Hyperopia is very common in young children. Studies conducted by Cook and Glasscosk (1951), Goldsmidt (1969), found that most infants are 1.00 Diopter or more hyperopic. However, the natural process of normalizing the vision (emmetropization) reduces the prevalance of hyperopia somewhat during the school years.

Hyperopia may be a factor in children's school performance. Rosner and Rosner (1987), compared the visual characteristics of children who had difficulties in school. Incredibly, they found that 54% of the children with difficulties in school were hyperopic. The opposite trend was evident in the group of children who did well in school, (54% were myopic and 16% were hyperopic). Rosner (1979) also found that three quarters (75%) of the inadequate achievers had vision perceptual skills dysfunction in contrast to 25% of the adequate school achievers.

In a more resent study Rosner and Gruber (1985) studied 710 school children (6 to 12 year old), they reported significant visual analysis difficulties were observed in as much as 82% of the hyperopes, 38% of the normal vision (emmetropes), and only 14% of the myopes.

There is great variance in how eye care professionals approach hyperopia in children. Some discourage the use of plus lenses even with refractive errors as high as +7 Diopters (Raab 1982). The rationale is that children's amplitude of accommodation (about 14 Diopters) is far in excess of what is required to cope with hyperopia. Others take a diffrent position. They feel that hyperopia left untreated may lead to binocular difficulties such as ambliopia and / or strabismus (Ingram et al 1986).

In other words plus lenses should not be prescribed until the child demonstrates a "need" for them.