What Happens During an Assessment?

Before an assessment takes place we will have asked you to fill out both of our questionnaires and have returned these to us by email. We would also like to be emailed any relevant reports from other healthcare or educational professionals.

These reports are commonly the source of referrals to our practice. Any comments from teachers are also welcome.

Although we are interested in any current problems your child might have, we also want to know when these problems were first noticed. Information as regards any previous help such as occupational therapy or speech therapy is also useful. We would also want to know details of the developmental history in terms of walking, talking and crawling.

During the assessment we will look at focussing ability as a reduction in focussing ability can lead to the eyes getting tired. Words may go in and out of focus when reading. Focussing of the eyes may be slow when looking from one distance to the other such as when copying from the board.

We will also look at eye coordination as a reduction in eye coordination can sometimes lead to occasional double vision and a reduced attention span.

We will also look at the ability to move the eyes in terms of pursuit and saccadic eye movements that is tracking eye movements and jumping eye movements.

If the eyes to do not track or jump appropriately this can lead to the misreading of letters and words.

This can also lead to losing your place and/or skipping lines when reading. Other possible difficulties include catching or following a ball when playing sport.

We will also look at the ability to tell the difference between rights and lefts. If you are not sure of your rights and lefts then you are more likely to reverse and confuse letters when reading and writing.

You may place the stem of a letter on the opposite side to that would be expected. This would mean that you might write a ‘b’ as a ‘d’, write a ‘p’ as a ‘q’ and vice-versa.

During the assessment we will examine all these visual skills individually and seek to improve them where appropriate.

We will also look at body coordination and hand eye coordination so you may need to get down on the floor so dress appropriately.

What to expect and what to bring:

• Glasses if already wearing them
• Reports from the school or any other professional such as an educational psychologist
• Examples of handwriting or other work that is an issue
• Plan on arriving 10 minutes before the appointment to allow time for filling out forms, settling down and going to the toilet so that you can make the most of your time with the optometrist.
• Please turn off your mobile phone during the assessment
• Wherever possible have other children minded outside the test room though we do have colouring activities to occupy them

What will happen:

We will want you to:

• Sit in a big chair
• Read out some letters and if you do not know your letters we can use pictures
• Look through different glasses
• Look at a light whilst we look into your eyes to make sure that they are healthy
• Play some games and do some puzzles
• Draw some shapes, copy some pictures and do some activities involving balance