After a routine eye exam, a concerned parent may ask me, "how are you going to check my kid's eyes? I could barely tell which option was better!"
Pediatric exams can definitely be more challenging but I find them more fun and interactive. I really enjoy finding creative ways to engage a child to show me how they see the world around them.
Traditional eye examination techniques like asking a child "which is better, one or two?" may not produce reliable results so I rely heavily on objective tests.
A few machines in our office help us with that. My 5 year old daughter, helped me come up with some creative names to our pretesting equipment.
"Talking Elephant TV" = Autorefractor (the machine that shows you a hot air ballon to get an estimation of your glasses prescription)
She loves getting the "ticket" after the Elephant shows her a picture.
"Rocket ship Camera"
Retinal scan that takes a picture of the inside of your eye to look for ocular diseases. For children as young as 5 years old we can get great baseline photos of the retina to monitor for changes every year.