My personal journey with glasses began when I was about 6 or 7. I thought my sister and brother looked super cool in their glasses, so in an effort to try and copy them, I sort of fudged on the eye exam. What The Heck was I thinking? I would have needed glasses eventually anyway, but geez, little did I know. So, when my husband brought Franklin home from his 3 yr old screen with the local school district and said they noticed a problem in his right eye, my heart sank. He told me that when they covered his eye and asked him to read the letters, he started trying to cheat and use his left eye. They thought it looked questionable and he should see an optometrist, so I immediately made an appointment. As Ann Z said, glasses aren’t the worst thing in the world for our children, but having lived a life of dependence on either glasses or contacts myself, I knew the crap he’d be in for.

The first thing our optometrist did was have Franklin look into what looks like strange binoculars and try and focus on a picture of a cartoon farm house. If you’ve ever had your eyes checked, you probably know what I’m talking about. The idea is you try and focus while the doctor purposely brings the picture in and out of focus to watch how your eyes react. He looked for about 30 seconds before putting the contraption down and telling me Franklin would need glasses. Again, my heart sank. We moved into the exam room and he went through the usual routine, then he gave me the diagnosis. Basically, Franklin’s right eye is far-sighted and his left eye is near-sighted, so his right eye was starting to atrophy and fall to the side so he could focus out of his better eye, the left. I was told Franklin would always need glasses or contacts and that Lasik probably wouldn’t help. The doctor could see I felt bad and told me again and again that there was no way either my husband or I could have noticed it ourselves, but good ol’parent guilt set in and I kicked myself in the butt for not noticing a problem. But still, thank God someone noticed something and we got Franklin in before the problem got any worse. The next step was picking out glasses…stay tuned!