Glasses Help

snugglepet20

My daughter just turned 2 and has been prescribed glasses as her eyesight is pretty poor. However she will not wear them at all or even touch them! We have tried talking about how pretty and fun they are and all wearing glasses in the hope she will want to copy but no joy. She just screams and covers her eyes when she sees them, even the optician couldn't get her to put them on. Does anyone have any ideas to get her to like them?

sueeve

I don't think you'll make much progress immediately. Is her sight actually harmed if she does not wear them? If not, lay it cool and relaxed. Do you wear glasses? If not, how about having some plain glass ones for yourself to get her used to the idea?

Kittendreich

Does she have a favourite cartoon character or something she's really into (nightgarden, dogs, tellytubbies etc)? Can you get glasses with them on and try "oh, look at the lovely glasses with x on...what a shame you don't want to wear glasses as you won't be able to get the ones with x on"....

Has she ever had glasses on? or is it just the ones she has now? They might be too tight, uncomfortable etc - or it may even seem weird to her to see the world properly if it has always been nice and fuzzy?

Make-it-3

I agree two is very young, I always feel sorry for young kids who have to wear glasses, it seems to prohibit a bit of the rough and tumble at that age. I would also lay off for now, instead try and normalise the situation, show her lots of pictures of people wearing glasses, do any of her favourite cartoon characters wear them? If not find some? Maybe make a scrapbook. Ask your optician if there are any storybooks about children getting glasses that you can read to her.

What about buying some cheap fun children's sunglasses - if she will try these it might get her used to the feel of wearing glasses. Remember it will also take her a while to get used to what she sees with her prescription glasses if she has been used to seeing the world in fuzzy vision.

Agutka

There's a Peppa Pig episode about an optician and Peppa really wants glasses, but doesn't need them, so gets a pair of sunglasses.

bettyB_2

buy some fake/cheap glasses/sunglasses for her dolly? that way she can put the glasses on the dolly and understand more about them by handling them and being 'in charge'

snugglepet20

Thanks for the advice. No she has never had glasses before and the optician did say things would seem a lot bigger to her when she wore them. I don't wear glasses maybe getting some for her dolly and upsy daisy would help. I will also try and track down the peppa pig episode. The Orthoptist and Ophthalmologist did say that wearing the glasses now may help strengthen her vision in future and as she is on quite a strong perscription already I imagine by the time she is an adult her vision will be quite bad .

GlasweJen

At 2 it is a battle. Part of my role is fitting childrens glasses and helping parents with compliance (basically getting them to wear patches/glasses etc). We have a few hints and tips for parents with kids who don't like their glasses.

We recommend building up glasses wearing time, make it part of the routine to wear the glasses at a certain time of day and build it up. So start with something like "we need to wear our glasses when we go to visit granny so that we can see the cars on the road". When she completes the trip to grannys with the glasses on she can earn a reward and lots of praise. Once this is established we might need to start wearing our glasses to watch TV after nursery/school so that we can see the characters, again rewards/praise etc and build it up again.

Mummy and daddy can wear their glasses too (cheap sunglasses with the lenses poked out will do), when wearing your glasses you can talk about how clear signs are, how well we can see each others faces. Can we buy comics and magazines to read with our glasses on?

It will come, at the moment all she knows of the world is the blur without her glasses. The new world is very crisp and that will be scary to a wee one who isn't used to all those shapes and colours.

Oh and you can get glasses for dolls and figures, one parent I had recently got them for ebay.

Js_Other_Half

DS had just turned 2 when we were told he needed glasses.
We put toy glasses onto a identical toy that was one of his favourites. We kept the one without glasses in the house, and the one with glasses was allowed to go out and about.
Every story we told him for months described a little boy with his name, his hair colour, his eye colour, and the fact he wore glasses.
I also got him this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daft-Dog-Collins-Picture-Lions/dp/0006646182
The glasses we got for him had curly earpieces, and a special bridge as toddlers of that age haven't formed the bridge of their noses yet.

hth

Js_Other_Half

We also got him this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baby-Duck-New-Eyeglasses-Hest/dp/0744552206/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300999740&sr=1-21

We sent them into nursery to be read with the whole room too, just to normalise it.

The optician's episode of Peppa Pig http://www.channel5.com/shows/peppa-pig/episodes/the-eye-test

GlasweJen

Jellybean frames (the ones with the curly silicon legs) need to be measured and fitted by a dispensing optician as they can be very uncomfortable if measured wrongly.

You can get glasses featuring characters but kids tastes change so much that we recommend using stickers, glitter etc to decorate their own case.

I like the idea of having a story describing the child with glasses - might need to steal that one for work. Also there are some fab books (JS_O_H has listed a good one) that can be read to her.

Not sure how you feel about drawing on books but I had one parent go through a couple of the kids favourite character books drawing glasses on the fave character and fitting the glasses into the story.