The recent observation that central refractive development might be controlled by the peripheral retinal image quality revived the interest in the peripheral optics of the eye. In general, this means that the temporal evolution of the ocular optics at the early stage of life will not be fully understood unless a full description of the optical components (cornea and crystalline) is given together with the angular positioning and the peripheral optical quality assessment. This would constitute the most complete picture of the development of the optics of the eye, being essential to understand the etiology of several ocular diseases like myopia or strabismus. The measurement in infants and children represents a technological challenge. A corneal topographer should be redesigned to work on distance, and be as less disturbing as possible. The ocular alignment (angular distance between the line of sight and the best optical axes of the eye) might be assessed with the same instrument. We propose here the development of a Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor to measure not only on-axis aberrations but also the peripheral image quality. All the instrumentation will be used in a cross-sectional study of the ocular optics at the early stages of life, from newborns to adulthood. A second line of related research will focus on the possibility of reducing the progression rate of myopia during ocular development. Recent experiments support the idea that a peripheral hyperopic defocus might promote central myopia. To induce the opposite effect, a set of lenses to selectively impose myopic peripheral defocus on certain areas of the retina will be designed and will be tried in a group of children with incipient myopia. In conclusion, this project expects to provide for the first time a complete description of the optics of the eye at the early stage of life. New lenses to try to stop myopia (the most common refractive disease at the development stage of life) will also be designed.