Help Please! Contact lenses for children???

[KandyKinz]

Hello, I have never posted here before I don't know if this is where this post should go as I don't really consider my daughter to be a special needs child.... she just has some vision issues....

Anyways, she's 5 years old now and has been wearing glasses since she was two. She has very mild strabismus (the muscles coordinating your eyes to move are slightly weaker in her left eye allowing it to wonder occasionally) and she subsequently also has quite severe amblyopia (where her one eye has perfect vision while her other left eye is almost to the point of being considered legally blind without corrective lenses).

Well we went to her eye appt yesterday and her doctor has now suggested that it would be best to have her switch to using a contact lense in her left eye as that would maximize her vision which will in turn help stabilize her alignment which would also increase the vision in that eye in addition to continuing the patching therapy and use of atropine drops on her good eye.
(they are also planning on laser eye surgery once she's around 8 and then do the strabismus surgery once her vision is at it's best.... but that's down the road so I'll deal with that then).....

Anyways.... I have never used contact lenses myself and thought of it kinda creeps me out.... Now I'm gonna have to put them in my daughters eye... I'm up for it and willing but I am scared and a little apprehensive. How uncomfortable is getting contact lenses put in? How uncomfortable is it to get them out? Has anyone else ever had to use contact lenses in their children's eyes? How did that go?

 

[Caezzybe]

I've not had to use contact lenses on children, but do wear them myself. I've got strabismus/long sightedness and didn't wear them until about 5 years ago. The day I first wore them, it was like someone had given me my vision back. I can even see 3D stuff at the cinema now, not as well as everyone else but it does work to some extent (which it never did before). Like your daughter, the vision in one of my eyes is virtually useless, it just fills the rest of the picture in. I find lenses in and taking them out no problem at all and they are really comfortable when they are in, although I think it depends on the individual.

It's interesting you should mention contact lenses for children, it's not something I had thought about before. It's possible my son may need eyesight correction. He has Down's Syndrome and that predisposes him to strabismus, as does his family history (my poor eyesight and also his Dad's). Perhaps contact lenses may be something that could be discussed if he does need help with his vision and if his learning difficulties aren't too severe (we won't know for some time how affected he will be).

Thanks for posting this, I believe your post does belong in the Special Needs section as parents with special needs children (including myself) could benefit from you sharing this information.

 

[KandyKinz]

I've not had to use contact lenses on children, but do wear them myself. I've got strabismus/long sightedness and didn't wear them until about 5 years ago. The day I first wore them, it was like someone had given me my vision back. I can even see 3D stuff at the cinema now, not as well as everyone else but it does work to some extent (which it never did before). Like your daughter, the vision in one of my eyes is virtually useless, it just fills the rest of the picture in. I find lenses in and taking them out no problem at all and they are really comfortable when they are in, although I think it depends on the individual.

It's interesting you should mention contact lenses for children, it's not something I had thought about before. It's possible my son may need eyesight correction. He has Down's Syndrome and that predisposes him to strabismus, as does his family history (my poor eyesight and also his Dad's). Perhaps contact lenses may be something that could be discussed if he does need help with his vision and if his learning difficulties aren't too severe (we won't know for some time how affected he will be).

Thank you for sharing your personal experience with me. I had never even heard of contact lenses for children before yesterday as well... Apparently they are are even being used in infants with severe eye conditions.... Unfortunately, so far the information I've gathered from google has been fairly limited and I have found a few sites about stories of babies needing contacts and their success stories but so far I have not found anything about anyone initiating contact lenses in young school age children.

But I definitly do want to do whatever will best help with my daughter's eye sight especially during these critical years when her vision is capable of improving, I just hate to have to do another invasive thing to her if you know what I mean. She's pretty good with the patching (though when she's having a bad day and starts getting frustrated with something it's the first thing to fly off) and the patching is not to bad in the sense that it doesn't hurt her... but I've been finding the giving her the eye drops difficult cause they sting (and I tried them in my own eyes just to see how bad they really were and they definitly burned ). She'll willingly get into a position for me to get the drops in but then when I go to she'll either squint really really hard of will try to move her hands in the way then I'm physically battling her which I really really don't like. So I'm worried that the contacts will result in the same kinda battle, though I've heard from many that inserting and removing them is not a painful process and if it does improve her vision like the doctor (and you) have suggested hopefully she'll be a willing participant.

