Gazette has prompted a local optometrist to warn teachers and parents about letting their children get too close to their work.

The photograph showed five-year-old Prospect Primary student Mykah Gibbons (who was incorrectly called Mykah Simons in the caption accompanying the image) working with a crayon and with her head bowed down very close to her work.

Optometrist Antony Siese responded to the article noting that he had to deal with a number of children who have difficulties with their reading, writing and blurred vision when looking at the blackboard.

"So many times,'' he said, "these young people do not have a vision problem, but they do experience difficulties with reading and blurred vision.

"These problems are so often caused by the child being too close to their work,'' he said.

He said children who were as close to their work as Mykah was in our photograph would only see one word at a time as the eyes converged on one point which was too close.

"The eyes get fatigued and the child will lose their concentration and the vision may get blurred. Also, when reading across a page, because they are so close they can miss out lines and do not know where they are on the page,'' said Dr. Siese.

He asked parents and teachers to make sure children stayed an appropriate distance from their work when reading or writing to help prevent vision problems.

That appropriate distance was easily measured, he added.

"The distance they should be back from their book, be they reading or writing, is a distance known as the `Harmon' distance.

"To determine what this distance is, one gets the child to bend their arm, close their fist and the distance from the closed fist to the bend of their elbow is the minimum distance they should be.''