Rarely do parents learn how toddlers’ emotions and behaviors are affected by visual processing difficulties. Professionals and doctors ask about behaviors associated with delayed visual-motor skills, speech, or even lack of eye contact. However, these areas of development are affected by visual acuity (20/20 eyesight), eye health, and the development of visual processing skills. Your toddler’s behaviors may be a clue that they are experiencing visual difficulties.

When both eyes work well together and both ears work well together, what is seen synchs up with what is heard. Consequently, toddlers continue to develop more advanced eye movement skills (visual processing skills) needed for more difficult motor skills. For example, the development of balance requires information from your eyes and your inner ear’s vestibular system. Then, your brain learns balance.

Fixed Depth Perception Effects Toddler’s Behavior

Depth perception is the distance between the eyes and the ground or between two objects. If there are visual processing concerns like poor depth perception, you can improve your ability to recognize visual processing difficulties.

How would you respond if day after day visual processing difficulties made stationary objects like door handles and drinking cups shift and double in front of you? Or letters blurred or floated up off a page?

What your toddler sees should stay fixed in place. This is called fixed depth perception, a visual processing skill. The ability to see objects fixed in space helps the brain coordinate movement through open doors, around objects on the ground, over uneven ground, and walk upstairs.

Interesting Fact

In 2005, researchers confirmed that the inner ear’s vestibular system helps the brain track depth perception during movement. The health of the hearing system also impacts visual development.

Encourage Observations Through Purposeful Play

Is vision clear and single all of the time as your toddler looks from one place to another?

Do your toddler’s eyes work well together letting them clearly see a detail in a picture, move with confidence, and judge depth perception?

You can encourage visual development and observe different types of visual processing skills using activities in this e-booklet, Encouraging Observations Through Purposeful Play for Toddlers.

Encouraging Observation Through Purposeful Play: Toddler Visual Play

Your toddler’s behaviors and emotions help them express their needs. Purposeful play activities encourage visual development. A list of toddlers’ visual developmental milestones and visual processing skills along with observation tips helps you understand your toddler’s visual strengths and difficulties.

Recognizing visual processing concerns in toddlers is life changing. When visual processing difficulties remain undiagnosed, researchers found a high risk of learning difficulties. I connect you with doctors specializing in visual processing difficulties, eye health, and intervention.

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Toddler’s Behaviors and Emotions Speak Loudly about Visual Difficulties

By age three, your toddler’s development of depth perception helps them move through, under, inside, over, and on top of objects. However, depth perception difficulties cause emotional distress and avoidance behaviors in toddlers such as:

Typical Toddler Behaviors and Emotions

1. Walks through doorframes or open doorways with confidence.
2. Successfully picks up a cup.
3. Climbs upstairs alternating feet on each step while holding onto the rail.
4. Enjoys heights, goes down the playground slides and plays up high.
5. Walks up and down hills on even and uneven ground.

Atypical Toddler Behaviors and Emotions

1. Walks into the doorframe, hitting part of their body.
   • Touches doorframe before walking through the door.
   • Avoids walking through doors.
2. Knocks the cup over several times a week.
   • When reaching out, acts uncertain about which hand to use.
3. Dislikes, avoids, or acts fearful of walking upstairs or downstairs.
   • Crawls going upstairs or continues to put both feet on each step.
   • Sits on the steps one at a time and scoots down on their bottom.
4. Is afraid of heights and clings to a parent or adult at the playground.
   • Cries, buries face in parent or adult.
   • Refuses to go up steps to the top of the playground equipment.
   • Dislikes slides.
5. Grips an adult’s hand tightly when walking.
   • Avoids walking on uneven ground.
   • Tires quickly, insists on being carried, fussy.
   • Walks on their toes.

Visual Development from 20 Months to 48 Months (4yrs)

Visual development for toddlers ages 20 to 48 months continues to build on previous visual skills.

