Severe myopia (-12) in 2yo

[CorpusCallosum]

We're not long back from the Ophthalmologist where my 2yo DD was diagnosed as short sighted with a prescription of -12.

DH is shortsighted and as an adult is -10 which is severe. I understand for DD it's likely to worsen as she grows.

I'm struggling to get my head around it. She has some delays but I always thought her vision was fine, turns out it could be the route of it all.

Has anyone here been through this? How did your toddler come to accept glasses? What has life been like for you?

Yeah, even thinned down the higher prescription are still noticable at the sides. My son has now moved into blended lenticular lenses, due to his very high prescription.
There are some great advantages to this type of lens, mainly they are so much lighter and thinner at the sides however the prescription is only placed in the very centre of the lens so he has no peripheral vision.
I wouldn't recommend these for younger kids though but something to take note of in the future. Or even contact lenses for her when she is older.

I was 4 by the time they worked out what was wrong with me... -6 in each eye with added astigmatism. It didn't hold me back other than making sports awkward - but I was never sporty anyway! I did well in life in general, bar the usual bit of bullying. My prescription stayed very much the same until I was about 25 and started using screens for 10+ hours a day. I'm now 40 and it's -8 and -10, but it seems to have plateaued. Glasses are fine, contact lenses are fine. I have considered laser surgery, still mulling it over. I know you must be worrying for your DD but it didn't affect me much at all.

Swimming was never fun until I started using contacts though!

@isurvived3under2 dude your username 😅😅😅 you're a frickin hero never mind being shortsighted on top. You give me goals for DD, grandmummahood here I come! 🙌

If you decide to go for the second pair ask the hospital for a second voucher towards the cost before you buy them as she can't be without her glasses. As she's under 16 she's entitled to help towards the cost of them initially and towards repairs and replacements of glasses under the NHS. If you privately purchase the spare pair you'll be liable for all the costs if they get damaged. With that prescription her nhs voucher will be worth quite a lot - the higher the prescription, the more the nhs pay. It'd definitely be worth asking.

Plastic frames would hide the prescription better but young children have much flatter bridges than adults and plastic frames tend to sit lower. For a child this can mean they spend a lot of time looking over the frames which isn't what you want. Children spend a lot of time looking up anyway because they're short! Some young children's plastic frames have the bridge in a slightly different position to compensate for this. Round specs (like Harry potter) are a great shape for children because they can't look over them and they tend to make prescription lenses look better in terms of thickness too.

A few people on my local mums group recommended tomato glasses. Don't have a clue myself, but they seemed highly recommended.

Don't feel guilty.

I am - 11. I wasn't - 11 as a child, I think I was about - 7 as a child. It's fairly academic tbh, you're not noticing much difference. Tbh any highish number of simple short sightedness has similar vision, it's all just a blur anyway.

I am a fluke in my family, and my kids have perfect vision. Apparently extremely short sightedness from birth is rare enough. Makes me feel a bit special!

Ive been wearing contact lenses since 10. Not all the time, I always kept up my glasses outside school and still only wear contacts for work so as not to strain my eyes. But I adore the freedom (and vanity!) of contacts.

Anyway, one thing that may comfort you is something my optician told me. That it doesn't matter if your number is getting higher as long as its correctable.

My number has gone higher and higher and now I've had to get varifocals and I've astigmatism of course and it's all a bit complex and my glasses and contacts cost a bloody fortune. But I'm still highly correctable!

I'm used to it. When (If) my prescription stabilises as sometimes it does after middle age, then I'm going to enquire about lens replacement. But it's not that big a deal tbh.

I think DH, having lived through this himself, thinks he knows all there is to know and doesn't ask for details

Things are so different now, there are so many more options compared to when I was a kid. Don't rely on your dh's experience. Things move on all the time. Ask lots of questions and don't be afraid to try different opticians too. Ask around and see if anyone can recommend someone local who specialises in kids.

Just to add it's unlikely that your daughters glasses will be as thick as the lenses posted above. As children's glasses are smaller they will be able to cut the lenses from a much smaller original lens or blank as they are called so child spectacles will be thinner than an adults even if they are the same prescription providing they are both the same lens material.

Don't feel guilty for not noticing I'm a dispensing optician and I didn't notice that my 3 year old was a -6 with a high astigmatism a young child's world is mostly close up!

There are options available and more arriving everyday mainly for when she's a bit older though. If you want to look into them there are MiSight, Ortho k contact lenses and some newly realised glasses that reduced myopia called eyezen.

In regards to 2nd pair definitely get a hospital voucher for her when the prescription has stabilised I know a lot of places including specsavers have stopped doing kids 241 and even if they did you would still have to pay for lenses in 2nd pair.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to help if I can

@CorpusCallosum not sure twins when your eldest is 1 is something to aspire to, but I did it, dodgy eyesight and all. I remember thinking glasses would be a pain with small children poking and grabbing them but they were just the norm for my crew and they've always ignored them. I wish your DD all the best!

😡

I plucked up the courage to tell my brother and his wife by text. I was going to leave it to mum to tell them but thought it would be better to hear it from me. Bro sent a supportive text back.

Then my SIL immediately posted a pic to FB of her DDs sat both with their heads in books caption 'sometimes i feel so lucky'. She's doesn't even post that much.

Like WTAF?! So sad, so angry, so insensitive, so unnecessary.

When she’s bigger, look into overnight contact lenses. You take them out in the morning and they leave you with good vision for the day. They also slow down deterioration of vision. I’m not sure what prescription they go up to, but they really are excellent and will keep improving over the next few years.

