasses. Make sure you buy them sunglasses that block 99 to 100 percent of UV-A and UV-B radiation. Cheap novelty sunglasses sometimes aren’t doing a lot to protect your child’s eyes from the sun. Try to get them frames that they love to encourage them to wear them more often.
6. Be careful with contact lenses – Children shouldn’t wear contact lenses before the age of ten, but if your older child has opted to use them, make sure they’re not wearing them all the time. Never let your kids wear contacts overnight and always help them to follow the guidelines of their optometrist.
My name is Louise and I am the Digital Marketing and Administrative Assistant at MyBump2Baby. I have been writing in the parenting niche for over 2 years specialising in fertility, pregnancy, baby and baby name support articles.