If there is excessive blinking in toddlers, one must keep in mind that many children can go on blinking excessively and usually they do it after staring at a blaring telly for too long, when feeling irked or bored due to fatigue, or are merely fascinated with blinking as a new sensation.
Parents tend to be instinctively concerned about their child’s health, as sense of vision and the perception through this sense plays an overly important part in how we relate to the world’s many faces of physicality, such as its forms and colors. However, if you’ve forgotten to breathe out due to worrying over your little one blinking excessively, now is the time to do it. Children hardly have any gravely serious problems, such as blindness, when it comes to their eyes. Little babies can have eye problems and an eye checkup is quite an importantly integral part of baby care. If your baby is just beginning to crawl, it is best to play with him on the floor as this develops his eye-hand coordination along with his motor skills, improving his vision and overall health of his eyes.
Basics of Blinking
Infants don’t blink as often as adults do. The number of times they have their mini-blackout is about once or twice in a minute. An infant’s vision is not quite fully developed at birth, but develops as they grow.
Blinking, basically, is a way to provide moisture to the eyes by using tears along with a lubricant that your cornea needs, which the eyes secrete. There are multiple muscles that control reflexes of blinking. Blinking is divided into reflex, spontaneous and voluntary blinking.
With children, if they do begin blinking excessively, it may last for around a couple of months and can’t quite be anything so major. Lack of magnesium is often the cause of irritability in toddlers that can lead to excessive blinking too, as the lack of this mineral can constrict the flow of impulses in the nerve and muscles. Your child may be anxious about something, if he is a bit older, and is suppressing or internalizing it, until it just projects itself as excessive blinking.
Causes of Excessive Blinking
- Many times, when we focus our vision on something, such as reading, in case of many children, perhaps watching their favorite TV show, the amount of times they blink their eyes decreases. Later, however, if this has gone on for too long, their eyes dry out making them blink excessively to compensate for all the time that they didn’t.
- If it is winter and your radiators are pretty much alive all the time to heat the air up, then dryness of the eyes might be the reason why your child is doing it.
- Your child may have a foreign particle in his/her eyes causing irritation; and this is one of the most common reasons too.
- Neurological dysfunction or infection can also be a cause for excessive blinking.
- A lot of times, children make a habit out of something and its reasons are not as pathological as they’re psychological, where they’re merely trying out a new sensation.
- Magnesium deficiency and other nutritional deficiencies are linked with getting tics, twitching of muscles, eye infection, all which lead to excessive blinking in children.
Right Nutrition: Easier than a Blink
Far too often, excessive blinking in toddlers and other problems with their eyes begin due to a weakened immune system, and this is a result of poor nutrition. Toddlers are far too energetic and with their tender growing bodies they need to regain and replenish. A lot of mothers have problems with getting their toddlers to eat all nutritious foods. Make sure your baby is getting the right amount of nutrition. You can give your child soft dried fruits such as apricots, prunes or raisins and a nutritious drink by blending together fruits, milk, and yogurt, which is a wholesome meal in a glass.
Sitting with your toddler and eating together as a family is a great aid. They see you trying out new foods and would also be more inclined on doing the same. It is difficult to hold their interest at a table if every one else is doing something different than they are, and they’ll just leave their meal sitting there and ramble off to something that’s more distracting.
Foods like avocados, broccoli, cheese (natural), slices of hard-boiled eggs, fish, pasta, organic peanut butter, blueberries, strawberries, papaya, sweet potato, pieces of cooked chicken, whole grain breads and crackers, plain yogurt, celery or other veggies sticks, and fruit slices are high in minerals like magnesium and vitamins, making them great for your child’s eye health and overall well-being. Avoid feeding your baby refined or processed foods, refined sugar and foods containing hydrogenated oils, as they block their systems from digesting nutrients and are also very difficult to metabolize.
Your toddler cannot eat too much at one meal, so healthy snacks for toddlers work well between meals. This would certainly curtail his chances of any nutritional deficiency or an eye infection, and any excessive blinking caused by either.
Some Signs Needing Medical Attention
- Frequent turning of the eyes in some direction, inward, outward, upward, or downward
- Squinting or closing eyes very frequently
- Having difficulty to look at objects without closing one eye with a hand
- One eye drifting when looking at objects
- Swollen or crusted eyelids
- Unusual redness of the eyes or eyelids
- Bumps, sores, or styes around the eyelids
- Unusual position of the eyelids
- Minor scratch to the cornea
- Eye allergies
- Dry Eyes
- Infection
- Swollen eyelid
- Corneal damage
- Tourette’s syndrome (an extreme case and a rarity in toddlers)
If your child is making repetitive noises and sounds accompanied by muscle twitches and eye blinking, it is most advisable to see your pediatrician. Though, in toddlers, they can be doing this like all babies babble and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve got Tourette’s syndrome.
Though, mainly, with toddlers, they have a fascination with finding out new things and probably it shall remain at that. Don’t get too fobbed off by every single piece of information you read on the net about Tourette and ADHD and things. A baby is a baby. Excessive blinking in toddlers is something that they overdo perhaps, until they tire their curiosity and fascination. Let him be compelled by curiosity and don’t suppress your toddler’s natural fascination with new sensations, unless what he’s about to do is foretelling an inevitable harm. And you always know best to take your child to a pediatrician, if you’re worrying yourself gray over it.
