Changes you noticed after your dc got glasses? Advice?

[Staceyshoe]

We are realizing that ds is near-sighted and needs glasses. Just curious what changes you noticed in your child after they got glasses? Any advice for teaching a 5 year old to take care of them?

[ChristusG]

My 3 year old DD got glasses back in June. Honestly, after she got glasses, I didn't really notice any changes. She's probably too young to notice if she's seeing better. However, a few months ago she began asking for her glasses if I didn't put them on right away in the morning. So perhaps she's noticing that she can see better. Plus, we have to patch her eye for 5 hours a day, so we do that in addition to the glasses.

 

As for taking care of them, I just tell DD that she's not allowed to take them off. There's no need for them to ever come off unless I'm putting her in the tub or putting her to bed. We've never lost a pair....and she's never broken a pair. An arm got bent one time, but it was fixable. For 3 years old, I'm pretty happy with how she does with them.

[CalicoKat]

We are realizing that ds is near-sighted and needs glasses. Just curious what changes you noticed in your child after they got glasses? Any advice for teaching a 5 year old to take care of them?

 

my 5 yo ds walked with his arms out -- like balancing on a tight rope -- for a week after he got his glasses. He kept asking why the floor was tilted. And where _____ came from, things he hadn't seen in detail before. And when he puts them on in the a.m. he self-talks things like, "Ahhhh, now I see."

 

We plunked his glasses on his nose and told him that they needed to stay there all day until bedtime. We take them at bedtime and put them away and give them back at breakfast.

 

He's chewed the nose pads off twice now. He's bent the frames several times testing things out, we've bent them back.

 

He knows he sees better with them and he's protective of them. Our other kids are used to seeing them on him now and pretty much leave them alone.

 

I'm ordering him a couple sets of replacement pairs from zennioptical.com.

I know there will be casualties. Walmart also has inexpensive frames for $8.

[Garga]

my 5 yo ds walked with his arms out -- like balancing on a tight rope -- for a week after he got his glasses. He kept asking why the floor was tilted. And where _____ came from, things he hadn't seen in detail before. And when he puts them on in the a.m. he self-talks things like, "Ahhhh, now I see."

 

 

I remember feeling that way after I got a new pair of glasses as a kid. Sometimes I felt like I could barely make it to the car from the doctor's office, the ground was so tilted.

 

I always knew I needed a new pair when I couldn't see out of a screen window. The lines on the screen would blur so much that I couldn't see clearly out the window (because the blurred screen was blocking the view.)

 

And people looked a lot older and uglier with the glasses. All of a sudden, they weren't air brushed anymore!

[sarawatsonim]

My dd6 got glasses at 4 and we have never had any problems with her taking care of them. I think the fact that she could see after she got them (she was considered legally blind before) made her very careful and cautious with them. I would just ensure to instruct them on the correct way to take them off and put them on because sometimes kids can be a little rough. Also get them something special and cute to put them onto at night for bedtime. My daughter has a little glass dog face that she places them on. It is kept on her night stand beside her bed in case she needs to get up in the night. Sometime though I will go in and she will have put them on again and be sleeping with them on. :001_smile:

[Sasharowan]

For my ds who got them at 7, he quit complaining that reading was hard and gave him a headache and started reading a lot. He is still my biggest reader, but has "graduated" from glasses only when reading and tv to glasses all the time now :(

[Audrey]

We are realizing that ds is near-sighted and needs glasses. Just curious what changes you noticed in your child after they got glasses? Any advice for teaching a 5 year old to take care of them?

 

 

Well... he could see. He didn't even know he couldn't see before because that was all he knew. Reading was easier for him, but probably the biggest change was his physical balance & coordination. I guess if you can't trust what you see on the ground, you don't exactly have the best coordination.

 

He got glasses when he was 7. We knew he needed them, but what was so shocking was that, on the drive home, he pointed to a huge sign that had the name of the town near us, and he said "Oh, it says TownName!" Dh and I just looked at each other with jaws hanging open. Later, I had a good cry. I still feel so guilty for passing on my craptacular eyesight to ds. Dh still has 20/20 vision. Why couldn't ds inherit that instead?

[mom4him]

We are realizing that ds is near-sighted and needs glasses. Just curious what changes you noticed in your child after they got glasses? Any advice for teaching a 5 year old to take care of them?

My youngest two don't have glasses but I can share what it was like when I got mine at just over 6 yrs old.

On the way home from the eye dr.(it was about a 70 mile drive) I saw things that I didn't know were there such as a farm house with barn and white fence. I can remember sitting in the back seat of the car in wonderment. It was never a struggle to get me to wear them because, ummm, I could see with them on. Now over 50+ yrs later I still wear glasses and don't move without them.

