A dad came in last week holding his own glasses in one hand and his six-year-old’s hand in the other. Before I’d even opened her file he asked, “Is she going to end up like me?” His prescription was strong, minus seven in both eyes, and he’d worn glasses since he was eight. It’s one of the most common questions parents ask me: is myopia genetic? It deserves a real answer instead of a shrug.
Short-sightedness does run in families, and the numbers are worth knowing if you wear glasses yourself. One of the larger studies on this, which followed thousands of children over several years, found that having one myopic parent roughly doubles a child’s odds of becoming myopic, and having two myopic parents pushes the odds up to around five times that of a child with no myopic parents at all. The risk climbs further still if a parent’s own prescription was already strong, or if they needed glasses very young. That’s worth mentioning here in Hurstville specifically, since a lot of our families have roots in East Asia, where childhood myopia is far more common than the Australian average, and genetics is part of why.
So is myopia genetic? Not entirely. Plenty of kids with two short-sighted parents never need more than a mild prescription, and some kids with no family history at all still develop myopia early, usually from a mix of near work and not enough time outdoors. What family history really changes is how early I start paying attention, not whether a child is destined for glasses.
Here’s what that looks like in the chair. If both parents are myopic, I won’t wait until a child fails a letter chart before I take it seriously. I’ll often start measuring axial length, which is the actual physical length of the eyeball, from around five or six years old, because that measurement shifts before the prescription does. A child whose eye is growing faster than expected for their age gets booked back in every six months rather than once a year, even if their vision still reads fine on the chart that day.
It’s also worth watching for the everyday signs regardless of family history. Sitting closer and closer to the TV, holding books right up near their face, or squinting at the whiteboard photos they bring home from school are all worth mentioning at their next visit, even if nothing seems urgent.
Catching myopia early matters because the options we have for slowing its progression, things like MiyoSmart lenses or orthokeratology, work best while a child’s prescription is still low and their eye hasn’t done most of its growing yet. Starting that conversation at minus one is a very different exercise to starting it once a ten-year-old is already at minus four.
So if you wear glasses and you’re wondering about your own kids, the honest answer is that your family history matters, but it’s a reason to get them tested a little earlier and a little more often, not a reason to assume how things will turn out. A comprehensive myopia check at Viewpoint Optical includes exactly this kind of axial length tracking, so we can tell you where your child actually sits rather than guessing from family history alone.
If your own eyesight is on the stronger side and it’s been a while since your child’s eyes were properly checked, it’s worth booking them in rather than relying on the school screening alone. Call us on 02 8021 2298 or book online, and we’ll talk you through what their numbers actually mean.