Care for your Baby’s Eyes

Right from a tender age , good eye care practices are essential to ensure that your child grows up with healthy eyes. There are many strategies to achieve this:

• Ensure that your baby has a well-balanced diet.
  
  


• Have your child’s eyes regularly checked by your pediatrician or eye doctor.
  
  


• Protect your child’s eyes from the sun. You may opt for getting your baby to wear special protective lenses while in the sun.
  
  


• Always have a mobile or other interesting moving objects near your baby’s crib.
  
  


• While speaking to your baby encourage your child to look at you. Make gestures with your hands and walk around to motivate your baby to keep looking at you.
  
  


• Encourage crawling as it helps the child to master coordinate the eyes and the movement of hands.
  
  


• Hold out toys at varying lengths and motivate your child to reach out and grasp them.

You can also buy toys that will help your baby develop healthy eyesight. These could include the following:

• Toys with lot of moving parts
  
  


• Beads to string
  
  


• Jigsaw and other puzzles that will encourage your child to decipher shapes and sizes
  
  


• Pencils, crayons, chalks and other things your child can use to draw
  
  


• Modeling clay, preferably in different colors

Always keep safety aspects in mind while buying any toys for your children. Avoid toys with sharp or pointed projections that could injure your child’s eyes.