your wisdom, collected and compiled

There’s been some good advice shared here, in the posts, but also a lot in the comments. Since it can be kind of hard to find all of that, I’ve compiled the more practical hints and tips and helpful advice on this blog and put it on a page on it’s own (I’ve left all the comments and such where they were originally). So far, it covers reasons for getting your child’s eyes checked, hints to make the eye exam easier, things to look for in places to get glasses, choosing glasses, getting kids to wear glasses at first, and ways to keep the glasses on once your kid is (at least a little) used to them. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have other favorite hints, please leave a comment there and I’ll continue updating that page as we go.

I’ve also moved the order of the pages just a bit so the photo gallery, which is rapidly becoming the most popular page on this blog, is a little more prominent.

my new favorite response to the questions

I just received the following in an email from Sarah Braunstein whose son, Asa (nearly 12 months) wears glasses:

Many, many comments from strangers, and sometimes this is wearisome. People have no boundaries when it comes to babies! They positively gush over him, comment endlessly about how adorable he is in the glasses, how “smart” he looks, how it’s “amazing” he keeps them on, etc. I worry about how he will internalize this as he becomes increasingly cognizant. I want to say: he is adorable, period. Or: there is a baby behind the glasses! Clearly, right now, they define him. But I know that there will be less novelty as he gets older.

My husband and I have decided that next time some intrusive stranger sidles right up to us and says, bluntly and incredulously, “God, how did you know he needed glasses?” we are going to reply, with a shrug, “Oh, he was having trouble with small print…”

But there are also moments where I relish the attention, as it affirms his singularity.”

I think I may need to steal the line about having trouble with small print the next time someone asks us about Zoe’s glasses. But beyond that, I share Sarah’s concern about our children internalizing the comments that they get older. Zoe is the kid at daycare with glasses, and I know that humans are visual animals, and we use appearances to describe and classify people, but I don’t want her to be defined by her glasses, and I’m never sure what, if anything, I should do or say about it.

Speaking of the visual, the photo gallery is starting to look great (if I do say so myself). Of course, now I’m hoping that the photo gallery doesn’t reinforce the classification of our kids being the ones “with glasses,” but my idea is more to show that our kids don’t all look the same with glasses on, and that the glasses are quite clearly not getting in the way of our kids’ cuteness, or their happiness, if some of those smiles are any indication. We now have 4 pictures up, including a picture of Sarah’s son, Asa. Check it out, and keep the pictures coming.

ordering glasses online

We’re starting to think about what we’ll do for Zoe’s next pair of glasses, especially if it turns out that she needs a new prescription. Even if she doesn’t, I expect that she’ll outgrow her glasses soon enough. Kids and their fast growing heads. Though I’m happy with Zoe’s glasses in terms of how they look, and even how they’ve held up, I have to admit that the cheaper prices of some online frames are pretty appealing. Still, I think about the number of times we go to our eye glasses place, and I just don’t understand how it works with the wear and tear and adjustments and prescription changes.

So, I have a bunch of questions for those of you who have ordered your kid’s glasses online. Did the glasses fit well when they arrive? Have you needed to get them adjusted either due to your child’s growth, or to bending that happens during the day-to-day general toddler roughness? If so, where do you go to get them adjusted? Have you had to get the prescription changed? Do you have to pay for the lenses to be remade?

Oh, I can see!

Said Sam this morning when he put his glasses on.  Heehee! I’m pretty sure that he has reached the point where he realizes that he sees better with them on and is happy to wear them. Yay!

In fact, I think that big sisters are a little jealous of Sam being able to wear glasses like Mama does.  We’ve had to make several trips to Target’s optical shops for adjustments to Sam’s glasses (face plants on the floor are hard on their alignment) and the girls like to try on the display frames.  Now, they keep telling me that they are having trouble seeing the tv and such, when it is abundantly clear that they aren’t, at least not to any noticeable extent.  If either of them ends up needing glasses, I think it will be Emma, because her eyes are starting to have that weak look that I see in pictures of myself and Sam pre-glasses.  Hopefully it will be a few years before she needs them, though, even though she wants them now.

the look

Still working on the look of the blog. I agree with Chris’s comment that having the authors of the posts is important. I think it makes it easier on the readers if they know who’s doing the writing, and I think it’s important to give credit to the authors. I don’t like the current theme as much, but I’m having trouble finding a theme that I like, that also includes the authors in the posts. So you might see things change a bit more as I play around with some things.

scenes from a wedding

Apparently the bride and groom only invited kids with glasses. Other than Zoe, the only other kid at the wedding was a girl, probably about 6 or 7 (I’m horrible guessing ages), with super stylish purple Hanna Montana glasses. She was really shy when I complimented her on the frames, but they were really cute.
…
A guest came up to us and said “wow, they didn’t have glasses nearly that stylish when I was that age.” I agreed and we talked about how cute little kid glasses are these days. Then she mentioned she got her glasses at age five and asked how old Zoe was – 1 1/2. I really think the glasses lead people to think she’s older than she is.
…
We got a lot of other comments and questions from other guests, though everyone said how great the glasses looked. I noticed that both Chris and I will occasionally reflexively launch into the story of how we knew she needed glasses, and how they know what prescription she is, even though the person hasn’t asked the question.
…
At the reception – at a nice local restaurant – the owner comes up to me and says he wants to say hi to Zoe. I’m a bit taken aback that he knows her name. But he explains that she goes to the same daycare as his daughter. He saw her and immediately recognized her – there’s not all that many little girls with her glasses in the city. He mentioned that his daughter (a few years older than Zoe), has come home asking when she can get glasses. So now she’s a recognizable trend setter!

