It’s the start of the new year, and a time to reflect and make changes. In that spirit, I have decided to change the name of this site (and the related fb group and page) from “Little Four Eyes” to “For Little Eyes.” There’s a few reasons that led to this decision, and I wanted to share my thinking on this.

First, some history:

This site started out back in 2008 as the blog “Toddler Glasses,” so named because, well, my toddler wore glasses, and I wasn’t feeling terribly creative. Very shortly after I started writing, it became clear to me that while a lot of my readers had toddlers in glasses, even more had children of other ages, ranging from 0 to well into elementary school and beyond, and so I needed a different name. The name “Little Four Eyes” popped into my head pretty quickly, though I’m not entirely sure where it came from. It was meant to be sweet and fun and a little whimsical. It never occurred to me that the name might bring up painful memories for people who had been taunted as a child with the phrase “four eyes,” but I’ve heard from enough to know that unfortunately, that is the case for more than a few readers. For those of you who did feel that way, please accept my sincere apologies. I never, ever intended the name to be hurtful.

This site has grown a lot since then and reached far more people than I had ever imagined. It has been a huge positive part of my life, and I hope for many others as well. However, the question of the name has nagged at me ever since I first heard that it bothered someone. After thinking this over a long time, and listening to many discussions of the name, both through personal emails and on the facebook group, I’ve decided to change the to “For Little Eyes.”

I like that the name still makes reference to the previous name of the site, as well as broadening the scope to include children who wear eye patches, contact lenses, prosthetic eyes, or who have had other vision treatments. While this site has featured information on those topics for years, until now, the name only referred to wearing glasses.

A couple of other notes on this decision:

• I struggled over this decision for a long time, it was not made lightly, nor was it made in response to any single conversation or person.
• The thing that finally pushed me to make the change was a conversation I had with friends who are not part of the group – as I was looking for an outside opinion. One particularly wise friend asked me who I was trying to reach. I’m trying to reach any parent who has learned their child needs glasses, but especially those who are feeling upset or worried about it. I don’t want the name of this site to add any pain on top of the stress of a parent who is already feeling overwhelmed.
• The term “little four eyes” or “L4E” gets used a whole lot in the facebook group as well as on the site as shorthand for a child who needs glasses. I am totally fine with that term being used in that way. It’s kind of a pain to type out “child who needs glasses” and I know that no one using that term in that context is being mean-spirited.

I own both the domains “LittleFourEyes.com” and “ForLittleEyes.com” and they both will bring you to this site.  I will continue to maintain both of them, so any bookmarks and links to the site will continue to work. I know that it’s going to take me a while to update the site as well as all the associated social media accounts, so please forgive me if both names still show up for a while.

One final note, I’m keeping comments open, but I would not like to have a debate over whether or not the name is hurtful. I’ve seen that debate happen enough times to  know that no one is going to change anyone’s mind on what is or is not personally hurtful to them.  The name was hurtful to some and that’s reason enough for me to change it.