Eye Care

Mary Bridge Children’s Eye Care has the largest and most comprehensive team of providers in the region. All our doctors are board certified and fellowship trained in pediatric eye care. More important, our team members are kind, understand the unique needs of children and offer a child-friendly environment to provide a positive, comfortable experience.

We extend the full continuum of eye care from prescribing the best pair of glasses for your child to performing the most complex cataract and eye misalignment surgeries. Whatever the eye problem might be, we have the right expertise for you.

As a parent, you may wonder whether your preschooler has a vision problem, or when you should schedule your child’s first eye exam. Eye exams for young children are extremely important because 5 to 10 percent of preschoolers and 25 percent of school-aged children have vision problems.

Visiting any doctor’s office can be stressful for some children, so we work hard to make the visit as stress-free as possible. We accomplish this by:

• Playing popular children’s movies in every exam room to keep them visually engaged.
• Having a team of staff and providers that genuinely love working with kids.
• Being patient.
• Explaining each step of the eye exam to you and your child during the visit.

At your child’s first exam, you can expect:

• Questions about your child’s eye history and visual behaviors: Are there family eye conditions we should know about? If you have pictures and videos about their eyes, we’d love to see them.
• Testing for visual acuity in each eye using letters, numbers or pictures. We want to know if your child favors one eye over the other.
• Testing for refractive errors, including farsightedness, nearsightedness and astigmatism.
• Observation of your child’s eye movement to identify if there are any misalignment or convergence issues.
• Examination of the cornea and the lens.
• Examination of the retina and optic nerves. We put drops in your child’s eyes to dilate the pupils for this exam.

We can perform an initial exam without your child needing to follow instructions or say a word. We’ll be with them (and you) every step of the way.

A referral from your child’s primary care provider is required before scheduling an Eye Care appointment. For more information, please call 253-792-6630.