As a parent, you are always anxious to know about the vision development in a new born child of yours. You would be worried about your baby not recognising you or sometimes even if they can see you. Not just you, but you also want to understand how he is perceiving the world around him.
A newly born baby’s sense of vision is the weakest of all his senses. Thus, it is very much important for him to develop the traits of healthy vision in order to grow up healthy.
Vision Development in a New Born: Newly born babies are not known to see very well right after birth owing to a very very low visual acuity. The eye in a new born starts developing as early as two weeks after conception. But, the optic nerve and the internal structure of the eye take a little more time to develop and continue developing during the child’s growth.
- You might have observed that new born babies blink a lot. This is because their eyes cannot accustom to the light around them. A new born bay’s eye is just one-quarter of a normal adult’s eye. But, their visual acuity slowly improves over time and reaches a near perfect stage by the age of two.
- Also, new born babies can only see as long as one foot. But, they do develop a sense of colour, though they cannot distinguish one from the other. But, it does not take them any longer than two weeks to get attracted to bright and bold patterns.
- By the time infants reach an age of 4-8 weeks, they start gazing at objects and can follow object movements. Both their eyes begin to coordinate with each other by the time he is 16 weeks old and they develop a clear vision.
- By the time the infants are 24 weeks old, they develop a much better three dimensional vision and can even see far away objects clearly. Also, this is the period where both their eyes begin to align.
- Vision development in a new born is a very important process of his life. Utmost care has to be taken to see that he develops a flawless vision as this aids in the development of their brain as well.
All parents must provide proper visual stimulus which not only would aid in their infant’s vision development, but also enable their infants recognise their faces thus enabling a strong bond between the parents and the kid.