new look and call for pictures

I’m playing around a bit with the look of this blog. I think I’m pretty happy with it now – it highlights the different pages we put together a better, and I like having a picture in the header.

Speaking of pictures, one of the more common searches that lands people on this blog is searching for pictures of toddlers or babies or kids with glasses. So I thought it would be fun to put together a gallery page of kids with glasses. That way, parents who are facing this can see just how cute the glasses can be. Plus, if you’re willing, you can include information on the glasses and where you got them.

So, if you have a picture that you want to share, would you link to it in the comments, or email it to me (ann at shinypebble dot com)? Include any information you want added to the picture, like how old your kid is, where you got the glasses, your child’s name, age they got glasses. Whatever you want, feel free to include no information if you’d prefer.

Also, if any of you have a picture of your kid with glasses that you’d like me to rotate in to the header, I think it would be fun to have that picture change occasionally (though I admit I’m quite fond of the current one).

Well, that was just odd.

Tuesday was field day for my daughters’ kindy class (their class won 2 1st, 2 2nd and 3 3rds, btw), so Sam and I went to watch and cheer them on. We were on our way out when one of the custodians stopped me to ask about Sam’s glasses. That’s not so odd, although I did laugh when he asked if Sam had been a preemie. Yes, I know that being a preemie can cause a need for glasses (although I think that is happening less as the technology advances). The girls were preemies, and weighed about 2.5lbs each. Sam, on the other hand, I was begging to evict my uterus at 39.5 weeks and he weighed a whopping 10lbs, 10oz when he was born. Hence, the laughter.

Anyway, the guy keeps asking me questions, although he never actually asked why Sam wears glasses, and eventually asked me who his eye doctor is. I told him, and he promptly got all concerned and urged me to get a second opinion and not to worry about offending Dr. E, but to just get a second opinion. His reason was that his brother had been a patient of Dr. E when he was a kid and claimed that Dr. E misdiagnosed him and now the brother is going to be blind by the time he is 40. He claimed there was some surgery that could have been done that Dr. E didn’t recommend.

Now, I have sympathy with the guy and his brother. He never told me what his brother’s diagnosis was, so I have no idea if he is just a bitter family member blaming something on the doctor instead of the fates that landed him with an eye problem, or if the doctor really might have made a mistake or if some advance has been made in treatments that weren’t available when his brother was a child or what. For what it’s worth, our optical store sang the praises of Dr. E, so who knows.

But the guy just would not let us go. I was trying to inch my way down the hallway and just kept talking and talking all the while going on and on about the fact that his brother was going to be blind because of Dr. E.

I appreciate the concern in my child’s eye health, but this guy really needs to work on his approach, because he didn’t come across as concerned family member looking out for other people, but rather as bitter and vindictive. Even so, I have an appointment with my ophthalmologist in a few weeks and I’ll ask him to look at Sam, too. It can’t hurt, after all.

A helping of mommy guilt

Sam’s preschool finished up their year this week with the little program they do.  Each class gets up and sings for the parents and its all very cute.  When we dropped him off at his classroom, his teachers gave us a little book they had made with pictures of him taken throughout the year.  My husband and I were looking at it before the program started and we could not believe how obvious it is in the pictures from last fall that Sam needed glasses.  We didn’t really notice him squinting at stuff until around Christmas time, but there he is in October clearly squinting trying to see the camera.

He’s got glasses now, so no harm done, except for a hit to the mommy guilt-o-meter.

good news for kids with glasses

Found via Blogging Parent, who found this through Boing Boing. Apparently a recent study in the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics has found that kids think that other kids who wear glasses are smarter and more honest, and that the glasses don’t affect their perceived appearance. The study was done on kids aged 6-10, so a bit older than our kids here, but I still think it’s good news. I know the perception of other kids is one of the things that had really worried me about Zoe getting glasses.

I don’t have access to the full article, but the abstract is pretty detailed (as are most abstracts from medical journals). My favorite part is the final line:

Discussion: The old adage ‘Boys never make passes at lasses who wear glasses’ may be outmoded, but glasses may tend to make children look smarter and slightly more honest to their peers.

Not that any boy should be making any passes and my little lass at the moment, but it made me laugh.

