Peek-A-Boo – We Will See You!
Learn how to best support your child’s best vision over their first 5 years
Brighter Outlook Vision is an InfantSee provider in Charleston, SC!
Schedule a free eye and vision assessment for your 6-12 month old at our Charleston office as part of the national InfantSee Program. As a parent, it is important to have your baby’s eyes checked before they reach 12 months old to ensure that they are developing properly, and to avoid future vision and learning problems.
We aren’t born knowing how to see, our vision develops over our first year of life. Infants between 6-12 months old undergo a significant amount of development, especially in their eyes and brain. The InfantSee exam makes sure that your baby’s vision is developing normally.
Think about how much a baby wants to touch things and put them in their mouth. They are exploring their new world! The French philosopher Merleau-Ponty said, “Vision is the brain’s way of touching the world.” So much of our abilities to learn, experience, perceive, and understand our world is through vision. Just like a baby trying to touch and taste everything, they are also learning to visually identify everything.
Development Milestones for your Child
Birth – 1 month
Visual acuity is very limited at birth, approximately 20/600, and improves rapidly during the first year. There is a strong preference for high-contrast faces and patterns held about eight to 10 inches away, essentially the distance from breast or bottle to a parent’s face. Most infants are born mildly hyperopic, averaging about +2.00D, which is normal and expected to reduce naturally over the next year or two.
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Lots of supervised tummy time
- Make noises to the side so baby turns toward them
- Change position frequently so their view of the world changes, alternate feeding sides
- Use high-contrast room decor
- Mobile paired with talking to the baby while moving around the room
- Lots of toys to touch, grasp, listen to and find with eyes and ears, keep within 12 inches
1 month
Your baby should be able to follow an object with his or her eyes
- Hold and feed your infant from alternating sides to promote development of both eyes.
- Place your baby in their crib from different directions.
- Periodically change the location of the crib so the infant can see the world from different viewpoints.
- Hang a mobile off to the side so your baby can see it through the slats of the crib.
2 – 5 months
At this age, tracking becomes smoother past midline, eye-hand coordination begins as babies start reaching for what they track and color vision starts to mature, with reds and yellows typically preferred first. Eyes should begin to align more consistently, and early stereo responses may start emerging by three to four months. Smooth pursuit past midline is expected by eight to 12 weeks, along with watching and exploring a parent’s face by 10 to 12 weeks.
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Follow faces up, down, sideways, closer, farther
- Mobile or crib gym for grabbing, pulling and kicking
- Supervised floor time to explore
- Make noises to the side so baby turns toward them
- Let baby bounce on the bed with support for both hands to encourage balancing
- Play with blocks or textured toys
- Begin spinning and swinging activities and hand-motion games like patty-cake and other visual-motor activities
2 months
Your baby should be able to bring his or her hands together
- Allow your baby to explore with their hands.
- Provide stimuli of many different textures, sizes, weights, and forms.
- Place a lightweight rattle in your baby’s hands and help them shake it.
4 months
Your baby should be able to turn his or her eyes together to focus on near objects
- Allow your baby to help hold the nursing bottle
- Provide objects that can be explored with mouth and hands.
- Start to play the “patty cake” game.
5 months
Your baby should be able to make the sounds for “P”, “B”, “T”, “D”, and “M”
- Play “peek-a-boo” to develop visual memory.
- Move the crib mobile closer to your baby so it can be reached, touched, and moved.
- Tie bells on booties so the infant can learn about their body through sound.
📆 Schedule your baby’s first InfantSee eye exam around 6 months of age with a developmental optometrist like Dr. Jesse at Brighter Outlook Vision
6 – 12 months
This is the key window for amblyopia risk, when the eyes should move together consistently in all fields of gaze and persistent misalignment is no longer a normal finding. Tracking should show full versions and ductions in all fields of gaze with less reliance on head movement, and color and depth perception start to mature. Acuity is approaching 20/50 or better. Alignment should be stable, with an adult-like near point of convergence emerging and grasp-response stereopsis beginning around six months.
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Lots of creeping and crawling time, encourage crawling over early walking
- Manipulative toys to grasp, roll, pick up, push, pull, bang, throw, squeeze
- Play games that include dropping and picking up objects
- Slowly roll balls for them follow and stop
- Name objects during play to build word association
- Use simple words and sentences about clothing, food, toys and baby
- Play Hide-and-Seek
7 months
Your baby should be able to roll over independently
8 months
Your baby should be able to sit up without support
- Talk to your baby frequently so they can associate experiences with words.
- Place objects on a highchair tray that can be pushed off and dropped to the floor.
9 months
Your baby should be able to creep and crawl
- Do not rush your baby into walking. Creeping on all fours is very important for developing coordination of both the body and the eyes.
12 – 18 months
At this age, acuity is nearing 20/20 to 20/40. Binocular fusion is strong, with more refined stereopsis and saccades, and smooth pursuit becomes more refined and accurate. Emmetropization, the eye’s natural reduction of refractive error, continues to progress. By age six, most children complete emmetropization, with mean refractive error typically in the +0.70D to +1.00D range.
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Language is developing quickly: use names for actions and objects
- Engage in water and sand play with containers, cups, pails, plastic bottles
- Provide crayons and large sheets of paper for creative scribbling
- Introduce to things to put together and take apart, fit shapes into spaces
- Pretend play: telephone, human and animal dolls
- Reading or telling stories builds visualization and reading readiness
- Blocks, clay and balls of varied shapes and sizes support fine motor and visual-motor integration
- Rolling a ball back and forth builds tracking skills
18 – 24 months
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Build towers and structures
- Provide toys to put together / take apart
- Encourage imagination and storytelling
- Find four-wheeled toys to straddle and move
- Challenge child to conquer an obstacle course of furniture and pillows
📆 Schedule your child’s vision evaluation with a developmental optometrist when they are about to begin preschool
2 years – 3 years
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Running, tumbling & climbing
- Give lots of time to create and draw
- Play make-believe games, dolls, dress-up clothes, stories
- Assist as beginning to classify objects, colors, shapes
- Set up playdates as learning to socialize with one playmate at a time
3 years – 4 years
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Challenge child to dodge, throw, stop/go, turn sharp corners
- Set up times to encourage to play well in small groups
- Encourage manipulatives, puzzles, hidden pictures, sames/differences
- Give time for drawing, coloring, activities with clay and play-dough
- Read lots of books and stories together
4 years and older
Encouraging development at this stage:
- Tells stories, makes up names, Talk and talk and talk…
- Intellectual development moves ahead quickly
- Fine motor development continues
- Provide lots of opportunities to explore these new abilities.
Many conditions we want to catch at this age don’t cause obvious symptoms a parent would notice at home, and a quick screening visit can miss children who need closer attention. We recommend an InfantSee vision exam at 6-12 months and then a comprehensive vision exam when starting preschool. Children in school should receive an eye exam with their local optometrist each year.
