Share your top tips on getting your child to wear their specs with Specsavers: you could win a £250 voucher NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

The team at Specsavers know all about fitting specs and getting the correct prescription but would love to know from parents how you go about ensuring your child wears their specs when they need to.

They say "At Specsavers we have great deals on glasses for kids: all in our kids’ £64 and teens’ £85 ranges are free with under-16s’ NHS funding. And now, Specsavers will give you a second pair from the £64 or £85 range, free. Both pairs can come with SuperTough Trivex® single vision lenses with a scratch-resistant treatment. Or you can choose to have tinted prescription lenses and UV filter free in your second pair. We also have a fantastic range of children’s glasses to choose from, with fun designs including Moshi Monsters, Disney Princess, Star Wars, LEGO®, The Simpsons and many more.".

So, whether you have a spec wearing toddler, teen or any age in between please share on this thread your tips to ensure the glasses are on their noses when they should be!

Share your thoughts and everyone who does will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £250 voucher from here

Please note Specsavers may use your comments - anon of course - on their pages on MN, on their social media or possibly elsewhere - please only post if you're happy with this.

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

DD2 will wear her glasses when reminded, so long as she actually has her glasses there. That's where 2 pairs are really handy: one pair lives in her schoolbag and the other pair are kept on the mantelpiece beside the TV remote control.

The schoolbag pair are supposed to transfer to the family rucksack at weekends. She's getting better at remembering to do that now she's noticed that when she actually wears glasses out on walks, she can see all the tiny things on the horizon that the rest of us get all excited about. (Honestly, nothing exciting - trains, seagulls, that kind of thing...)

Ds2 and ds3 have both had glasses since they were 3. I think it has helped that they have to wear them all the time so they go on with their clothes in the morning and off at night and less likely to lose then if they are wearing them. Neither of them were ever a problem. They have always chosen their own glasses.

Dd has worn glasses since she was 1. My tips for getting a very young toddler to wear them is not to push it at first. You don't want them to associate the glasses with getting upset. Keep putting them on but leave a few minutes every time they take them off before trying again. The best time to get them on for longer is to put them on when they are distracted by something like tv or a toy. Gradually they stay on for longer and longer and they will start to want to wear them once they realise it is easier to see!
Another tip is to get everyone involved. Me and dh wore our glasses instead of contacts more often and I got my older two children fake glasses (cheap from amazon, just frames with clear lenses) so we all had glasses for a while! It made it much more fun for dd

I'm a lifelong, full time glasses wearer (and now distance and reading glasses wearer ), so I don't think ds was worried about having glasses for reading only

our 9yr didn't want to wear glasses but as it ended up the glasses itself had incorrect strength, so tip 1 - make sure the glasses are actually correct for your child
tip 2 - let them pick what they want to wear... (with some limits ofc)
and let's hope they are going to last more than a week (we just replaced 3 pairs of glasses within 1 month)

It can be really difficult! We got my daughter pink ones and that does help to a certain extent as she loves pink so can help with her wanting to wear them a little more often. In the holidays we use a star-point system, then if she wears them without being told more than once she gains a star and can choose to have a treat at the end of the week!

My daughter always wanted specs to be like me....and other heroes like Katy Perry.
Now she's a bit older, she appreciated her new prescription and the fact that when she put her new specs on the world came into sharp focus.

But I think the whole 'trying on' things, the fact that you can have more than one look, especially with 2-4-1 at Specsavers means they can be the master of disguise, or show how they feel by chopping and changing. They can create unique looks, and being able to let a child know they can lead trends is important for their confidence.

These are my daughter's latest Specsavers additions....before we went in she knew she wanted pointy 1950s/60s style. And boy does she carry them off! I'd look like Olive from On the Buses....

My DD was fine about wearing her glasses but she just forgot to get them out of her bag at school! It helped when her friend was given glasses not long after, so they became 'glasses buddies' - reminding each other when to put them on and take them off!

Get them to actually choose the glasses with you and make it a fun experience. Specsavers now do 2 for 1 for children so get a school pair and a home pair.

My oldest dd is 21 one now and first started to wear glasses when she was four,

She was fine about it, she loved choosing them and even had fun at her eye tests. I was gutted at first which sounds stupid now but I felt guilty ( a mother's lot is to feel guilty!) that she needed glasses.
We first noticed that she might need a pair when she got given a Tamigotchi virtual pet toy for her birthday. She would hold it at arms length to see what was on the screen.
We took her for her eye test and had a thorough check, she then went on to choose the brightest pair of glasses she could find. They wouldn't have been my choice but I wasn't the one who would be wearing them.
She did take them off a lot to begin with but she could tell herself the difference the glasses made and soon learnt to keep them on.

