When do the glasses come off?

I got this email question the other day from Lisa (I’m a little behind on getting through my emails):

Do any parents whose children wear their glasses full time allow their children to nap with them on? My nearsighted 3-year-old is still in a crib and takes naps some of the time. However, often he just likes to sing or talk to himself, and I am fine with that so long as he is resting and I get a little break. But he can only see clearly a few inches in front of his face, so I am wondering if he’d be less likely to fight this “rest time” if I just let him have his glasses (the backup pair of course, in case he breaks them, but he hasn’t broken a single pair in two years).

It got me wondering about which activities you leave your child’s glasses on for, and when you take them off. We haven’t had a poll in a while, so here goes (the question is if you leave them on for any of the listed activities):

Are there other times you take your child’s glasses off?

8 responses to “When do the glasses come off?”

We take off the glasses when she’s napping or sleeping just for comfort reasons. She occassionally falls asleep in them, but we just take them off. However, she does wakeup at night & cries hard sometimes but never gets out of bed. I guess it is probably because she can’t see and it’s dark. Does anyone else have this happen? It scares me to death eveery time though! We also take the glasses off for bathing or swimming. I told the Dr. the swimming is kind of a concern for me b/c she’s playing and basically can’t see anything. He doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue though. Does anyone have a good tip for that since summer is approaching?

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N keeps the glasses on at all times except when sleeping, bathing.

Come to think of it Annie, he never gets out of bed too..whether night..or daytime nap..though the thought had never crossed my mind re: limited vision without the glasses. Quite perplexing considering he is extremely nearsighted, but functions very well with or without…

we don’t wear the glasses while swimming/bathing as the droplets on the lenses are a major distraction. I have read about companies that make prescription swim goggles (recspecs…http://www.sporteyes.com/kidsmain.htm ..is one of them.) which may be of interest…

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Bennett takes his glasses off when he’s tired and sets them in a designated spot. Sometimes he will fall asleep with them on and we take them off and put them in the spot so he knows where to find them in the morning/after naps. He does get up in the night and come to our room, I’m surprised at how well he does getting around in a dark house with no glasses but it’s not like any of us see well in the dark. 🙂

We wash his hair first thing in the bath (minus glasses) then hand them back for playtime in the tub. He wears them to the pool but doesn’t go underwater in them – when he starts swim lessons we’ll explore prescription swim goggles or just see how he does swimming without glasses.

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We try to take Elly’s glasses of when playing in the pool or at the beach, when rough housing with papa, doing tumbling on the floor, in the bath, sleeping (we set them right beside her bed on the dresser) and sometimes in the car depending on her mood.

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Thanks George! She doesn’t do a ton of swimming right now, but we have a great local pool & swim team that may be of interest to her when she gets older. I didn’t even know prescription goggles existed & the pricing isn’t too bad. This will definitely be handy as she grows 🙂

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Our daughter Sarah, (4.5) does not take her glasses off for *anything*. (They only come off her face if they are being cleaned and then they go right back on.) She’s been wearing them since she was seven months old. We used to try to take them off her after she fell asleep at night, but she would say in her sleep, “but I can’t see my dreams!”

Alex (8.5) never went through that even though his vision was worse. (20/600 as a pre-schooler) His glasses come off for swimming, bath time & bed. He never had a problem swimming or at night. I always felt we were on a level playing field at night, walking around in the dark because neither one of us could see. ;-D

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We did not let the kids wear glasses in the car until they were forward facing. (around 2 years for each kid, we turned them when they hit the RF weight limit on our car seat) Otherwise you’d hear the lovely sound of Crunch!! Crunch!! Crunch!! and temples breaking, lenses being popped out or thrown like little Frisbees. Yikes!!

I usually take them off for nursing too, because they poke me, but they go right back on afterwards.

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