1. Sometimes, your toddler looks without touching. (20-24 months)
2. When they see their favorite objects or people, they smile.(20-24 months)
3. Enjoys watching movement like wheels, beaters, fans, and drills. (20-24 months)
4. While scribbling, watches their own hands. (26-30 months)
5. Walks with more confidence and climbs up. (30-36 months)
6. Visually curious, will leave parent to explore. (30-36 months)
7. When coloring, they keep the pencil or crayon on the paper. (34-38 months)
8. While looking at pictures, they make up a story. (34-38 months)
9. Looks closely at the letters and details in a book. (40-44 months)
10. Using crayons, draws and names a circle and a cross on paper. (40-44 months)
11. When asked, closes eyes and may try to wink with one eye (46-50 months)

Encourage Eye Movements

Movement develops visual processing skills. Thus, encourage your toddler to move both inside and outside the house. How to Encourage Eye Movement Skills in Toddlers provides insights into the importance of activities often thought of as annoying. However, those annoying activities are actually developing visual processing skills.

Importance of Repetitive Movement

While growing up, I loved rolling down hills over and over. Once my brothers talked me into digging a hole. Would we reach the other side of the world? The weight of the dirt in the shovel along with bending over stimulated the inner ear’s vestibular system. My eyes guided me from the hole to the dirt pile and back again.

Repetitive movement provides the practice toddlers need to gain a visual processing skill.

Movement pushes energy to the whole brain. Thus, movement can stimulate a part of the brain that is under-stimulated due to a visual processing deficits or temporary hearing loss caused by ear infections or enlarged adenoids. This is why we start to fidget when trying to pay attention. Your toddler’s behaviors and activity choices are influenced by what their brain needs for development.

Involve Your Kids in Everyday Chores

Toddlers love to do what they see their parents do. They learn by watching and working alongside you. Toddlers are developing visual processing skills. Thus, they oftentimes seek out stimulation such as heavy lifting. A toddler’s brain needs feedback from muscles and joints, proprioceptive feedback, as they learn eye-hand coordination.

Therefore, encourage them to work alongside you, especially when they ask to help.

My granddaughter, who just turned two, spent many days this summer working alongside her mama in the garden picking vegetables. She insisted on carrying several squash or buckets of green beans that were arguably too big or heavy. With a few drops or spills along the way, she successfully carried her heavy load all the way up the hill to the house. Could her mama have done the job faster? Yes, but allowing children to work hard from an early age also develops character traits like tenacity and self-discipline. Getting hot and dirty is just part of living.

Waiting Shows Respect

Have you ever thought about the fact that toddlers need more time to think than children? Likewise, children need more time to think than teenagers. When you wait, you are showing respect. As you transition from one activity to another, look at your little one to decide how long they need to finish their task. When you arrive at your destination and open their car door, take a minute to look and learn if they need another minute to finish their work.

Playing and working with your toddler creates opportunities for them to build character, tenacity, and analytical skills. A toddler who thinks can grow up to become a leader.

Activity Ideas For Toddler’s Whose Behaviors Indicate Visual Difficulties

Purposeful play and work encourage development of visual processing skills. When we get older, these same activities help us maintain our visual processing skills. Thus, join your little one in these activities and create sweet memories.

Buckets and Rocks

If you have a gravel driveway, give your toddler a bucket. Show them how they can pick up the rocks that have been tossed in the grass by the cars. Listen to their glee as they dump the rocks back on the driveway. Allow them to make the bucket as heavy as they want. Remember, the weight of the bucket and picking up rock develops their brain as it receives information from their inner ear’s vestibular system, visual system, and proprioceptive system (muscles and joints). Wow! No wonder little ones need to move.

Picking Up Sticks, Raking Grass or Leaves

During the summer, there is always yard work to be done. Give your toddler a small rake. Encourage raking up the grass clippings. In the fall, spend time together raking leaves into piles. Then, enjoy watching your toddler jump into the pile of leaves. Introduce them to sounds of leaves crunching beneath their body. Prepare for bon fires loading up a wheelbarrow or wagon full of sticks. Toddlers love to ride in the big wheelbarrow.

