2 year old needs glasses - info appreciated

Hi,

my DS has had an on and off lazy eye that we noticed a while ago but wernt sure becuase its not always apparant.

Anyway we saw the opthamologist she said muscle development and coordination etc is fine - then we went to the optomertrist (?) after they had put drops in his eyes they looked and said that he is long sighted and his presricption says

RE +3.5DS/-0.5 DCx180

LE + 2.0

Now i know this sounds superficial and vein which im neither, but i was devo'd by it... neither DF or I have eye problems. Can anyone make sense of the numbers - does he have bad eye site.

He seems to be able to see what ever i ask him so what does long sighted actually mean that he cant see close up very well????? - the lady did explain but i was juggling the 10mth old DD aswell as him - handfull


Hes 27months and Im really hoping that maybe this corrects itself.. if it even can.. i dont know anything about this anyifo would help..

Also they said that the 3.5 lense would need to be ground so is that i guess "Coke bottles"

He actually looked cute with the glasses on when we tried them out but Im still sad that he now may have problem with nasty kids at school and that.. i miay be paranoid but im in the unknown... right now.
Thanks

hi meegm :)

Ive been wearing glasses since I was 11 months old - I am long sighted, have a lazy left eye and a stigmatism. (so pretty screwed lol)
Anyway, WRT to the kids teasing etc at school - it will happen, but you get over it pretty quick - I think that by the time I was finished prep I was over the "four eyes" jibe and just used to laugh at them...I also told them that I could see around corners with my glasses on lol
So dont fret that - he will deal with it if it comes to that and it isnt scarring for life or anything.

The other thing is that if you catch eye problems like the lazy eye early, there are exercises that he can do to improve and develop the muscle control in his eyes and correct it for the most part.
He also may not need to wear glasses for the rest of his life - by the time he is 10 or so he may only need them for reading, etc, or even not at all.
The basic fact of the amtter though is that if the opthamologist says he needs glasses, then get them. The sooner the better. He may not need them all the time either, but the headaches he will get from eye strain eventually are painful, long lasting and can be crippling depending on how severe they become.
Once he is old enough to understand them you can begin exercises with him, the opthamologist will show these to you and how to do them. The most basic one is to focus on something close then something far away. You should be able to do it yourself if you focus on a speck of dirt on the windscreen then focus on the car in front of you (I do mine in the car at the lights lol)

The long term issues with not correcting the problem from my experience are this: I have very poor depth perception - this can affect things like not being able to hit a tennis ball to not being able to judge stopping distance in a car. Because of the lazy eye, you will find that over time he will use only his strong eye - this will cause the shape of his eyes to be different to each other as the muscles are over used on one side and under used on the other - this is a big thing the eye exercises will help to control. The older you get the harder the problem is to correct and control.

WRT to the thickness of the lenses, you would be amazed at the lense technology there is these days - the 1950s coke bottles are not what he will wear, so dont fear ;) I have been wearing glasses for so long now that the thought of not having them is like not having my right arm...from my personal perspective, the harm in not attempting to correct and control the problem will lead to more problems than the need to wear glasses, even if it is for the rest of his life.

Find a good opthamologist and trust them, they know what they are talking about.

Anyway, I HTH...good luck :)

I too have worn glasses since I was about 2. I am also long sighted. Both of my eyes turned in and they had to do an op. The left eye was fixed but my right eye still turns in when I am not wearing my specs.
It is good they have gotten to it so early. Like lime slice said, by the time they are 10 the eyes are kind of "set"
They grind down the specs now so you cannot even tell what strength they are.
Its hard not to fret but glasses are so common in school these days.
And it is good they are working on fixing his sight now rather than later.

like LS i've had glasses since i was months old. long sighted, astigmatisms - and optic nerve that points the wrong way (should look like a donut facing forward to front of eye - mine lays flat). by the time i hit school, i was so used to having glasses that i apparently come home from school the first time i was called four eyes and asked my mum what it meant! the teasing is nothing unless your child has self esteem issues, which you can help with at home from the outset.

