In Alaska, they do vision screens at 18 month appointments for all of the children. This was new to us - I don't think they do vision checks in Texas until much later. But apparently there is a statewide initiative to catch vision problems early to prevent lazy eye. It's a pretty neat camera that looks like a radar detector. They turn the lights off in the room and then take a picture of the child's eyes. And given the spacing and focus of the retinas, it can recommend referrals for children that might be at risk.
And, of course, we got flagged for a referral.
We didn't have any particular reason to think he had vision problems and they told us that it is like most screens in that it flags children that are fine in order to catch most of the ones who aren't. So the follow-up time comes and we go to a pediatric ophthalmologist. I figured you couldn't get a 18 month old to read letters off of a chart, so I was interested to see how they would test his vision. More camera-like tools and some good old fashioned have the child look at a toy and watch to see when they focus on the toy.
Turns out the screen didn't mess up - our kiddo is really nearsighted. :(
The ophthalmologist reassured me it wasn't "the worst he's ever seen", but that his focal distance was only about 18" from his face. And he spent time looking at his eyes through magnifiers to figure out the best prescription for him - apparently it will be refined when Thomas can actually give some feedback, but that this "ballpark" prescription is better than nothing.
Picking out the glasses was a bit of a nightmare. Tommy did not like us putting things on his face. We hoped that once the glasses helped him see, he might leave them on. But when his real glasses came in and we got them fitted, he didn't do any better. The guy there suggested a few things to help ease the transition to glasses which mostly involved distracting him as soon as they were on.
But mostly he just pulled them right back off when we tried to put them on him. So this morning, we went full on distraction mode. Matt snuck them on Tommy while I played peek-a-boo with him from across the room. And he seemed to get that something was different. I walked him around the house and pointed at things far away. We have been a bit worried that maybe he didn't need glasses - he can spot the dogs across the room and says "ball" when they are across the room. But turns out he's just really good at identifying fuzzy objects.
He was pretty good at wearing them most of the day. He still ripped them off his face occasionally and hid them in a cabinet from us at one point. But overall, he wore them most of the day and seemed like he didn't mind them. So I guess he did need glasses and we should be thankful that they caught his vision issues so early. Most kids don't get screened until grade school, so at least he won't go the next 4 years not being able to see us from across the table.
And it doesn't hurt that he looks super cute in them! :)