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SN children

Refusing glasses

6 replies

Purpleartichoke · 24/06/2019 19:06

The background. Dd is 10yo. Recently diagnosed ASD. Bigger issue right now is intense anxiety. We are waiting on appointments for medication and CBT.

Her vision recently changed and she needs glasses. She definitely needs vision correction by the time school begins again here (about 7 weeks away).

I knew getting her to pick out frames was a no go, so I found a company that sends a full set of frames to your house to try on. She absolutely refuses to do it. We took away screen time until she cooperated and she ended up spending the rest of the day and night crying and refusing to sleep. Today she has laryngitis which is something that happens when her anxiety gets bad.

I actually want to get her contacts because I understand that she doesn’t want glasses. There are a couple barriers to that. 1) she isn’t great with personal care 2) she has some dexterity issues

I have asked her to cooperate with glasses for one month, wearing them at home only and not when we gave guests. I want her to take care of the glasses. During that time I also want her to work on mastering brushing her own hair which she currently refuses to do. The two things combined would be to show she can handle the contacts.

I’m not getting anywhere and I don’t know what to do.

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Ambydex · 24/06/2019 20:33

Why doesn't she want to wear them? We can never overcome any of these things until we get to the bottom of what the problem actually is. Very difficult here as DS often finds it difficult to articulate.

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Purpleartichoke · 24/06/2019 20:59

Dd absolutely refuses to tell us why she won’t wear them.

She is actually incredibly articulate and her speaking, writing, and vocabulary skills have all been rated at the level of a 16-18 year old so it isn’t a communication issue. She is simply refusing to communicate.

She has some strange clothing quirks and absolutely refuses to wear anything with words on it. She won’t tell me why, but that quirk has been around since she was 4 and she will not waiver. I suspect the glasses issue is related.

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Ambydex · 24/06/2019 21:34

Ok, firstly with the contacts, I haven't worn them myself but my understanding is the sensation of them takes some getting used to. If there is anything sensory contributing to the dislike of glasses, contacts might be worse. But anyway I am with you on the self care thing.

You could perhaps try approaching this purely as an anxiety issue. PPs on this board or maybe SN chat have given some great advice on this. The example was reducing anxiety around getting to school. So first they'd just go into the car park or something. The child had complete control and could leave at any time, and was just praised for what they'd accomplished. Next stage might be to get out of the car - again could leave at any time, and adults resisting pushing the child to do a bit more, just letting the child call the shots and praising for what they had managed. I think the idea is that the barrier is the anxiety itself. We have used this for stuff DS finds hard, like cutting toenails, and it's really helped.

So to apply to your situation, maybe asking her to wear them at home for a month is starting too big. Ask her to pick a time of day when she is going to work on wearing her glasses. Maybe the first day she should just try to open the glasses case, without any pressure to do anything more. Then another day open up the case, and if she feels ready, get out the glasses etc - work up to actually putting them on her face and reading with them over a number of days. She stays in control and can stop any time. That probably sounds really Noddy as you know she is capable of putting glasses on her face, but it is amazing how DS's anxiety has dropped when we have broken the task down into minute "successes".

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Purpleartichoke · 24/06/2019 22:15

That is excellent advice.

I think DH and I need to discuss this again. He is adamant that she has to be in vision correction for school. That is creating a hard deadline which doesn’t allow for taking this slow. I was talking last night about how the real deadline is going to have to be when she switches to the higher level school a full year from now. He thinks that would be neglectful. I already vetoed forcing her into OT before we get her help for her anxiety. That wasn’t really a battle, he ultimately deferred to me since I felt so strongly about it.

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Ambydex · 24/06/2019 23:25

More haste, less speed. If you can get her to buy in to how much the glasses will help, that will help.

Hopefully someone else who knows more about this stuff will chip in.

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Purpleartichoke · 25/06/2019 00:01

Well DH and I talked and we are actually on the same page. We are going to slow down. We aren’t saying no glasses for school, but we will give her time to get used to it and hopefully therapy will help with that. We will have to ask that her vision be considered at her IEP meeting in regards to seat placement and possibly for writing things down from the board. Hopefully the school will be understanding if we explain that we are addressing it as best as we can. We already know she needs accommodations on writing down assignments and just writing in general, so hopefully this can just roll in with that issue.

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