I recently came to find out that my four year old daughter needed eye glasses.  I didn’t see any signs that she needed them, I was totally oblivious.  My husband came home one day and told me his eye doctor thought he should have his daughter’s eyes checked because apparently he had some genetic condition  that she could inherit from him. 

Genetic condition??????  I had no idea of this.  My husband doesn’t even wear glasses.  Where did this come from.  I was always planning on taking my daughter before she started school to get her eyes checked, but I never would have dreamed she would have inherited some “genetic condition”.

I brought her in to the eye doctor.  Sure enough, when the doctor put the eye patch on one of her eyes, she couldn’t see anything.  It was the most pitiful “I don’t see anything” response that made me want to cry myself.

As it turns out, my daughter has a “lazy eye”.  She now has to wear glasses 24/7.  Apparently with this type of condition, it needs to be caught when the child is very young, if there is any hope of helping the problem.  When I asked why my husband doesn’t wear glasses, apparently it is because he didn’t get the problem looked into early enough, and it was too late.  The eye doctor then proceeded to tell me that his one eye is so bad, that if something were to happen to the “good eye” he would be legally blind and lose his driver’s licence.  WHAT??????  How did I not know this?????

If my daughter’s eye glasses do not work, she will need to start wearing an eye patch on ther “good eye” to strengthen her “weak eye”.  I really hope it doesn’t come to this because kids can be cruel at times.  I felt like a really horrible mother for not seeing that my daughter had an eye problem.  Wouldn’t I notice???  However, the eye doctor reassured me that I wouldn’t have noticed because the “good eye” compensates for the “lazy eye”.

Keeping eye glasses on a 4 year old is very challenging.  Especially when you have an 18 month old in the house who loves to rip them off her face.  I have already had to bring the glasses back to the store twice in two weeks to get fixed.  While I was there, there was a mom of 4 kids there, and her son was on his 7th pair of eyeglasses in 2 years.  Yikes, $$$$$$$$ is all I can say.

One thing I have to say, she looks sooo cute with glasses.  And the best thing is, she says “Mommy I get to wear glasses just like you”. 

If there are 2 things you take away from reading this blog post:

1.  PLEASE, HAVE YOUR KIDS EYES CHECKED BEFORE SCHOOL.  Even though you don’t see a problem, there still could be one and if there is a chance that you can fix a problem if caught early, you should do everything you can.

2.  TALK to your spouse.  Obviously there was some lack of communication when I have been with my husband now for 11 1/2 years in total and have only just found out he has a genetic eye problem. 

May Your Eyes See All The Beauty In The World