(Eye) patching - nothing working

[Iminpatchinghell]

We were recently told our 3 year old DD needs to wear a patch for 6 hours a day, to correct a squint. She’s always been a sensitive girl, previous problems with leggings and socks, which are now resolved.
The sticky patches, she won’t even look at them, absolutely nothing can convince her to put it on. So we bought some fabric patches which go over her glasses. We’ve had a bit more success with these but not much.
I keep reading stories from other parents saying it’s tough but they wear it. It feels like we’re the only people in the world where it’s nigh on impossible to get it on her. Even very high value rewards aren’t working.
I’m waiting for a call back from the hospital to see what they can suggest next. But has anyone else had experience with patching on a really reluctant child?
At the moment I’m feeling like leaving it a year might mean she’s more receptive to it. So tricky!

I think when it's a medical need you just have to do it. What happens when you put the fabric patch on her glasses? She takes them off? And then presumably you put them back on? And she takes them off? I think you just need to put them back on. And stick with it.

Helping her understand how long she needs to wear it may also help. When I've had to do it before with children it's usually only a few hours each day. How long does she need to wear it?

My daughter was about 6 when she had to wear a patch. They were sticky but came with lots of different patterns and pictures on them so she loved choosing a different design each time, are yours colourful at all? Would it help if she could choose the designs?

Thanks for your comments.
In terms of putting it on and she takes it off, yes she would keep taking it off. Then she’d throw the glasses. Then she’d curl up in a ball covering her face. If we did force it, she’d sit there crying for at least 15 minutes. She can have epic meltdowns when she’s really upset.
She chose the fabric patches we have, they’ve got characters on she loves. It doesn’t work. We’ve tried asking childcare to encourage her with her friends, she responded at first but now won’t even try them on for a minute. We tried decorating the sticky patches with stickers and sparkly gems, but as soon as it’s on and she can’t see, it comes straight off.
This is what I feel, every comment I read is about making it fun, distracting them, and lots of rewards. None of that is working.

It's bloody rough - we had to patch DD2 for what felt like ages at that age - thankfully once we bought some pretty patches to give her a choice, she was fine complying with them, but then her eyesight regressed as she got older and was much more at an age where she was likely to refuse and was already being bullied at school, so on that occasion we went for the atrophine eye drops approach with it after discussing it with the orthoptist.

We've been there. What worked for us: unlimited TV in patch time, and arm restraints so she can't touch her eyes. Awful at first but honestly she'll get used to it. With more patch time her vision will improve and it'll be easier for her. Also, one hour a week for week 1, two hours week 2, etc. Straight in at 6 was way too much for us.

Have they checked she definitely has vision in that eye? Thinking cataracts or similar which need treating and can cause a squint.

And get the patch on absolutely the moment she wakes up - before her brain really kicks in and cottons on that her strong eye is turned off.

Think there might be an eye drops option but that would depend on being able to get the drops into her eyes.

The patch is to improve the sight in her weaker eye. It may or may not improve the squint.

My dd had to patch for a while around that age as the sight in her left eye was weaker and she also had a squint. She had an eye op around age 4 as the squint was still noticeable even when the sight had improved and was visible when wearing her glasses.

It’s very difficult. We had to do this with DS from when he was a toddler. I seem to remember sticking the patch on and then quickly distracted him with a tv programme or something on the iPad.

The hospital gave us nice reward posters, fun patches etc but it didn’t really work as he was too young to appreciate the rewards.

Once he had had the patch on for a little while he forgot about it.

Their eyesight is fixed by roughly about the age of 8 which is why they try to get you to patch when they are younger.

We had to buy our DC a Nintendo. He could play it if he had his patch on. Desperate but vital. He wouldn't entertain it at all otherwise.

He ended up having an op and his eyes are okay now unless he's tired then one wanders a bit.

That sounds really tough at her age OP. My son is 5 and we are patching at the moment. He was referred to the eye hosp at 4 and I'm almost with hindsight slightly relieved the wait was so long to see them as it would have been so much more.of a battle at 4 with him. He also struggles with some clothes and labels etc and we've found some patches which are a bit less sticky (they're cheap knock offs from Amazon essentially) which he's getting on with way better. I think the biggest thing though is that he's receptive to bribing - once he fills his chart we take him to choose a Lego set. No way that would have worked at 3.

Worth having a chat about the impact of waiting a year and trying again, I'm not knowledgeable about this so absolutely seek medical advice. Could you ask about the eye drops as well?

We were seen for our first follow up appointment recently and my son's weak eye has improved loads in 2 months so I'm really relieved. Good luck.

The eye drops can be put in while they sleep (daughter would never have done it otherwise) but I think can only be used 6 months at a time. It makes one pupil bigger so slightly more sensitive to light. My daughter had patched for years beforehand so I'm not sure if the drops were a last resort as the patching hadn't made too much difference.

Atropine eye drops were what worked for us. Dd had extremely limited vision in her unpatched eye, even when corrected with glasses. The eye drops meant that she could actually get a benefit from wearing the glasses rather than ripping the patch off and hiding her glasses.

