Comments on: understanding your child’s glasses prescription

By: Moofleur

Moofleur — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:21:11 +0000

That is very interesting Nikki. My children have just been diagnosed long-sighted (6yo +4.5, 3yo +9!!!) and both had quite pronounced plagio as babies. 3yo was corrected by repositioning, but 6yo had to have helmet therapy.

By: when you’ve just found out your young child needs glasses « little four eyes

Fri, 11 May 2012 01:48:37 +0000

[...] Read an explanation of your child’s glasses prescription. [...]

By: Nikki

Nikki — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:33:12 +0000

Well as thats with the NHS, we did wonder whether it was worth seeking a private opinion? We are quite unsure about all of this as we have 6 older children and none of them have vision problems, but Troy was squashed inutero and born with Torticollis and Plagiocephaly and we think this may have contributed to the vision problems he has…

By: Ann Z

Ann Z — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:56:44 +0000

Nikki, that really surprises me. His prescription is strong, but it should still be fully correctable. Can you get a second opinion?

By: Nikki

Nikki — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:59:57 +0000

He’s prescription is Right +8.25 -125 40 and Left +5.25 -100 165 if that helps?

By: Nikki

Nikki — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:58:01 +0000

Hi…Great posts thank you. My 6 year old son has severe long sight and astigmatisms, he had turned in eyes when he was 4 so started patching and has since wore glasses.

Theyve just told us that glasses will never get his eyes to 20/20 vision as he had 4 years of brain development without them. They said this means he will not be able to join the forces for instance.

Is there anything we can do if we pay privatley? Also would this mean he wouldnt be able to drive when older?

Thanks, Nikki

By: Ann Z

Ann Z — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:12:36 +0000

Rachel, I’m confused by this as well. A ‘+’ in front of the number does mean farsighted. When you get his glasses, I would take them back to your son’s eye doctor and have them check the prescription to be sure it matches what the doctor meant to prescribe. In fact, I think I might call your eye doctor and just ask for clarification of whether your son is nearsighted or farsighted. It’s more common for a baby to be farsighted, though it’s not unheard of for a baby to be nearsighted, but maybe the doctor misspoke and said nearsighted when he meant farsighted. If it turns out that your son is nearsighted, then you will want to contact the glasses shop right away and see what prescription they ordered for him.

Whether he’s nearsighted or farsighted, he has a pretty strong prescription, and that could certainly lead to the eyes not aligning (usually farsighted leads to eyes crossing and nearsighted leads to eyes pointing away from each other, which is why I think maybe your doctor just misspoke when he said “nearsighted”). Good luck with the glasses and please let us know what you find out.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:22:39 +0000

My son was born 12/3/2011 Since he was born I noticed something I little off with his eyes. He would never look at me. I was concerned just as any mother would be. At his 1 month check up the dr noticed that both of his eyes seemed to be “lazy”. She said it was nothing to be concerned with because he was only a month old and they have until 6 months to start to be concerned with that. At his two month check up his eyes were still not working entirely together at times and seemed to be worse when he was tired. I still wouldn’t look directly at me and this bothered me and I voiced my concerns with the dr. He had had “colic” since he was about 4 weeks and always seemed miserable and extremely fussy. I voiced this concern to her too. Not even thinking the two could be correlated. She said he is still young, his digestive system was still developing and just to make sure everything was ok with his eyes we would schedule an appointment with the Ophthalmologist. This was in February and they made his appointment 2 months down the road so that it would give him more time to see if it would correct itself. Well today was his appointment. The past two months he HAS started to look at me more but his right eye still turns inward and upward. Sometimes its the case with this left I too. The Dr. noticed it right away and said it was probably a muscle issue. He asked if this runs in my family who wears glasses or if there was any such eye issues etc. (I’ve worn glasses since 2nd grade and Everyone in my family wears glasses and my boyfriends family wears glasses) He said there are 6? ( I can’t remember) muscles that help the eye move and the muscles that help it move inward and upward were either working stronger than his other muscles or they were too weak. So they dilated his eyes to check his vision. As soon as the Dr. put the machine up to face he noticed that he had extreme nearsightedness. He said it was a +6 in both his eyes. He also said he usually does not put glasses on a 4 month old but his vision needed to start being corrected now. He stated that this might be the cause the muscles in his eyes to not be working properly and only time would tell whether his glasses would fix this problem and if not it would require reconstructive surgery. So he gets his glasses in 4 days and we will see from there. So needless to say I’m a little overwhelmed and confused. Reading through the column I see that a + means farsightedness and so I’m also confused with his prescription. It says from what I can read OD +6.W / Sph +1-w X115 OS +6.W /Sph +0-sc X090. Im not sure if I’m reading this correctly because it is sort of scribbled. So any insight or comments or similar stories would be greatly appreciated. I’m very concerned as any parent would be and just a little lost as to whats going on. Thanks….Rachel

By: Nicole

Nicole — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:08:42 +0000

Thanks Ann for your wonderful site, forum and easy to understand information. Like a lot of parents who have posted above we recently found out that our 4 year old daughter Chloe has vision problems. OD =3.5 cyl +2.5×102, OS +4.00 cyl +3.00×82. This was shocking to us, since no one in our entire family has required glasses. She has hypermetropic astigmatism and refractive amblyopia. These words were foreign to us, as too her prescription, until we read your information. It is comforting to read about parents who also did not see any sign that their preschooler required glasses, thank you for sharing your stories. We pick up her glasses next week, she is excited so far that they are purple – we will wait and see how she reacts when the reality of wearing them all day, every day hits home!

By: lory

lory — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:07:09 +0000

Seriously, how can a PO recommend glasses for myopia to be worn by a child while doing homework? -0.75 glasses should be worn only when seeing details at big distances is mandatory like reading the board in class, driving, probably cinema, wearing them all the time will create dependence on them and worse than this, doing close work (homework) while wearing minus glasses (which slightly reduces the size of objects and don`t help since myopes already see perfectly near) puts and extra strain on the eyes resulting in a prescription increase quite fast. Some doctors even recommend wearing plus glasses by myopes while doing close work because it relaxes the muscles.

My friend and I were prescribed -0.5 glasses at quite an early age. After 10 years she is now -5 and I am -0.75. The difference? She has worn her glasses permanently, even while reading and I almost never. I tried sitting in the front row in class instead, as my mom advised me I kept my eyes as far as I could from the book while reading, always took breaks while using the computer for a long time.

I`ve always wondered why ophtalmologists almost never instruct the pacients how to properly wear the glasses they prescribe in order to avoid further sight deterioration. Maybe it`s a part of the business.