I decided to go on youtube and find the least ickiest video of someone nonchalantly inserting and removing a contact lense to show my daughter so she'd be aware of what everyone was talking about and she seemed quite fine with it (I think I'm much more squirmish around eyes then she is ). Then she saw another video of woman inserting funky colored contact lenses on the side and wanted to view that and now she has decided that she is so gonna get those kind when she's older (I told her she had to wait till she was a teenager... she was a tad disapointted...) I guess overall she's handling the idea of contacts much better then I am

Anyways, out of curiousity how was your strabismus managed. Did what they do work much in terms of the alignment of the eye?

Hopefully, your son will manage to bypass all these eye troubles!

 

[Caezzybe]

I had an eye patch as a child and it didn't work, I don't think it was started early enough and my left eye doesn't work independently, it just fills in the rest pf the picture. If I shut my right eye, I can only see the big letters on the first 3 lines of the optician's chart and only the ones on the left and right, not the middle. Lenses do improve it a bit. My eye turns inward a little and looks worse when I am tired. I have not had corrective surgery. Apparently, strabismus makes for double vision at first, which the brain corrects. I know it needs to be corrected early by non-surgical methods if it's going tp have a chance of working. Good luck for your daughter, I hope that the lenses sort it out until she has the surgery.

 

[Steph63]

Hope you don't mind me butting in, I have no experience with contact lenses for children, but I do wear lenses myself and I have recently switched to continuous wear lenses, which means I only take them out once a week to clean them and I can sleep in them etc, if you could get something like that for your LO, might save the hassle of putting them on & out every day

 

[KandyKinz]

Hope you don't mind me butting in, I have no experience with contact lenses for children, but I do wear lenses myself and I have recently switched to continuous wear lenses, which means I only take them out once a week to clean them and I can sleep in them etc, if you could get something like that for your LO, might save the hassle of putting them on & out every day

Thank you, I'll bring that up when we got to the lense fitting

 

[Caezzybe]

Hope you don't mind me butting in, I have no experience with contact lenses for children, but I do wear lenses myself and I have recently switched to continuous wear lenses, which means I only take them out once a week to clean them and I can sleep in them etc, if you could get something like that for your LO, might save the hassle of putting them on & out every day

You have a point there You can actually get lenses that are kept in for up to 30 days between cleanings.

 

[Septie]

Not sure if you will still check this thread...but I got contacts at 8 or 9 yrs of age. Initially my mother had to put them in and out. The ONLY negative memory I have is once when my mother had to take them out when she had had too much to drink at a party. Other than that I have NO recollection of problems/pain etc. I quite liked wearing contacts rather than glasses... Initially they will likely start with short periods of wear so that her eyes get used to the contacts.
I started out with soft contacts (generally considered more comfy), but soon moved on to hard (gas permeable) ones.
Good luck! It will quickly become second nature to you and your daughter, I am sure

 

[KandyKinz]

Not sure if you will still check this thread...but I got contacts at 8 or 9 yrs of age. Initially my mother had to put them in and out. The ONLY negative memory I have is once when my mother had to take them out when she had had too much to drink at a party. Other than that I have NO recollection of problems/pain etc. I quite liked wearing contacts rather than glasses... Initially they will likely start with short periods of wear so that her eyes get used to the contacts.
I started out with soft contacts (generally considered more comfy), but soon moved on to hard (gas permeable) ones.
Good luck! It will quickly become second nature to you and your daughter, I am sure

Thanks, it's good to hear you were not traumatized by it

 

[joeyjo]

Another here who wore contact lenses from childhood - age 7. I got them simply because I hated glasses (I'm shortsighted). Never had any issues with putting them in & out. I had to have rigid gas permeable ones because optometrist said they allowed the most oxygen to the eye & allowede growth & development the most naturally - although we are talking 20 years ago!