Which are the top 3 questions you hate to answer about your kids?
Which are the top 3 questions you hate to answer about your kids?What’s she majoring in? (she isn’t in college and that answer starts a whole avalanche of questions that pretty much point to me not being a good mother because I don’t make her do stuff as an adult she doesn’t want to do)Oh, she’s living with her boyfriend? When are they getting married? (because bite your tongue, she’s only 20 years old)Are you ready for the grandkids? (again, bite your tongue, she’s only 20 and she doesn’t want kids and I support that decision)
If a toddler has prescription glasses for being farsighted, should she wear the glasses all the time?
With a toddler we are talking about the future of this person’s vision, and following bad advice can cause permanent vision issues.Yes wee ones should have like TWENTY dioptres of accommodation, and yes, it is normal to be slightly long-sighted as a pre-teen, but if the child is sufficiently long-sighted then things can be so blurry that the system “doesn’t realise” that exerting maximal accommodation can bring it into focus, and it can be that no distance is ever in clear focus for such kids (and there is no eye-turn in these cases either).Instead, a child with over +5.00 long sight (or even less) may experience bilateral amblyopia and be on the road to permanent blindness if this is not treated in time.Myopia will never cause amblyopia, but uncorrected long-sight certainly can. You don’t state the degree, but if its more than +2.00 then don’t fuck around with longsightedness. Wear the glasses every waking hour until it has been demonstrated that the child can achieve 6/6.Getting kids to wear their glasses can be difficult enough without having amateurs telling them they don’t need to. I’ve known many permanently sight-impaired adults who were detected in time and prescribed glasses and patching which would have saved them from amblyopia… but no-one explained the stakes to them (nor their parents) so they didn’t adhere to the treatment (few kids like wearing glasses, let alone a patch), and of course after age 7ish its all too late.And there is nothing odd about new glasses for long-sight making long distance vision fuzzy, if the eyes have not had sufficient time to get used to the fact that they don’t need to accommodate so much. Mere optometrists such as myself (over 20years experience) tend to shy-away from causing blur (!), but aggressive prescribing to force the accommodative muscles to relax is especially common practice among Pediatric Ophthalmologists (the eye specialists who further specialise in kids vision).If the situation persists for weeks despite actually wearing the glasses (if they aint being worn, then the eyes won’t get used to them) then by all means return to the specialist and let them know, but if they haven’t been given a decent wear to allow the eyes to get used to them, then make sure she wears them all day for at least a few weeks. I would expect there is a scheduled follow-up anyway?
If you had to lose your vision or your hearing which one would you choose?
I have come close to losing my hearing.When I was a toddler I had so many ear infections my mom started teaching me ASL on the recommendation of the doctors, just in case.My hearing gives me:Beauty (music is wonderful and can give me goosebumps)Entertainment (audio books!)Information (alarms, dogs barking, kids screaming)I have come close to losing my vision. When I was in my early 20's my eye disease was unmanageable to the point that I was ready to proceed with a risky corneal transplant for the possibility of a reduction in pain.My vision gives me:Beauty (the way the leaves shimmer in the trees is magical)Entertainment (movies, games)Freedom (driving!!)Which one could I most live without? My hearing. My husband can learn ASL (he's talented at learning extra languages) and I can start up where I left off 30 years ago. I'd miss music and audio books, but not as much as I'd miss the ability to drive.Unfortunately, it's not given to us to choose. While my vision is currently stable, my eye disease is degenerative, so... We shall see, or not, as the case may be.
My toddler is crossing his eyes on purpose, can I make him stop. Will this hurt his vision if he wont stop?
Does it he do it 24/7 or when he is trying to get to you? Hopefully he won't be in this phase for years - then yes, I imagine it would affect his vision-- and a lot of other things. Meaning, if he is just doing it when you scold him or to get a rise out of you, you can tell him what our parents told us, "If you keep your face like that, it'll get stuck that way". He won't be doing this forever. On the other hand, if his eyes are never looking straight ahead; go see the optomotrist NOW. (Or, tell the toddler that it WILL HURT his vision if he doesn't stop: instead of worrying about it yourself, scare him with that possability)
My toddler scratched his eye and caused a reddishness in one corner of the white portion of his left eye. Today his pediatrician found that he has astigmatism in both his eyes. Could the reddishness have resulted in this astigmatism?
Unlikely. Astigmatism is actually quite normal, though people seem to think it's a dread disease! It simply means that the light isn't perfectly directed through the eye (usually because the cornea isn't perfectly rounded), resulting in some level of distortion of the image, whether barely noticeable or rather strong. It's only a serious worry if it is very strong, which can indicate keratoconus (a corneal condition that *is* serious).Most people have a little astigmatism, and if it's strong enough to be a nuisance then it can be corrected with glasses (or more expensively with contacts). Glasses and some contacts for nearsightedness and farsightedness can and often do correct for astigmatism at the same time.What surprises me is that a pediatrician diagnosed astigmatism. Usually they only do general vision screenings rather than a full eye exam, since they usually only have a vision chart and maybe an autorefractor (an automated quick screening tester); this usually doesn't give a lot of detail or catch more finicky eye conditions.I'd suggest, if they haven't already, that you set up an appointment with a pediatric optometrist (or ophthalmologist, but they specialize in surgery, where an optometrist specializes in vision — basically, a general practitioner of the eye where an ophthalmologist is a specialist) to get a more thorough eye exam and discuss expectations of your toddler's developing eyesight.
Babies and toddlers in glasses?
I always wondered that myself. Until I met a friend of mine who has worn glasses since she could crawl. She said her grandmother noticed she would crawl into walls, tables, etc, that she would grab at something and miss it, that it was obvious she could not see. I'm not sure how the medical profession verified it, but my guess is they have tests they can perform. If a child's vision is bad enough, it is noticable.
Can the eye doctor tell if kids are faking bad vision?
There are objective measures of refractive error like auto-refractors. You can catch a child in inconsistencies pretty easily. The problem is that kids can be pretty inconsistent even when they are not faking it. There is such a thing as hysteric vision loss where the child is in a sense faking but does not know it. It is also possible for a child to be intentionally faking and still need glasses. I have never told a parent his child was faking.
How accurate are eye exams for toddlers?
The thing with young children is that they can correct vision issues (especially farsightedness) by using the muscles in their eyes to make the eye's lens less flat (accommodation). While that enables them to see well (and causes others not to notice vision problems in the child) it also takes a lot of energy and is likely to cause problems like headaches and going cross-eyed. Many children are even so used to correcting their own farsightedness, that at first they will see less well through the right prescription glasses than without, at least until the eye literally learns how to relax. The drops your child was given don't just dilate the pupil. They also temporarily paralyze the muscles used for accommodation. That is why this technique can give objective results. It works by shining a light in the child's eye and noting the presence or absence of a certain reflex. That reflex is immediate, so this does not require the child to stay still while the doctor takes a long time gazing into the eyes. Anyway, if you have any doubts about this diagnosis, you should of course seek a second opinion. But it is at least highly possible that the doctor was simply good at his job, which after all tends to consist in large part of correctly diagnosing eye problems in squirming and screaming little toddlers.