Both my DDs (now 12 and 14) are long-sighted. DD12 is +9 and DD14 is +13.5. They have both worn glasses since they were little -DD12 got hers in her second birthday and she suddenly learned to speak! DD14 has hers from even younger. They don’t know any different and are both very happy to be in the glasses gang. They also both have amblyopia and astigmatisms. They have never had anything negative said to them because they wear glasses and certainly no bullying.
DD12 has divergent squints so had corrective surgery at 6. It has improved the squints but they are still there when she is tired. DD1 has huge squint but it’s corrected by her glasses and is a bit of a party trick - she likes to make people squirm by removing her glasses and showing them how her eye runs to hide behind her nose!!
Please don’t feel bad or guilty about your DD needing glasses.
My girls have gone through tens of pairs as can their eyes have changed (and DD12 has a habit of breaking them often so lots of repairs and replacements).
We pay extra for thinner lenses. Both girls much prefer the moulded frames rather than nose-pieces. They also have prescription sunglasses and swimming goggles.
Honestly, glasses have never held them back or been seen as anything negative!

CorpusCallosum, my son always has his head in a book, definitely his favourite pastime and has been from a very young age. Your little one will be fine and will adapt very quickly to her new glasses. They really want hold her back at all.. It is a shock for the parents more than the child when you first know your child needs glasses.

Back with an update. We got DDs glasses today 👏 her jaw dropped when they first put them on and then she started remarking on the fact that everyone was wearing shoes! It was very cute.

The optician told us her depth perception would be a bit off for a while as things will seem further away that they are. We took her to the park across the road straight after and she was watching her feet so closely - maybe it was surprise that she too was wearing shoes, maybe she was seeing the ground clearly for the first time - who knows!

It's only been a few hours but when playing she has been really good about wearing them, they're a novelty still. The pram walk home was less successful, lots of threatening to drop them in the road 🙈 I thought they would be a magic bullet but they fall down her nose so much and with taking them off she probably looks through them only about 50% of the time.

The glasses are much thinner than I was expecting so I'm pleased about that, they just look like normal kid glasses 🤓

Thursday night i had a bottle of wine for dinner and a meltdown, I'm feeling much better about it all now. Thank you everyone for the virtual handhold ☺️

Bet she looks super-cute in them.

could you put an elastic cord or something on them if needed, so that she can't get them off? Or maybe they still need a bit of tightening/fitting around the nose and ears, so that they're properly comfortable and won't slide down.

One of my favourite old children's books has a scene in it with a 9-year old getting glasses for the first time after years of not seeing, and it talks of her amazement at seeing the half moons in her fingernails, and the hairy bits on her blanket etc. So I'm not surprised she was amazed at shoes - probably blades of grass in the park, too!

So pleased to hear that your DD took well to them! I had glasses for short sight from about 4. As a child I didn’t actually notice them most of the time. As a adult I wear contact lenses but also occasionally glasses - the technology for making them thinner keeps improving so the thickness now is not necessarily what will be available in a few years’ time. There are lots of options for laser surgery/lenses when she’s older. As a op mentioned, you may find her speech improves massively, if she hasn’t been able to see people speaking if they are further away!

As for what she sees, my prescription isn’t quite as high as your DD’s (-9/-8), but it’s basically just blurred - everything is there (it’s not like being blind) - you just can’t see it in definition unless it’s very close up. It’s really hard to explain 😂

Oh and yes it does sound like they need more fitting - they shouldn’t fall off if the fit is right. Just pop back to the optician and ask them to re-fit the glasses - they can bend and heat them slightly until they are a better shape for her.

Agree about getting them re fitted, they shouldn’t drop down.

Regarding what things look like: for me the best parallel is that everything looks like an out of focus photograph (if you remember those before iphones auto focused everything 😆). Everything is there but blurry, the further away the more blurry.

@doublemix hope you don’t mind me asking but what age would you say the ortho k and mi sight are suitable from? And is one more effective at slowing down progression? Asking for my 8 year old. I remember wearing hard contacts for a while back in the early 90s as they were thought to help slow progression- god they were uncomfortable!!

@minipie both are suitable from about age 8-12ish, but it's all dependant on how compliant the child is. My nearly 8 year old couldn't even put the lens in so obviously wasn't ready I'm going to probably try again at about 11. Ortho k are hard lenses so I can't imagine an 8 year old would tolerate them very well and are only a temporary fix, and are only suitable for prescriptions upto about a -4.00. MiSight from what I've seen are better as they are more comfortable and there is some research that they can reduce progression in the long term for higher prescription the only limiting factor is that they don't cater very well if the child also has a high astigmatism and also they are quite expensive about £40-£50 per month.

Thank you! Hard lenses definitely puts me
off ortho k - they were so uncomfortable as I recall and I can’t imagine DD sleeping in them (she isn’t a great sleeper anyway). I will have a further look at Mi Sight but they do sound pricey, and quite new/untested? Thanks again

My ds is using mi-sight. He started aged 11 so a bit older. Hes 13 now. Took him about 4 optician's appointments to get then hang of them but once he got home he found it much easier and he wears them no problem all day every day pretty much. He plays a lot of sport so he had a good incentive for persevering.
They're £44 a month so expensive, but I'm really short sighted and if we can avoid that for him I'm happy to pay. His prescription has mostly stabilised since using them, it was getting worse at every visit before that, so they seem to be working for us.

Glad you're feeling a bit more positive now op. It must have been a shock.

They are lovely frames OP, bet your daughter looks cute in them! I agree with what others say about getting them fitted better, we often have several trips back to the opticians before a new pair is right

We've been back to the optician and had them refitted. It's much better now and she's tolerating them really well. I've not noticed an incredible change in her behaviour but she was sitting back a bit more while we read a book which made it more comfortable 👍

That’s good news! I hope your DD is settling into them!