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CNN Live At Daybreak
Children's Attention Span and Their Vision
Aired August 14, 2001 - 07:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, do not adjust your TV set, we're showing this to you this way because this is exactly how some children actually see the world -- blurry vision and double images. But a new study this morning sheds some light on a possible connection between your child's attention span and his or her vision. Your child could not be focused at school because your child is literally not seeing straight.
More now from CNN's Thelma Gutierrez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Does your child have trouble reading?
SALLY OLAS, PETER'S MOTHER: It broke my heart that he had so much trouble.
GUTIERREZ: How about daydreaming or getting antsy in school?
S. OLAS: He would be looking everywhere but at the teacher.
GUTIERREZ: Does your child have a short attention span and trouble following directions?
S. OLAS: The doctor recommended that we put him on Ritalin.
GUTIERREZ: Meet Peter Olas. He's 7 years old. When he was 5, his parents, his teacher, even his doctor knew something was wrong. The diagnosis? Attention deficit disorder, or ADD.
S. OLAS: I, you know, broke into tears. I was heartbroken.
GUTIERREZ: And Peter was medicated. For one month, he took Ritalin, but his concentration did not improve. In fact, his mother says she noticed a frightening change.
S. OLAS: He started developing twitches, and so my husband and I at this point just said, you know: That's it, this is not -- this is just not the right -- the right diagnosis.
GUTIERREZ: Peter's teacher suspected his problem could be something as simple as his vision, but his parents thought it had already been ruled out. After all, Peter's eyesight was 20/20. DR. DONALD GETZ, BEHAVIORAL OPTOMETRIST: All 20/20 means is that a child can see clearly 20 feet away, and unfortunately, how well a child sees at 20 feet bears absolutely zero relationship to how well they function at this distance.
GARY ETTING, BEHAVIORAL OPTOMETRIST: Do you skip and leave out words anymore? How about copying from the blackboard? Are you not getting any headaches or any eyestrain?
GUTIERREZ: Doctors Donald Getz and Gary Etting are optometrists who've seen hundreds of cases like Peter's. They believe eye chart screening, by itself, is woefully inadequate.
(on camera): It's hard to believe, but this eye chart that we've all come to rely on was actually developed in the 1800s. Experts say it only screens for distance vision, not reading vision, and it only catches 5 percent of all vision problems.
GETZ: It would be a great test if we wanted to train a generation of buffalo hunters, but if want to find those children who'd be doing better in school if it weren't for an undetected vision problem, we're going to have to go well beyond that particular test.
(voice-over): Vision therapy runs about $125 a session. Insurance doesn't always cover it. Dr. Etting diagnosed Peter with a condition called convergence insufficiency, which means he can't follow a moving target or get his eyes to work together.
ETTING: It's like he's driving a wagon pulled by two horses that really don't like each other.
GUTIERREZ: Sometimes the words on a page pull apart like this, so children try to cope by turning one eye off.
ETTING: The way you can tell someone's doing that is that they get into distorted postures when they read or write, they cover an eye, rotate their head.
GUTIERREZ (on camera): Was it hard for the other kids to read?
PETER OLAS: No.
GUTIERREZ: How'd that make you feel?
P. OLAS: It made me feel bad, real bad.
GUTIERREZ: Real bad?
P. OLAS: Super bad.
GUTIERREZ: Super bad? Yeah.
P. OLAS: Enormous bad!
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): With 18 weeks of vision therapy, Peter learned to control his eye muscles. Did it make a difference? (CROSSTALK)
P. OLAS: Over 158.
GUTIERREZ: In fact, Peter is now reading at grade level.
(on camera): Do you think you're doing better in school, too?
P. OLAS: Yeah, of course.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCEDWARDS: Well how would you know if your child actually has an eye problem and what should you do about it? We've got an expert right here on the subject to help us out. Dr. Arlene Drack is a pediatric ophthalmologist at Emory University.
Thanks so much for being here.
DR. ARLENE DRACK, PEDIATRIC OPHTHALMOLOGIST, EMORY UNIVERSITY: My pleasure.
