Vision Skills That Will Improve Your Child's Sports Ability

Vision affects every area of your child's life. If your child is really into playing sports, you can help them excel even more by helping them develop their vision skills. Even for kids who don't need vision correction, there are skills they can enhance. If you want your child to be able to keep their eye on the ball and keep the finish line in sight, they need to have excellent vision. Here are a few areas of your child's vision that correspond directly to their ability to participate in sporting activities, and a few ways you can correct and improve your child's vision in these categories.

Visual Concentration

Visual concentration is your child's ability to ignore visual elements that are trying to distract them from what they really need to focus on. For example, if your child was playing baseball, they would need to focus on where the ball was at, and not at the kids playing tag on the side of the field. Your child's natural instinct will be to look towards the area where there is movement, even if that is not what they are supposed to be concentrating on.

You can help your child increase their visual concentration by practicing it. For example, if your child plays baseball, practice throwing the ball back and forth while a younger sibling or parent stands behind and waves their arms and creates a distraction. With time and practice, your child will learn to ignore the movements that are not relevant to what they are doing.

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking describes your child's ability to follow an object that is moving with minimal head movement. As your child improves their ability to track objects as they move, they will also be able to improve their reaction time and response to the moving object, be it a baseball or other toys. 

You can help your child develop this skill by reinforcing to them that they need to keep their eye on the ball. You can also have your child stand still with a book on their head, like you would to improve their posture, and have them watch two people toss an object back and forth. This will help your child keep their head still as they improve their eye tracking ability.

Peripheral Vision

Peripheral vision is your child's ability to see what is going on around them, and not just directly in front of them. In sports, this will help your child read the field better and be more aware of what is happening around them. This will help your child respond to the situations around them.

Peripheral vision is actually a visual skill you can work on when your child is relaxing. Challenge your child to watch television with their head turned to the side. Quick your child and see how much they saw on the television when their head was turned. This is an easy way to build your child's peripheral vision skills.

Succeeding in sports takes more than talent and skill; it also takes great vision. You can help improve your child's visual concentration, eye tracking and peripheral vision using the suggestions listed above. As your child improves these visual skills, they will be more equipped to succeed in the sport that they enjoy.