Doesn’t she look terribly smart and honest here?

very little four eyes

I was back at the eye glasses store with Zoe today (she’d lost a screw from her glasses and we didn’t have any small enough for her frames), seriously, I feel like we’re there all the time. While we were waiting for her glasses to get repaired, another family came in with a little baby girl in an infant carseat carrier, looking extremely cute in the tiniest pair of glasses I’d ever seen. They looked a lot like Zoe’s frames, but they were pink with purple checks. I talked with her dad a bit as we waited. The girl was 5 months old (“nearly 6 months” yells the mom from across the store). She had cataracts surgery in one eye, so needs a corrective lens for that eye, and wears a patch on the other eye for around 5 hours a day, to help strengthen the eye that had had the surgery. It was a bit strange to feel like Zoe was the big kid with glasses for a change, but it was really nice to talk with other parents of a baby with glasses.

Must Play

Not much to report about Franklin and his glasses lately, life has been moving along normally. I have been noticing a trend though; Franklin has been trying to get away with not wearing his glasses recently. Hmmm. As in, he doesn’t put them on right away in the morning until we mention it to him, and when he takes them off for a nap or whatever, he’ll ask if he can have some “glasses-free” time. I was worried that he was not wanting to wear them anymore, so I just flat out asked him what was going on. Basically, his response was “they take too long to put on, Mommy!” Heh? Apparently he just wants to play and the 25 seconds it takes him to put on the frames (including the Nerd Strap) is simply too long to wait. Sigh. Maybe we’ll have to instigate a “glasses-free time” along with “naked time” so he can really cut loose.

Also, one of the 4 yr olds who comes to my library’s storytimes recently showed up in glasses. He’d been in them about a week, and his mother said he seemed to be adjusting well. I told him my son had glasses too, and he really perked up. His mom said he doesn’t have any other friends who wear glasses, so I showed him a picture of Franklin. The good thing about Franklin being an older “Little Four Eyes” is the fact that there are more and more kids his age getting glassesFranklin on the Field at the Metrodome. They can bond. 🙂

Lost kid and glasses

We have a fenced in yard and I’ve been ok allowing Sam outside for a few minutes without me. A few days ago, he wanted to go out back and play as soon as we got back from picking his sisters up from school. I sent him through the gate and then went in the house to open the back door. I saw him, went to get a drink and grab some crackers and went to check on him again. He was no where in sight.

It seems I’d forgotten that the neighbors behind us had replaced their fence and when they did, the fencers left an 8 inch or so gap between our fences. (Who gives up an 8 inch strip of their entire yard, btw?) We’d had it blocked with the wheelbarrow, but I’d been doing yard work and using it. And Sam found the gap and decided to go exploring. I was this close || to calling 911 when I found him, 2 houses away. He got that far in less than 5 minutes. I may have yelled at him like a fishwife, too. Poor kid. Poor me.

Back in the relative safety of our yard, I realized his glasses were missing. Wordy dirds! $#&@$^! I asked him where they were and of course he said they were “out there!” So, we retraced all of his steps, as well as a 2 yr old can remember, looking for the glasses. Now that my priceless child was safe, I was almost in tears over the thought of having to replace the glasses already. Fortunately we found them. He had tossed them off when he started crying after I yelled at him. Poor guy.

The next home improvement project will be fixing that gap.

More Costco love

This morning we were heading to Costco to pick up a few things, when Zoe exclaimed “uh-oh!” in a bit of a concerned manner. There’s rarely anything good that comes accompanied by the concerned “uh-oh.” I looked back to see her holding her glasses in one hand, and the little plastic nose piece in the other.

picture of Zoe’s glasses with the nose piece correctly attached.

Since we were already heading to Costco, we decided to see if they would fix her glasses, even though the glasses were not purchased there. And indeed, the optician there was happy to fix them right up, and even cleaned them and complimented us on the cute glasses. I asked if they had any frames that would fit Zoe, but they don’t have any that are small enough, which kills the idea of buying a spare pair there. But, it’s good to know that if we did pick up a spare pair online, we could go to Costco to have them adjusted or fixed.

Fingerprints and other things

We have yet to be able to teach Sam not to push his glasses up by putting his fingers on the lenses. The result is that they are pretty much always spotty, even 5 minutes after I’ve cleaned them. Last night, he pushed on them right after eating an ice cream sandwich. Result= two chocolate fingerprints right in the middle of the lenses.

I’ve also noticed that the supposedly scratch resistant lenses already have scratches in them. My glasses do, too, and they have the uber expensive, all the bells and whistles type lenses in them. They had a scratch within two months of me getting them. That’s about how long Sam’s had his now, too, and they have a couple of little scratches on them.

We’ve had our first trip to have Sam’s glasses adjusted, too. My husband was concerned they wouldn’t be able to straighten them and we’d have to buy another pair, but there is a reason that kids’ glasses are made out of titanium.

He’s been ordering books for the kids lately, too, and quite by coincidence ordered an Arthur book that is about D.W. wanting to get glasses, too, so she can be like her big brother. It hadn’t occurred to me before to look for books were someone where glasses, but I thought that as he gets older Sam might enjoy reading books were the kid has glasses, too. The Harry Potter books come to mind, but those will obviously be quite a few years down the road. Anyone run across books for toddlers that feature a character with glasses?