How do you know if your child has a squint?

[Dragonhart]

Noticed that my ds1 might have a squint, especially noticable when he is tired or looking to the side. Spoke to health advisor and she has refered him to specialist. Would love any experiences as worried about him. What happend next?

i have lots of experience with squints, both mine have eyesight problems and squint and yes, it is always more noticeable when they are tired or ill. what will happen is you will go and see an opthalmic optician. they do a basic eye test to evaluate, and then put drops in the eye to dilate it to have a proper look at the back of the eye. from that they can tell if he will need glasses or not. the brain has to learn to use the eyes, if one eye is not so good, it stops using it, the muscles relax, and that is when the squint occurs.

dd - eyes ok till 18mths, then one day, her left eye was squinting. she's badly long sighted in both eyes and has worn glasses ever since.

ds - referred due to dd's problems, tested at 5mths. his eyesight is fine in the right eye, but his left needs a prescription lense so he does also have glasses on that side which will pull this eye straight. he won't wear them though, just chews on them. he's too young, 10mths now so we'll try again with them at about 18mths.

they both get checked every 3 months to make sure the glasses are pulling their eyes straight. if they are still squinting with the glasses on, that is when patches would need to be used (patch the good eye for a couple of hours a day to force the bad eye to be used, this exercises the muscles in it)

there are loads of groovy glasses for kids now, so don't worry if you find out he needs them. dd has barbie ones and they do beano ones for boys!.

hope all that helps. try not to worry . i was really upset when i found out dd needed glasses, but there are far worse things she could have had wrong with her.

My DS was referred by HV for suspected squint after his 18 month check - I had never noticed any problems. Turns out that he doesn'thave a squint, (he is very broad across the top of the nose (think it's called a wide epicanthal fold) so that can sometimes mimic a squint. However they did pick up on another potential problem -that DS is astigmatic, with one eye being more affected than the other, so they are concerned that he might develop a lazy eye, so they are reviewing him in July. Atm. no treatment is needed. So although HV was wrong about the squint, I am sooo glad that DS was referred as I would never have picked up the astigmatism by myself.

A friend of mine noticed after I said "does DS2 have a squint?"

He did! Was about 3 at the time I think. Wore specs for a bit and no probs now, aged 18.(Can't remember any details but could ask if you like?)

these are supposed to be eyes, not norks by the way . this is what a true squint usually looks like,

( . ) ( . ) - eyes straight

( . ) (. ) - eyes squinting, its usually one eye pointing either in or out

My dd has had glasses since she was around 19 months (now 2 1/2) as I noticed her left eye was turning in. The tests were like lucykate described and she was found to be slightly long sighted. She has been having patching treatment as well for a few months now but it is down to only an hour a day - she has been a star about both the glasses and the patching and sometimes we lose track and she has the patch on slightly longer than she should!!

p.s. she has the Beano glasses as she tended to peer over the smaller Barbie ones rather than through them. Still looks cute though.

I have squints in both eyes - had 2 operations when very young, which worked for a while but they have become very bad over recent years. I can spot squints in other pple very very easily. In fact, I think Leanne Battersby offa Corrie has one I'm sure, very slight though. Mine are so bad now that I am thinking about more operations as it is starting to undermine my confidence a bit. iwas out for the first time at the weekend for a good while and felt very aware of it. I think they can do much more now (i'm 38) but I know my mum had to fight to get them to take it seriously, so if you suspect something........shout.

hi my dd3 2 1/2 has a squint. Her's was very obvious from birth as really cross eyed. So far we have had two botox operations where they inject botox into inner eye muscle to bring the eye out. and one operation on her left eye where they cut two eye muscles to stop the eye turning in and up. She had patching from 4 months until 13 months then from 23 months until now she has had a lazy eye on both sides as she tends to favour one then the other eye becomes weak. Her eye sight is good though and she's not needed glasses as yet. She's currently wearing a patch for four hours a day, i found that the sticky patches available on the nhs made the skin round her eye sore and made her very upset (shes got very sensitive skin) So at first we tried childrens sun glasses with lenses taken out and a cloth patch (available from hospital) over the eye that needed patching she would keep them on for ten mins or so then loose them ! So i ended up getting some pirate type patches from an american company called eye patch heaven which she loves as they are child frendly and have pictures on them shes been ok since having them. one of the worse thinks is going for eye test every two weeks! Hope you get on ok with your dd i know from lots of reading on the subject the younger they are the better. Also moorland nhs hospital site has usuful easy to understand info.

My little one's eye used to move independently of the other one when looking at objects close to. It looked very odd. She has a convergent squint that is corrected by spectacles (thank goodness) so we haven't had the trauma of eye operations. Do they do these operations as much nowadays? I know that children were operated on routinely years ago.

My GP didn't send me to a consultant with her, she went straight to the orthoptist, who deals with squints. She had various patches, etc, eye tests up until the age of around 9. She was then discharged from the hospital and we now go to the local optician. She is very long sighted, but it is improving with age.

I agree with being able to see squints in others - I can spot them a mile off. There are lots of different types of squints, some that are corrected by glasses and others that aren't, so you will find out what he has got. The patching is a pain in the neck, but we used soft patches that fixed over the glasses and were much more pleasant in a small child. She had curly sided glasses when small and looked very cute.

Good luck!

Hi there is a thread on eye patch's which is quite useful, my daughter has a squint and has to wear a patch on her good eye for 1/2 day every day to try and correct it, she does'nt need glasses, sorry I would link it but not sure how to do this.

Thanks for all your messages, def reasuring! He is nealy 9 months old so maybe have the same probs as you lucykate with treatment. Have enough probs keeping a hat on him so god knows about glasses! Me and my husband both wear glasses, his eyesight is especially bad. Anyone know if this has anything to do with it?

Sorry to hijack this thread, and I know that this sounds stupid, but GS can go cross-eyed on demand and I have noticed that one of his eyes goes almost totally into the corner whilst the other moves only slightly. When he isn't pulling faces, I can't see anything wrong with his eye. His mum had a slight squint and I'm wondering if it's possible that he has one.

joash - given that squints can run in families, and you have spotted something that might be a problem, I would speak to GP/HV about it, and discuss whether an opthalmic referral would be appropriate.