Your Baby’s Vision Development

You just had your first precious bundle of joy or your second or even your fifth. But you have no clue on how your baby’s vision develops. Don’t fret! Every baby’s vision development is highly important. The most crucial vision development phase is from birth to five years old. If any impairment of development happens during this stage, it can have negative consequences on not only the baby’s vision over the long term but also the development of their learning abilities. However, there is no need to get paranoid over their vision development. Nature has made their vision development almost fully autopilot. All you have to do is practice a little bit of due diligence to ensure there is no disruption to this process. Let us look at how your baby’s vision evolves in their crucial first year.

Birth to 1-month old

The most beautiful thing your baby sees when they first emerge into the human world is your face. However, everything they see at that point in time till they are about one-month old is in black and white. They also do not have very strong accommodative strength which means they can only see up to about 30cm in front of them. This when its crucial for you to spend a lot of time having your baby’s face up close to yours. This will allow them to recognize your facial features and that’s why they simply love looking at your face.

They also have poor light sensitivity. So, no need to worry about switching the lights off when they are sleeping. You can have adequate lighting in their room without affecting their sleep. Colour recognition starts to improve within the first week. The first colour your baby recognizes is red. So wearing a red lipstick or a red bandana once in awhile can be a fun way to stimulate their vision.  

It is also normal for their eyes to stray and seem misaligned. This is very normal as their eye muscles are still developing. However, if one eye is constantly off alignment, it is best to bring them for an eye examination.

2 to 3-month old

Vision development accelerates. Your baby now has a higher visual acuity and can start recognizing objects. Their colour perception is also a lot better. It will be a good idea to move colourful toys in front of their face. They will actually start to track these objects and even try to reach out to touch them. Their light sensitivity also improves so you might want to dim the rooms a little bit more now. At this age, you might want to leave the dim lights on while they sleep at night in a colourful room. So in case they wake up in the middle of the night, they have the visual stimulation of the colourful objects around them rather than waking up to pitch darkness.

4 to 6-month old

At this point your child’s visual acuity is almost as good as an adult. It improves from being 6/120 at birth to 6/7.5 at 6 months. Their ability to see the full range of colours is almost as good as any adult. You will notice that their eye-hand co-ordination has also improved significantly. They can actually start to grab milk bottles and put it straight in their mouths and also grab toys and put it in their mouths. This is where extra care is needed. They may accidentally hit their own faces or their eyes with whatever object they may be holding on to.

At the age of 6 months, it is time for your baby to go for their first eye examination. This is essential. The eye doctor will check the basic structure of the eyes and the co-ordination of the eyes followed by an eye health check to ensure your baby’s eyes are in perfect shape. Do not miss this crucial eye examination.

7 to 12-month

Your baby would be really active by now especially due to their highly developed eyes. They also start to notice their bodies more. They become aware of their body as all of their senses have improved drastically by now. Once again the hazard at this stage is that they may accidentally knock stuff onto their faces and injure their eyes.

Your love and a visually stimulating room filled with psychedelic colours is all your baby needs to develop their amazing and beautiful eyes.

Stay Healthy & Stay Happy!