Little Four Eyes
Recently, while out to dinner with my kids, a little girl with glasses on came up to say hi to my four-eyed child. This little girl had recently been diagnosed with similar eye issues to my daughter, and was just test driving her new specs. She kept trying to take them off and her father was doing a good job of getting them back on.
Wearing glasses is a big adjustment for kids. Also, many children require patching and eye drops (as mine did), which can be hard for everyone. (Try getting a two-year old to not rip a patch off his or her eye…it’s not easy!) We did a lot of bribing with gummies and lollipops when our daughter adjusted to patches, drops, and specs. I’m not saying it was right, but it worked.
Back to dinner. The father of the little girl asked me a lot of questions about the experience we went/are going through. I told him about this amazing site I recently discovered for parents of children with glasses: LittleFourEyes. It is a great resource for parents, both for those just discovering eye issues or those with experience. There are articles about all types of eye issues, photo galleries to show off your child’s bespectacled face, books for kids, and links to games and print-outs related to glasses. My favorite is this Backyardigans “Glasses are Great” printable sticker set.
So, if you have a child with eye issues, I can’t recommend this site enough. It’s a wonderful online community for parents that reassures, informs, empathizes, and celebrates being the parent of a child who wears glasses.
Julie Said,
November 16, 2009 @ 8:20 am
OK, those photos are completely adorable. But how does anybody figure out that a 12-week-old needs glasses? That is amazing to me.
Ann Z Said,
November 16, 2009 @ 11:30 am
Wow, thank you for such a nice write up! And for being open to talk with the family. I remember being at the mall the week before Zoe’s glasses arrived, and I saw a woman with a toddler in glasses. I tried asking her about his glasses, but she wasn’t terribly open (and may well have been in a rush), but I just wanted someone to talk to and ask questions of who had been through it.
Julie, babies who are in glasses at age 12 weeks, almost always were born with cataracts. Those are often caught by the doctor at their first pediatrician visit. For older pre-verbal kids, they usually use preferential looking tests: a series of rectangular grey cards that have a smaller square of black and white stripes. A baby (and really anyone) will look at the black and white square, because it’s more interesting than the grey background. The series of cards has a square with decreasing sized stripes until it is impossible for someone even with good vision to differential between the square and the background. They show the cards until the baby stops noticing the square, and that gives an approximation of their visual acuity. The eye doctor will also dilate the eyes and use a retinoscope to look at the retina to see it’s shape which gives an indication of if the baby is nearsighted or farsighted, and to what degree. That was probably way more than you wanted to know.
Julie Said,
November 16, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Not at all. It’s very interesting!
Jeff B. Said,
November 17, 2009 @ 11:52 am
Thanks Ann for the description. I’ve often wondered how pre-verbal children get their eyesight diagnosed too.
If Junior sees those Backyardigans stickers, he’ll be demanding glasses of his own to be like Pablo! I wonder if they make “Groucho Glasses” is size 24M…..