Watering Plants

Let your toddler help you water the plants. Fill the watering can or bucket together to see how much weight your little one would like to carry. This is one job where you can let them take the lead and water the plants.

Feeding the Pets

If you have pets, get your toddler involved when it is time to fill up their feed bowls. They can scoop the feed and carry the bowl. Both of those activities provide proprioceptive feedback for your toddler. How? The resistance on the scoop as they push it into the feed bin and the weight of the bowl as they carried it to their pet. Both stimulated muscles and joints. Eyes watched their hand move the scoop to the feed bowl and tip the food out. So many everyday little activities develop visual processing skills.

Reading Books with a Weighted Blanket

When the brain is over-stimulated, it sends out signals causing us to seek quiet, calming activities. At the end of a busy day, reading books with your toddler snuggled up in a heavy or weighted blanket can calm their sensory system. Snuggling is always a wonderful way to spend quality time with your little one.

Toddler Eye Exams are Recommended

Avoidance behaviors help all ages cope with visual processing difficulties. Does your little one enjoy running, climbing, stacking blocks, playing ball, and swinging? If not, there may be fluid in the ear without an ear infection, eustachian tube inflammation, or/and visual processing difficulties.

The American Optometric Foundation recommends an eye exam any time after nine months of age. Today’s technology does not require your toddler to respond during the exam to identify vision difficulties. The eye doctor will assess eye movement ability and eye alignment. You will learn if your little one has astigmatism. amblyopia (lazy eye), or another eye condition known to negatively impact learning and moving.

If this is your toddler’s first exam, you can make an appointment with either an ophthalmologist or an optometrist.

• Ophthalmologists specialize in eye disorders, eye health (prevenetion of vision loss), and eye surgeries.
• Optometrists also assess eye health. When concerns are found, optometrists refer patients to an ophthalmologist or a retina specialist. Most optometrists focus on prescribing glasses.
• Developmental optometrists or neurorehabilitation optometrists specialize in developmental vision difficulties and assess visual processing skills and vision therapy.

What should you expect at the first exam? The American WebMD shares helpful information about what to expect at your toddler’s eye exam. Eye exams do not require your little one to verbally respond to complete testing.

Even when there is excellent eye health and eye alignment, individuals of all ages can still experience other types of visual processing difficulties. Thus, do not ignore your concerns or your toddler’s behavior. Schedule an appointment with a pediatric developmental optometrist or pediatric neurorehabilitation optometrist.

It is important to understand that there are numerous different types of visual processing skills. Thus, little ones can display a wide range of behavioral, learning, and emotional difficulties.

Vision Therapy at Home or/and In-Office

I have personally seen life-changing improvements in learning, self-care, motor coordination, and emotional health in clients of all ages who received therapeutic glasses and vision therapy. Yes, both. Eyeglasses push stimulation along the visual neural pathways. However, the brain still needs therapy to teach both eyes to work together when focusing on objects near and far or looking from one place to another.

My Sudden Visual Difficulties Affected Behaviors & Emotions

Regardless of age, visual processing difficulties affect your emotional health. If your toddler struggles to transition from one activity to a new activity, there may be visual processing difficulties.

I have personally experienced vision difficulties due to an eye bleed resulting in partial vision loss. During this time, I often avoided moving. I did not feel safe because it was difficult to judge distance, depth perception. For example, how far down is that step? How high up must I step over that fallen tree limb? Walking was work. I could only focus on what I saw directly in front of me. That means I lost the ability to see around me: to the right, left, and up ahead.

As I regained my vision, I will never forget seeing the sidewalk heave up and down as if it was breathing. I instantly felt nauseous. Thankfully, I was at the end of my long walk. I kept moving knowing that movement was the best way to help my brain and eyes relearn how to perceive the distance between objects.

Improve your understanding of how visual processing difficulties affect emotional health.

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