Anyone ever heard of children as young as 3 having to have contact lenses?

[girliefriend]

My friend told me recently that her 3 yr old son would have to have contact lenses as the difference in his eyes is too great for glasses, I was and How would you even put lenses in a 3 yr olds eyes? My dd would have gone ballistic if I went any where near her eyes!!! I told her that I would get a 2nd/ 3rd opinion as this doesn't sound right to me. Has anyone else been told this?

I always thought the opposite, but I'm no optical expert.

But I begged for contacts from about 14 and was told by the optician that I'd have to wait until 16 as your eyes are still developing and growing too rapidly to make contacts viable.

and

The opposite being that if your eyes are too different you couldn't wear contacts. Sorry

My DS had them at 10. I have heard of a toddler having them and can't see why not, if you can get them in and out cleanly.

My friend is really stressed as he does def have to have them, something to do with getting the right messages to the brain..... but getting them in is a nightmare

wow 3 yo is a bit young i would've thought. any idea what his power is? my dd is 6 and i always knew she'd probably wear contacts eventually (we are both extremely short-sighted, dd started wearing glasses at 2, and i started wearing glasses at age 8 and lenses at age 16 or 17) but not til she's at least, oh i dunno, 12? and able to handle the lenses properly and the hygiene aspect and all. am tempted to ask her eye dr if she can wear lenses now :0

Yes my friends little was prescribed special lenses as glasses just aren't strong enough for the eye condition she has.

She won't wear them though as as a result her school work is suffering terribly, poor mite

It's definately worth perservering with them.

How shortsighted is your dd, hazlinh?

My 8 y/o dd has just been prescribed rigid gp lenses as they apparantly can slow down progression of shortsightedness, she's currently -6 diopters in each eye.

She's not getting the hang of getting them in, though, so we've left off trying for a couple of weeks as she was getting very stressed about it all.

The good thing is that at least when she gets them in successfully they are comfortable (more so than her glasses she says), DH was prescribed them about the same age for the same reason & found them awful to wear, but fortunately I guess the materials have come on!.

I started wearing contact lenses over 30 years ago, at the age of 8. I'm a bit about 14 being "too young". My two eyes are also quite different.

I wouldn't try to stick contact lenses into the eyes of a 3 year old. Lenses for prescription glasses can also be quite different - there is no rule that says if your eyes are different, you shouldn't wear glasses.

Takver, her right eye is 5.25 and her left eye is 7.5. What's rigid gp lenses?

Personally, I find that different brands of soft lenses differ in terms of comfort. I guess it depends how well they fit your eyeball...

CoteDAzur, am glad to hear you started wearing at age 8! To be honest, I'd never heard of small children wearing lenses before this. Our oncologist did suggest it, but I dismissed him as I reckoned he wasn't an expert in the field! Maybe I should ask her eye dr if she can start wearing at age 7.

Apologies girliefriend for hijacking your thread...but thanks so much for starting it...

ds age 5 has specs with one plain lens and one bottle bottom! Had then since 14 months.

I'm a bit about this. DD's vision in one eye was appalling as a baby/toddler - registered blind level, but perfectly normal sight in the other eye. We had to do lots of patching to make sure the right messages got to her brain, but they didn't want to give her contacts at a young age because they said it was major hassle as toddlers tend to lose them constantly.

I know Im still myself but my friend got a little bit stressed when I quizzed her as she has had two consultant eye drs tell her the same thing. Will have to wait and see, Im guessing there must be a plan b as most toddlers I know this would not be viable in the long run

hazlinh - they're rigid gas permeable lenses - since they were prescribed to dd I've met a few other people who were given them at the same age.

The optician said it was more usual to prescribe from age 10 up, but that if an 8 y/o was happy to try them & had a reason for doing so then there was no reason not to give it a go so long as parents were happy to help with cleaning etc.

Obviously the chance of losing them is another issue as they're not disposable, but we're hoping that if dd does get on with them we can get contact lens insurance.

I think the thing with them potentially slowing down progression of shortsightedness is still uncertain (and that if it does help, it only helps some people), but there does seem to be a consensus that they don't do harm, which is why it seemed worth a try.

good luck to your friend, girlie!

thanks Takver, will have a chat with dd's eye dr... :)

Your friend has been advised correctly. A big difference in prescription means that, particularly in spectacles, a different image size is projected onto the retina. This can make it difficult to impossible for the brain to fuse the images of each eye into a binocular image. Instead the child will begin to suppress or ignore one of the images causing a permanent decrease in vision in that eye. Contact lenses will go a long way towards creating more equal retinal images and give the child a chance at developing normal binocular vision. is an instructional video made by a mom who has to do this for her children. With patience and perseverence it can be successful. Your friend needs encouragement, not skepticism.

hazlinh, you may find he completely disagrees about them - it seems that there isn't a scientific consensus about it at all.

By chance, dd's optician used to work in research on the subject, and his opinion was very much 'not definitely proven, but the evidence is relatively positive, and unlikely to do harm', and we read up on it as far as we could, and what we found seemed to agree.

Sorry jabber, but that doesn't make sense. Very different images are indeed projected onto the retina of a person whose two eyes have very different prescriptions if he doesn't wear contacts or glasses. This does indeed lead to the brain ignoring the worse eye, which then becomes lazy. (This happened to me when i stopped wearing glasses & contacts at university)

With glasses or contact lenses, the images projected onto the retinas are the same or nearly the same, for the simple reason that they are corrected by the contacts/glasses.

Cote, I am a developmental optometrist in the US with 21 years of experience and a minor in physics. I do believe I know what I am talking about.

Jabber, how does a parent get a 3 year old to wear contact lenses?

I could not even get my 3 year old to open his mouth for the dentist or put eye drops.

It just takes patience and perseverence but it can be done. The link I posted shows a mother inserting contacts into her infant's eyes and her toddler's as well.

What's your opinion on the gas permeable lenses thing, jabberwocky?

So far dd has found them very difficult to get in, so we thought probably best to leave it for a bit, and try again in a couple of months.

Its hard, because (having moved opticians for logistical reasons, and because you don't always get the same one at different tests even within the same practice) it feels like there are different messages. One optician says 'its all genetic, there's no environmental component, she's just going to be as short sighted as she'll be, no point worrying about it'. Then another says 'well, I never see farm children who are shortsighted, and there is research evidence saying that time outdoors makes a big difference'.

What no-one ever says is that reading has any effect - yet I look around & see all the bookish middle class children (sorry for stereotype, but it is true) wearing glasses . . .

And its hard to know how much to worry about shortsightedness in any event - DH & I are both -5 or so, and it worries us that DD is already more shortsighted than either of us & she is only 8 . . .

-6 at 8 years old is an extreme amount of myopia. I fall in line somewhere in between the two schools. Genetics, imo, does play some role in the tendency of vision/visual processing but near stress greatly exacerbates it. The worry is that along with extreme nearsightedness comes the increased risk of retinal detachment. The theory of gas perms is that they can be used to flatten the cornea which can reduce/control nearsightedness. But that doesn't have an effect on the eyeball growing longer. I think it would be well worth your time to seek out a developmental optometrist through BABO who is skilled in myopia reduction techniques. 8 is a really good age to try something like that.

Thanks, jabberwocky, that is really helpful.

Could you help me understand then, jabberwocky.

What do you mean when you say that a different image is projected onto the retinas of eyes with different prescriptions when said eyes are corrected with glasses? How is this different than being corrected with contact lenses?

I'd like to ask you another question, if you don't mind: What is the standard practice in the UK for children's hypermetropie? Do you prescribe glasses for it?