When your kids are starting at school, there is always going to be a degree of tiredness at the end of the day, but what do you do when kids get excessively tired?

Towards the end of a term I tend to get a large number of children in grades prep through three who seem excessively tired at the end of the day of school. I notice that these crop up particularly towards the end of the term, because they have been keeping up the pace from long time.

Frequently I have parents tell me that they think their child is tired because they not drinking enough water, and while that may be so in some cases, my experience is that the most frequent cause of tiredness in young children at school is related to bed eyes and vision.

Poor Focus Can Make Kids Get Excessively Tired

One of the most frequent causes of tiredness in children at school has to do with a focusing system. What many parents do not realise is that you can have a child who was neither long or short sighted, and that seized 20/20 or 6/6 vision, which is considered to be good vision.

In fact many parents have taken their child to an optometrist and been told exactly that? Your child is not longsighted and they have good vision, therefore there eyes are fine.

I see many frustrated parents who are asking the question, “Why is my child so tired at the end of the day?” They have had an eye test and think they have covered all the bases, but most often eye focus and eye teaming have been overlooked.

As a behavioural optometrist, I spend extra time looking at the way the two eyes focus together and how they team together, because these are important in a child’s learning. I run extra tests specifically to examine these areas, and most often these are the culprits when it comes to the times when kids get excessively tired.

If your child is returning from school very tired, if they’re failing to concentrate on their home work, struggling at school or even putting themselves to bed early, then the probability that your child has a vision problem goes beyond mere seeing is very high.

The bottom line is, if you want your child to perform at their maximum potential in school, they need to not be getting excessively tired, especially in the first three or four grades of school.

So if the kids get excessively tired after a day of school, the best thing to do is to get their eyes tested with someone who knows and relates well to children, and who has studied the effects of stressed out focus and eye teaming systems.

You also need to look for a practitioner who not only relates to your child, but can sit and talk to you about what your child is facing, and how it relates to their school performance.

Above all, do not overlook the effect that excessive tiredness can have on your child’s learning and school performance.

The treatment for this type of condition can be a simple as a set of reading glasses or as complex as a programme of vision therapy, but both of these could see your child concentrating better and being less fatigued towards the end of a day at school.

When kids get excessively tired after a day at school, especially when this is increasing towards the end of the term, the best thing to do is to get their eyes properly tested and make sure that there is no focus or eye teaming problem to be dealt with.

Poor Focus and Eye Teaming Can Make Kids Excessively Tried, but we can help!