don't let your own perception of how hard it will be for your child cloud your judgement. the headaches from crappy eyes are horrific and debilitating - and catching problems early means they can be treated and even potentially corrected. from a teasing standpoint, it's more likely if you leave things til later - DH has a great niece whose parents put their own thoughts on glasses over the recommendations of specialists. his niece didn't get glasses until she was in about grade 4 when things had gotten quite bad with the turn in her eye. she was supposed to wear them for reading only, to help strengthen her eye, and wear a patch for some time everyday - she didn't want to "look like a dork" so she didn't do it. she had to have surgery on her eyes this year for something that could have baan corrected at a young age

my DD is 13weeks old and has a turn in her eye and will go cross eyed looking at objects up close to her, so will be getting referred to an opthamologist in a few weeks. family history makes the GP more wary of leaving it unchecked. if she has to have glasses, i won't be surprised at all (both DH and I wear them all the time) - it's better to get them younger and get used to it, then to leave it to a point where your child's vanity wins out

A grind lense doesn't mean that it is going to be thick. It basically means that they have to grind the lense to make that script. Stock lenses (so ones they can just grab off the shelf) only go up to a certain script. By grinding the lens they can try and make it thinner anyway. (I hope that makes sense) :)

My eldest has glasses as he is about as far long sighted as a person can be LOL. His prescription was +5.50 for his right eye and +7.0 for his left (The turned one) so in theory they literally should have been as thick as coke bottle ROFL, but they were really good, very thin so they didn't look geeky at all. It is a bit weaker now that his eyesight has improved because of the continual wearing of them - all day every day - and the eye patching. Your little fella doesn't have a script near as strong as my DS, so his eyesight isn't that bad at all. It is possible that he may need the glasses full time for the rest of his life - long vision isn't usually something that 'corrects' itself and goes away after a few years. My DS will have to wear them till he's old enough for contacts, then corrective laser surgery.

And yeah, it can be upsetting at first to know that they have to wear them all the time and how that will affect them from doing things, but you get over it pretty quickly when you see just how much they improve from having them. Lindsay even plays football now (without his glasses). It is really great that you got onto the problem so early becuase Lindsay had a turned eye from about 10mths, but we didn't get his eyes checked till he was 5.5yrs as he was doing fine, no headaches or anything but he'd started school and we thought we'd do the right thing and see how he was coping with it and found out he needed glasses and went from there. He hasn't had an issue with teasing because apart from the initial jokes which were actually all from girls he doesn't get teased at all. Ironicially three of the girls in his class who did tease him now all wear glasses themselves, so I guess karma bit back. And neither DH or I have eyesight problems either - though DH's parents, brother and sister all have atrocious eyesight themselves.

ooh, just thought i'd mention - my eyesight has completely changed as i've "grown up" - i was long sighted (similar to Trill's son) severely in both eyes - by the time i was about 15, my glasses were half the strength they were when i got my very first glasses - and now, i'm long sighted in one eye still, but short sighted in the other... long/short sightedness will change as your kidlet ages - so regular checks are important.

i can't wear contacts unless i spend over $500 a set due to the severity of my astigmatisms - and laser surgery won't correct the issues i have. but that's cos of the compound impacts of all those things wrong - if it's a singular issue, there is a good chance that, when they are older, the laser surgery can correct the issue

when i do things, i do it the hard way!

Yep, Linsday's has changed a lot too in the short time he's had glasses - he's nearly at 20:20 vision now with his glasses on. And BG's right - you will need loads of follow up appointments - we did 3monthly ones at first with his Opthamologist and now we're down to 6 monthly.

the numbers never made any sense to me :(

Jaidan wears glasses, and he's never been teased at school so don't fret it :)

One thing I do reccomend, is getting the bendable frames. They are a lot more exxy but I went through 2 pairs of $130 frames before I ended up giving in and spending the $360. He's had those frames for 2 years :)

Hi ,
I work in this field so I will give you a quick run down.
His right eye is significantly stronger than the left and the / - power is a slight astigmatism power. With kids it is best to correct it at this stage because they can develop with the muscle imbalance and power a ineffective corrective ability where the eye cannot be corrected as it starts to shut down as its focus never recovers. Positive lenses are always thicker in the middle and as a pp has said the stock lenses especially in kids can be thick and heavy as they can be out of a large blank size (diametre), Pay alittle more for either grind / aspheric lenses...they will look alot better.
But in saying this usually with kids optoms or opthals can prescribe a certain prescription and it will be altered in 6 months after the kids have adjusted to the correction and often increase it. So in saying no it wont correct itself if you dont do nothing and may make the problem worse. But alot of kids do have this sort of prescription, let me know if I can help.