Failed school eye test

[Morellocherries]

My daughter is in foundation and I received a text the other day to say that she failed the school eye screening test and has been referred for an appointment which will be at our local hospital. I managed to access the results of the school test through the parent portal which was 0.1 in the left eye and 0.7 in the right. This morning I sat down with my daughter and asked her to read letters from a book with one eye at a time and she was definitely saying that it is blurry on the right at a distance which I was easily able to read.

Obviously I am now a bit worried and feeling like a terrible mother that I had no idea that there was anything wrong!

I’m not really sure what I’m asking, sorry - I suppose I’m just hoping for some words of reassurance or advice while we wait for an appointment. Im not sure exactly what these results mean or how bad they are. Anyone??

@Rebel2023 That just made me laugh out loud. Thank you!

It's pretty common, my daughter got oicked up in the school screen, wore glasses for a year and grew out of it. If she had needed glasses for longer or forever it's not a big deal. I've worn glasses / lenses since I was around 11.

I failed an eye test at primary and was sent to the hospital. Aside from not seeinf well there was a big difference in my eye shape between the top and bottom horizontally. Lenses during puberty slowed further worsening of my eye sight and because of that My eyes are -4.0 and I wear normal glasses. Totally happy that they caught it on time.

In my country children get annual doctors checkups that include a vision screening. We went for a checkup at age 9 and dd was not reading the letters on the first row of the eye chart at all. I actually told her to stop goofing around. Then I realized she wasn’t, apologized, and pulled out my phone to start using my opticians online booking system before the nurse even finished the exam. I had no idea and dd had never said anything. Her previous checkup had been perfect.

@Morellocherries can I ask how it went? Did the appointment take long to come through? My ds failed his eye test and has been referred on.

Dont feel bad, that’s why they test at this age.

Neither of mine had eye screening at school (currently aged 12 and 15), although I did when I was at school, I remember doing the colour blindness test.

We actually found out when DS was 11 that he has really bad eyesight but only in one eye, the other eye is absolutely fine. Nobody had noticed, not even him, because the other eye was doing all the work. Now he has glasses but one side is just untreated glass (or whatever they are made of).

@scanner20 We have our appointment at the hospital tomorrow morning so the wait was about 8 weeks long. I will update when we get home.

Thank you, it wasn't too long, I was expecting it to be a long wait. Good luck, I hope all goes well.

Hope all is ok op. The good eye has probably been compensating for the bad eye so her vision with both eyes open will be better than the weaker eye by itself if that makes sense. So it wouldn’t have seemed too bad for your daughter as the vision in the good eye is ok.

@Scanner20 we went to the hospital this morning. They were great - very good with kids and super efficient. We saw a lady first who did lots of tests using letters, pictures, lights, 3d images etc. They then put in some eye drops to dilate the pupils and sent us to get a coffee for half an hour. When we came back we saw the optometrist (I think) who did more of the sort of tests I’ve had at the opticians. He was so kind, explained everything he was doing as he went along and my daughter did brilliantly. He said her eyes look healthy which is good news but that she is very long sighted in one and a bit in the other. The main issue is that there is a significant difference between the two eyes.
Anyway, the outcome is that she needs glasses which she will have to wear all of the time for now. The hope is that they can correct the issue and she may not need them forever or perhaps later only for close up working.
She has taken the whole thing in her stride and is very excited about the new glasses she chose in Boots (the hospital gave us a prescription to take to any opticians). She was only disappointed that she has to wait a couple of weeks for them to be made up!

Ah I’m glad you had such a good outcome for your DD. My daughter is 2 and she has had glasses for just over a year now because of a squint and she loves seeing the big kids with glasses!

Thank you so much. I'm glad she had a positive experience and that she is happy about it as that must be half the battle of them wearing them. I have read that with treatment they can improve with time. I will wait for the appointment and see what the outcome is.