Tbh I'd put up with the crying for 15 mins, it's tough but it's for the long term good. Obviously comfort throughout, but she needs to know it's happening and that's it. Once you're through the initial upset you can move onto doing special things with her why she wears it. A hug infront of a film with sweets/ice cream for example, because then you can keep track of her arms and be a constant comfort. Or a special art activity that you can sit and do together, again close by and her hands are busy. Or if her sight is really bad then maybe lay on your bed with her with an audio book on/tell her a story.

But I think the first stage has to be you make sure she keeps them on.

I patched ds1 and ds2 and whilst no one likes it, I would tell her that it had to be done. I wouldn't put up with any nonsense.

Hi,
my ds had a tough time with this as had v poor sight in lazy eye. We got a box of toys that he particularly liked, jigsaws, Lego etc that could ONLY be used while he wore his patch.
At first even 15 minutes was a struggle! Gradually got better, wearing at school was easier as was distracted.

Our 4 year old has a patch. Key for us was building up slowly as the eyesight in the weak eye started off so bad. So say 30mins then we can go to the cafe/ zoo/ wherever she loves. For a week. Then an hour. I have to be honest I had to take annual leave, and what felt like massively over treat her to get there, but she now does 3.5 hrs am then 2 hours pm, we are working on consolidating this to 6 hrs still but her weak eye has improved so much she no longer hates the patch. It has been soooo slow. Not sure if it would have worked at 3 but may be worth trying with the 30
min approach?

Mine was the same. Just would not do it. No matter what we tried. We had the tiniest success with patching at preschool as she was more compliant there, but she had such a distressing time that we had to stop that too. Her mobility isn't very good so patching made her fall over more too. We just stopped doing it. Couldn't do atropine due to potential conflicts with another problem. I used to look at other patched children and wonder what their parent's secret was. I don't think they necessarily had a secret or tried harder or were willing to cause their child a level of distress that we weren't prepared to tolerate. I think our child just wasn't patchable.
Luckily, her eyes actually self corrected to the extent we could have expected the patch to do anyway. Which was a relief.
But I defintely hear you. I've certainly learnt over the years as a parent of a child with very complex needs that it's usually not the case that you're not doing it right when you feel like you've tried everything. Instead it's usually the case that it actually is different / harder in your case.

What I recall worked a bit for DD2 as well was explaining to her that one of her eyes was getting a bit lazy letting the other eye do all the work and so we were going to tuck the hard working eye up in bed for a bit of a holiday and make lazybones eye do a bit of work everyday. She's naturally a right lazy bugger so she appreciated the sentiment I think and came up with all sorts of holiday plans for the overworked eye when it was having its holiday.

@OhWifey thank you, I feel like she is trickier than it seems to be with others. Her vision is so terrible without the patch that she panics as soon as her good eye is covered. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one struggling.

She wore the fabric patch for nearly 3 hours today! She wanted a toy at the shop so we got it for her and it just worked today. I’ve tried bribery so many times and it hasn’t worked. On Friday we played pirates and ran round the house looking for treasure and she loved it. So we’ve maybe reached a turning point.

@Oblomov23 great that you managed to successfully patch two children. We’ve been struggling and calling it nonsense isn’t exactly helpful.

Thanks for everyone who’s offered some tips that worked for them. I’m going to keep trying and mix it up a bit and see what works. But we’re definitely having more luck than last week.

@Iminpatchinghell Hi, I know this thread is old but am in a similar situation. I wonder did you have any joy with your little one? My daughter 3 refuses to wear any sort of patch. I can understand why she can see nothing when her good eye is patched and often ends up banging into walls or falling over. She's been prescribed Atropine 7 nights a week for 10 weeks but was told to limit physical activity while using it because her sight will be quite poor when she's using the drops. Thanks.

Hey @Linto
my daughter is now 5 and we’ve very nearly finished patching. It’s done the job in sorting her vision.
Honestly, the only thing for us was perseverance and excessive bribery. We did about 6 months of the fabric patch but she would always peek around it, that gave us an in to say she couldn’t carry on using it, as she’d just cheat it and it wasn’t working.
In the August, we saw her dr and they said her eye had not improved at all. And we said to her then and there she just had to have a sticky patch.
The first day we did the sticky patch, it took about 3 hours to get it on her. I tried all the nice stuff but eventually I just forced it, and said we’ll carry on until it stays on. I would stick her in her pushchair and take her for a walk with a teddy and some sensory toys. I figured if she couldn’t see properly then she could still hear the sounds and feel the toys. We started with 30 minutes every morning and loads of treats. Got her up to 4 hours a day now.
As the vision improves, they can tolerate wearing it as they can see better. So, it is only really hard in those first few weeks.

I would re-iterate this - it’s a hurdle to get over then it’s likely to be easier as her vision in the weak eye improves. I hugely bribed but I am glad I did now - we used to get a smyths catalogue and once she has three worn sticky patches on a sheet of paper she could have a toy. She looks back on it all fondly now. It’s so hard @Linto but keep trying, something will work. Sending luck to you