Are you tired of struggling with your vision?
Not sure what Behavioural Optometry is?
You are not alone.
Simply speaking, it is a branch of optometry that aims to diagnose and understand the cause of your vision problems, rather than just fixing the end result.
Make you or your child’s life easier with Behavioural Optometry
Enhanced Eye Tests
We assess more than the clarity of their vision, like how easily they keep it clear and how well they process it.
Optical Solutions
Treatment options may include specialty glasses or contacts to help your child’s eyes work more efficiently together.
Customised Treatments
Additional options may include Vision Therapy to help your child’s eyes work better together or to help them enhance their school performance.
Find out what makes Behavioural Optometry different.
Behavioural Optometry can help your child
As Behavioural Optometry aims to identify the underlying causes of vision problems, it can be very helpful in diagnosing and treating a range of vision difficulties. Below are the 3 most common condition we see.
1. Visual Skills
Difficulties with visual skills commonly present as tired eyes and headaches, reading fatigue, blurred vision and eye rubbing.
2. Visual Processing
Common signs of visual processing difficulty include, trouble remembering sight words, letter reversals, mistaking words with similar beginnings and forgetting common words when reading.
3. Turned and Lazy Eyes
While a turned eye can appear obvious, there are times when a child can have a lazy eye, even though their eyes are straight. They may appear clumsy, rub their eyes or have poor reading fluency.
There is more to vision than what you can see on the chart…
Have you or your child ever had an eye test that you felt didn’t quite solve their problem? This may be because some of the key elements required for good vision are not as obvious as you may think.
Behavioural Optometry looks deeper at the visual system, assessing how easily your eyes and brain work together at distance and near when doing everyday tasks like driving, reading and using your phone. How well they are able to maintain focus and alignment, and how you process the information that you see.
Through our optometrists extra training, they determine the underlying cause of the problem, and provide options to help fix the real cause. This then allows them to offer a diverse range of treatment options including glasses to help relax or train the eyes, contact lenses, coloured glasses lenses and vision therapy to help you achieve your best vision.
Frequently Asked Questions
We know the term “ Behavioural Optometry” can be confusing, so we have answered some common questions below. you…
My teacher recommended we get a behavioural test...Why?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
We commonly get referrals from teachers, as they may have noticed some signs that your child was having difficulty at school. They also understand that Behavioural Optometry aims to determine the underlying cause of the vision problem, which may require more than just glasses
How is it different to a regular eye test?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
The biggest difference is that we aim to look at WHY a problem is happening, and then discuss the best option for you or your child at this specific time. This may include, glasses, contact lenses or vision therapy.
Do you test my child’s behaviour?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
Nope… However we do work hard to try and understand why your child has developed this VISUAL BEHAVIOUR. This means determining why they are squinting, rubbing their eyes, having headaches or struggling to learn to read, write or spell.
What conditions can behavioural optometry help with?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
Behavioural Optometry simply expands on “regular optometry”, this means we can help anyone. However many of our patients get benefit from sore eyes, headaches and eye strain. Our other additional areas of interest include. Turned and lazy eyes (strabismus and amblyopia), sports vision, motion sickness and brain injuries.
My child has additional learning needs, can behavioural optometry help?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
My child has a turned/lazy eye… Can behavioural optometry help them?
Your Subtitle Goes Here
Absolutely, our optometrists extra training means they work with 1000’s of children with turned and lazy eyes. They are able to offer glasses, contact lenses and vision therapy to help your child use their eyes together. Recently we have even started using VR technology to help them gain better 3D vision and straighten their eyes, even if they never had 3D vision before… Check out our Vision Therapy page for all the info.
Glare sensitivity/Mears-Irlen Syndrome
Meares-Irlen syndrome (MIS) is characterised by symptoms of visual stress and visual perceptual distortions when looking at patterns, particularly stripes or lines of text. For those who have symptoms of MIS, pages of print can resemble a visually stressful pattern making it uncomfortable to look at. Thankfully specifically designed coloured lenses may be able to help.
Symptoms of MIS are not always immediately obvious. Many individuals who suffer from MIS assume that their symptoms are quite “normal”.
MIS is found to exist in many neurological conditions including photosensitive migraine, photosensitive epilepsy, MS, Parkinsons, dyslexia, and autism.
Visual stress caused by MIS is NOT the same as dyslexia but is more common in those who are dyslexic.
Symptoms of MIS include:
- Movement and blurring of print
- Letters changing size, shape, or fading
- Patterns in the print (sometimes described as rivers or worms)
- Illusions of colour surrounding letters or words
Signs of MIS include:
- Discomfort while reading
- Using finger to track words while reading
- Re-reading the same line
- Rubbing eyes or blinking frequently while reading
- Poor comprehension of reading content
If you believe you have pattern glare sensitivity, we can conduct a detailed assessment with a specialised instrument called the Intuitive Colorimeter. If the test shows you are positive for Mears-Irlen syndrome then, the exact colour tint (hue, saturation and brightness) can be incorporated in a pair of glasses that also includes the required spectacle lens power. This will help you feel much more comfortable in your day to day life.
Glare sensitivity/Mears-Irlen Syndrome
Meares-Irlen syndrome (MIS) is characterised by symptoms of visual stress and visual perceptual distortions when looking at patterns, particularly stripes or lines of text. For those who have symptoms of MIS, pages of print can resemble a visually stressful pattern making it uncomfortable to look at. Thankfully specifically designed coloured lenses may be able to help.
Symptoms of MIS are not always immediately obvious. Many individuals who suffer from MIS assume that their symptoms are quite “normal”.
MIS is found to exist in many neurological conditions including photosensitive migraine, photosensitive epilepsy, MS, Parkinsons, dyslexia, and autism.
Visual stress caused by MIS is NOT the same as dyslexia but is more common in those who are dyslexic.
Symptoms of MIS include:
- Movement and blurring of print
- Letters changing size, shape, or fading
- Patterns in the print (sometimes described as rivers or worms)
- Illusions of colour surrounding letters or words
Signs of MIS include:
- Discomfort while reading
- Using finger to track words while reading
- Re-reading the same line
- Rubbing eyes or blinking frequently while reading
- Poor comprehension of reading content
If you believe you have pattern glare sensitivity, we can conduct a detailed assessment with a specialised instrument called the Intuitive Colorimeter. If the test shows you are positive for Mears-Irlen syndrome then, the exact colour tint (hue, saturation and brightness) can be incorporated in a pair of glasses that also includes the required spectacle lens power. This will help you feel much more comfortable in your day to day life.
See your world better
Get your eyes tested now
