Visual complaints from healthy children

It is common for healthy children with specific visual complaints to be seen for eye examinations. After a complete eye examination has ruled out pathologic conditions as the cause of these complaints, it is appropriate for the clinician to explore the possibility that normal entoptic or physiologic visual phenomena might have provoked the child's report of vision problems. Some of these normal visual experiences are frequent causes of children's complaints of vision problems, such as physiologic diplopia, relaxation of the near synkinesis during reading, and vitreous body floaters. Some complaints are common, even though the underlying entoptic or physiologic phenomenon may be speculative or obscure, such as the report that objects look bigger or smaller than they actually are. When the clinician encounters such situations, the parents and the child will be much more satisfied by an explanation of the normal system anatomy and physiology than by the simple reassurance that everything is all right.