[Laura Corin]

Hobbes got glasses when he was about eight. He stopped squinting at distant things and remarked on how clear everything is.

 

He did destroy a frame early on by wrestling in his glasses, and almost lost them a few times, but he's better at taking care of them now. It helped to designate safe places to put his glasses down, so that there was a better chance of finding them if he had to take them off.

 

Laura

[mom2att]

My oldest looked around the room and smiled when we put her glasses on her for the first time. She was 2.5. We walked around the mall afterward, and she just walked along beside us, holding our hands and looking at everything. Prior to the glasses she was zooming around everywhere, but once she could see she had to stop and look at everything.

 

As far as keeping them on, we would put them on her in the morning and tell her to leave them on, not taking them off until bed or bath time. Since they improved her vision so much, this really wasn't a problem. Other kids taking them off for her was more of a problem--I was babysitting for a couple of toddlers at the time and they would just yank them off of her face. The glasses place was really good about fixing them each time, though!

 

She's 14 now and still in glasses.

[gingersmom]

My son got glasses at 6. He walked outside, looked at the trees and went "wow". It made me want to cry. I never realized how much he was not seeing.

 

He loved his glasses and never took them off.

[Chris in VA]

Dd used to bump into things a lot. Glasses helped.

[angela in ohio]

My dc got them at 8, 4, and 5, respectively.

 

The middle dd had an astigmatism and was near-sighted and far-sighted. She was no longer bumping into things, and her reading skills took off. Before that, she could only read large individual words, but not books.

 

The oldest just barely needed them at first, and I didn't notice anything.

 

The youngest has been rough on his. He is good to wear them all the time, and he puts them away nicely and cleans them, but he is a boy, and he bumps his face into things, people, whatever, :D all the time. We have them adjusted every few weeks, and they never last more than a year.

 

My biggest advice is to have them put them on in the morning when they get out of bed and take them off at bedtime. That has always been our rule. That way, they don't get lost. But really, if they need them, they will be so happy with them, they won't want to take them off.

[Tabrett]

My 1st grade dd got glasses several months ago. She only needs them for reading. Since having glasses she:

 

Doesn't rub her eyes anymore

Her eyes aren't red anymore

She keeps her hand off her face

Her reading has improved a lot, but reading still hasn't taken off independently

She can read for a MUCH longer time

She colors and draws all the time now

Sunday School teachers noticed a big difference in her attitude in class (for the better:D)

 

What it hasn't changed:

 

She still needs to wiggle while she reads (she will stand and move her feet around, but stay focused on her task)

I still have to use a book mark and point at each word so she doesn't get lost on the page.

She still stops in the middle of a sentence to look at the pictures.

She still can't tell a b from d when reading (she doesn't have this problem when writing)

[jplain]

My DD was just barely 3 when she got glasses. She suddenly realized that playground equipment was up high, and she became a LOT more cautious. :D We never had trouble getting her to keep them on, probably because the world is a fuzzy blur without them.

 

She did break her first frames once (or twice?), so I was glad for our optical shop's free replacement policy. At 4 years old, she didn't break her frames, but she did scratch the lenses to heck. I was then grateful for the optical shop's lens replacement policy (we paid extra for that). Now, at age 7, she's pretty good about her frame and lenses. I keep an extra pair around because accidents happen (gymnastics!), but we haven't needed them.

 

About caring for them, be emphatic about putting them on and taking them off properly, with both hands. If you're concerned about them falling off during active play, consider having cable temples put on (Google to see what these are), or bending the existing cables so they curve around her ear. My daughter's first frames already had cable temples, but it is hard to find them for older children. So for her second and third pairs we had the temple pieces modified to add cable temples. Some optical shops are set up to do this, others aren't, so if it is important to you, call around and ask. With her most recent frames, the optician simply bent the existing temple pieces to mimic a cable temple, albeit a non-flexible one.

[Paula in PA]

After she was done being patched, she suddenly wasn't keen on being on the high balance beam at gymnastics anymore. For the first time in we didn't know how long, she had proper depth perception and developed a fear of heights. It was the only noticable change since she had perfect vision in her right eye and her brain was apparently only using that for input (amblyopia) hence the patching.

[....]

My 9 yro daughter can't ever remember where she's left her glasses...:glare: Good luck! We actually bought the transition lenses for her - they turn into sun glasses when she goes outside. That helps, because Texas feels like you're walking into a supernova sometimes.

 

The optometrist told me that - developmentally - it's bad if they can't see people's faces and details of their expressions and stuff. So, once they get glasses, it'll be a lot better for them. :)