Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care, which has a branch on Cockton Hill, believes it’s time well spent as changes in children’s eyesight, unlike growing out of shoes and clothes, are not obvious.
It has launched a ‘You Can’t See the Signs’ campaign to encourage parents to add eye tests to their children’s holiday ‘to do’ list while they are off school and have more time on their hands.
Branch manager Christopher Tingle said: “Being able to see properly is vital to a child’s learning and undiagnosed sight problems can be detrimental to a child’s achievement, behaviour and enjoyment of school. Even though most children get a basic check of their eyes in reception years at school, this doesn’t always check everything that’s covered in a full eye examination at an opticians.
“The summer break is an opportunity to find time to book an eye test and as the NHS covers the cost, parents don’t need to pay. We should see children regularly, and we urge parents to follow their optician’s advice and make appointments as recommended.”
To help children and parents understand the process, Scrivens has created a child-friendly comic strip to demystify the procedure.
“Understandably, children can sometimes feel nervous about visiting the optician for the first time. So we’ve taken the experience of one of our young customers and created a comic strip and in a light hearted way, tell the story. We hope it will help encourage more families to consider going to the optician as routine as going to the dentist or getting their children’s feet measured,” added Christopher.
To download a copy of the comic strip http://bit.ly/2atoNLa