MCEDWARDS: We heard in that piece that eye charts actually only catch 5 percent of problems, but you say they're still a really useful tool and that shouldn't discourage people from taking their kids and putting them in front of that eye chart.
DRACK: Right. I think eye charts really are the first step and diagnose a large amount of the problems that kids have.
MCEDWARDS: All right, Dr. Drack, walk us through some of the most common visual problems that kids end up having. We've actually got a list of them here. The first one's nearsightedness. Tell us about this.
DRACK: Well, the medical term for nearsightedness is myopia and it's a problem when the eye is too long from back to front and therefore, things aren't focused, specifically things at a distance. So kids can see fine up close, they can read, but when they look in the distance, everything is blurry, and that's a big problem at school. It usually starts between the ages of 9 and 12 and it usually progresses throughout the teenage years so kids' glasses prescription will often change every year and they need an update.
MCEDWARDS: And how do you know if your child has that? What kind of complaints are you likely to hear?
DRACK: Well, the child may not complain because they kind of get used to it as it gradually happens.
MCEDWARDS: They adjust, don't they?
DRACK: They adjust, but parents should be aware that children often will squint and because by narrowing the eyes you can get a clearer image. Sometimes instead of squinting, they'll tilt their chin down or up to get a better view. Also parents can just check their kids. They can test them when they're driving or walking at billboards, trying to recognize people across the street, and it's important to check one eye at a time. Cover one eye, ask him to read something, cover the other, ask him to identify something. So make sure both eyes are working right.
MCEDWARDS: And another one we point out is this crossing of eyes. Tell us about that.
DRACK: Crossing is also a very common problem and that usually begins between ages two and five. And it's usually caused by the problem opposite to nearsightedness which is farsightedness or hyperopia so kids' eyes have to work extra hard to see because they're hyperopic and that effort causes the eyes to cross in. If both eyes cross, you can usually notice it. If they usually keep one eye straight and the other eye crossed, sometimes parents just see it intermittently and they don't really make a big deal out of it. But that one eye that's crossed can actually go blind over time so it's important to pick that up early.
MCEDWARDS: OK. And also, one eye going blind because of disuse is another issue.
DRACK: Exactly.
MCEDWARDS: What do you mean by disuse?
DRACK: Well, that's something we call amblyopia and that's been known for hundreds of years that if one eye is crossed or one eye has a big need for glasses and the other doesn't, the brain just doesn't connect to that eye.
MCEDWARDS: Oh, I see.
DRACK: And because it's not using it, the eye goes blind. And you can only correct that up to the age of nine. After that, we can't bring that vision back.
MCEDWARDS: So it's important to catch that one early?
DRACK: Right.
MCEDWARDS: OK. Eyes that can't work together.
DRACK: Well, that's usually called strabismus and that means the eyes are not looking at the same thing at the same time. The eye can deviate intermittently like it can cross some of the time and then you look at the child and the eye is straight or it can drift outward or even up. Sometimes children will tilt their head or turn their head to try to keep their eyes together.
MCEDWARDS: And would this just be when a child's looking at anything or when a child's reading? What should - at what point in the day should parents be looking for those types of behaviors? DRACK: Eye misalignment problems usually will get worse as the day goes on because children get tired from the effort of trying to control them. Some things like crossing might be worse up close. Drifting out is usually worse in a distance, except in the case of convergence insufficiency. That's a problem where children see fine when they look in the distance but when they look up close, they have trouble pulling their eyes in together to read. And that can often be helped by exercises that we give kids to do at home.
MCEDWARDS: And so important to see this because all of us can be mistaken, as we heard, for a learning problem or an attention problem.
DRACK: Well, it's important to remember that kids can have two things: they can have a learning problem or attention problem and an eye problem. But certainly, if they have an eye problem, that has to be addressed and treated because otherwise you can't sort things out and one can make the other much worse.
MCEDWARDS: Understood.
Dr. Drack, thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate it.
DRACK: My pleasure. Thank you.
MCEDWARDS: Take care.
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