Patching for 6 year old

[withgraceinmyheart]

Hi, has anyone's child been prescribed patching at age 6 or older to correct a squint?

We've been warned it might cause double vision, and I'm feeling nervous about it. Has anyone got any experience?

Thanks.

I had it myself and I would go with it as that eye needs raising up fast as the window of oppertunity will close with a couple of years. I did hate it but I am glad now. I did have a OP and that gave me temporary double vision for about four weeks. My child also had a late presenting squint but only needs glasses to fix and raise the lazy eye.

Thank you. I'm going to it, I'm just worried about it. Did you do any vision therapy or anything like that? I asked but there's nothing on the nhs, I'm wondering if it worth trying to find something privately.

My DD had a squint and we used patches over her stronger eye (to train the weaker one to work harder) between the ages of about 4 and 6. We were told that after the age of 6 or 7 it's no longer possible to correct a squint with patching. DD's squint improved (but is still there when tired). She had/has double vision when squinting, but not when wearing the patches.

Dd patched when she was age 3ish to improve the sight in her left eye. I think you have until age 7/8 to sort out this sort of eye issue

The patching may improve the squint but only because its helping to improve the sight in the unpatched eye.

I gather they wear glasses too? My dd had patching and wore glasses for long sight too

No I did not do vision therapy for my son as he responded well to the glasses. For me it did not exist. What I would say is find a good independent optometrist who works well with children. Often hospitals have a paediatric dispenser who works in optometrists in the community on certain days, we had a great one and followed him to a few places until he left the area, but we have a great person now and have yearly checks.

@dementedpixie

Dd patched when she was age 3ish to improve the sight in her left eye. I think you have until age 7/8 to sort out this sort of eye issue

There is new thinking that eye flexibility can go up to teen years in some children which is good news for those who find lazy eye late. But getting the NHS to carry on with patching after 8 is not common. I watched a you tuber who played fast paced video games improve her lazy eye. She was a young adult.

If you don't patch the good eye the lazy eye can give up. Ie blind in one eye. I would listen to your real doctors and not Dr Google.

So yes, generally you're improving vision in the bad eye by patching and not really the appearance of the squint.

Playing computer games is actually quite a good way of improving vision in the lazy eye when you have a patch on the other.

It's incredibly rare for patching treatment to cause double vision. Age 6 is within the boundaries for getting a good improvement - I've patched teens and young adults before and had some success.

I would like to say that parents should not wait for the school eye test, but should test earlier as possible as some kids are found nearly blind in one eye as the school eye test is late and often can be missed.

My dd got tested at 18 months due to a squint so we got ds tested fairly early too - maybe age 3ish i think. They get annual eye tests now

My DD was patched at 4 to attempt to correct her lazy right eye. We stuck to it religiously and it failed. The eye is - 15 🙄
Left eye does all the work and I just hope this doesn't f11ck up her driving dreams as she is 14 and desperate to drive.
Good luck I know it does work on some.

The patching doesn't affect the extent of the short sight, it affects the actual vision in the eye. My dd is long sighted and had patching treatment. She can see better in the unpatched eye but is still long sighted

I had it myself at a younger age. No double vision. Didn't need glasses
Need glasses for screen work now (I am 43 and spent 20 years working on computers)

Basically because of the squint the brain's deciding that the two eye-feeds don't quite match up and starting to ignore the feed from the weaker eye. The eye's there working fine but the brain's chucked the information from it into the "fuck it" bucket and is not processing it. You patch the good eye so the brain has no bloody choice but to start taking notice of the weak eye again. The way we explained it to DD2 was that one of her eyes was being a lazy bones and letting the other eye do all the work so we were giving the good eye a holiday to make the lazy eye do its job - she found that hilarious and kept coming up with ideas for what the patched eye could do on its rest (but DD2 is bonkers).

DD2 had two squints - an eye turn up which was quite marked, and a slight in-turn of the eye which just gives her an impression of concentrating excessively hard really (that one is very slight).

Patched at age 4 for bloody ages - got the vision back and it held stable so then she had the more pronounced up-turn squint surgically corrected at age 5. Vision in the weak eye held stable for a 6 months then started to fall off again (and wasn't picked up on quickly because our orthoptics department are terrible for getting appointments at).

Was picked up again when she was 6 and in year 2 - and we gave her the choice that time about patching or atropine eye drops (very conscious that she was that much older, had already had some bullying for SN and that she also had a load of sensory issues from her SN) - she chose the eye drops so we used them for I think it was about 2 months or so (advantage being they keep much more of an eye on them using drops so we didn't have the forgetting to send us follow ups issue) and the vision was back fine.

I'll be honest that the 6 year old patching was a lot harder going than when she was younger because of the reading load required at that age. We were lucky in that she used her iPad in class anyway to type work because of her dyspraxia - so we set it up that she could use it as a magnifier for anything she needed to read - or photograph the page and zoom in, and the class teacher (who thankfully was brilliant that year) would enlarge worksheets for her when she was really struggling.

She still has the slight eye inward turn which they don't want to correct as it is so small there's a real risk of going too far the other way, plus short sightedness runs in our family so there's the likelihood of glasses being needed in the future and that will affect the eye turn as well or something.

My Ds has a squint in her right eye and vision is also lesser in that eye. When I patch that eye for excercises and take off the itch her good eye seems to go funny and out of place. Is this normal?