She did go through a stage of wanting to keep them on for bed, we had to wait until she was asleep and then take them off. Luckily she grew out of this!

She has had dozens of glasses over the years and has two beautiful pairs now, it has actually become quite trendy to wear glasses now and she does get complimented on them quite a lot. She is a gorgeous girl( in my unbiased opinion ) and has bags of confidence so if there are any mums out there with young children who need to wear specs I want to let you know that we haven't encountered any negatives with our daughter.

My eight-year-old boy has worn glasses since he was one so his compliance is pretty good since he is so used to wearing them. We pay extra for Transitions lenses so that they darken outside which makes them look much 'cooler' to the other kids and is very useful in the summer. The only problem is it's quite expensive (£25 in my case) so if he gets his lenses scratched then we say he has to have plain lenses on his next pair. To be fair though he's very careful with them so we haven't had to follow through on that yet.

The other thing we have is a wooden glasses holder similar to the photo which is a safe place for him to keep his glasses at night and we do a silly voice when he puts them on it at night saying, Thank you I can see now.

My ds who is 6 picked his own glasses which I think was the first step for him to bond with them.

Secondly he see's both his parents wearing them all the time so he was quite normal about it

We are a family of spectacle wearers. That was no help to DD2 when she was prescribed glasses at just turned 3 years old. She also has SEN and at the time didn't have much language.

Her sight is really bad. At first we thought we would never crack it. We tried games - teddy, dolly wearing her glasses, didn't work.

I made it a condition that she had to wear them to go out. Getting ready to go out was hat, coat, mittens, glasses. I think the penny dropped she could now see the world properly and she stopped making a fuss.

She is 12 now. Her glasses are last thing she takes off at night and first she puts on in the morning.

DS has been wearing glasses since he was two-without them one of his eyes goes inwards quite severely. He did choose his own pair, but being 2 he didn't really get that he had to wear them as well.

We had to be quite strict so if he refused to wear them or took them off we would stop what we were doing with him and not continue until he put them on. I felt awful, but it did only take a couple of days for him to forget he even had them on.

Now he is 6 he puts them on as soon as he gets up......although he doesn't like it that all the girls chase him in the playground and call him cute because his glasses make him look even more lovely!!

My children have had no problem wearing theirs, mainly because I let them choose their own frames.
My older two are now 18 & 19 so not an issue, but with my 9 year old we look at the frames that fit, narrow it down to the shape that suits her, then she chooses from them.
She's so happy with her glasses - and especially with the handbag shaped glasses case we found in Specsavers! It was only a few pounds but she thinks it's the bees knees ;)

My DS has worn glasses from the age of 7 although now, aged 14, he is in daily disposable contacts. We just kept telling him how lucky he was, how good he looked. It helped that he got on a plane and was immediately called Harry Potter by the cabin crew which he felt was cool. Towards the teens, he became more reluctant but, to be honest, he really needed them and quite liked seeing.

Now he has contacts, in spite of an agreement to wear his glasses when home for the day with no visitors, he still uses up a pair because he is 14 and vain. Also, buying new glasses costs £££ and so he is in a rather old pair so does not look his best.

my ds has worn glasses from 3, now he's 6.
even though he is a sporty rough kid, he always wears them willingly, we told him how great they looked, and he can't see without them.
Thank god for NHS free repairs is all I can say

Children are more receptive to wearing glasses than they were a few years ago.
It is important that they choose the style themselves - children are far more image conscious than when I was at school. They also need to see role models wearing them so that they are seen as being cool

Ds1 age 6 has worn glasses for a couple of years and despite the trauma of the lego ones being too small for him, he seems to find his Star Wars glasses very cool and wear them willingly (although he has no idea what Star Wars is!) DS2 has to be prevented from stealing his brothers glasses!

This thread is very useful for me! Me and DH have been glasses wearers since childhood and DS is nearing the age when I started to need them so I am very aware of this, as I have quite severe myopia. I had the incentive to wear them as a child because I wouldn't have been able to see a thing without my glasses but I was in the age of the 3 choices for kids glasses - clear, blue or pink national health specs.

Now things are so much better and I think there is much less chance of kids feeling embarrassed of their frames in the way I was. But as for what would encourage DS to wear them if/when he needs them - I'd have to say that he's 5 and anything that's like dressing up is a good thing. You have specs based on characters, which is a good move. But what about accessories you could buy to customise your glasses if you wanted (but which could be removed for school, etc, to have the plain frames)? Anything robot-y would get my sons vote.

My tip is about choice. If my kids have ownership of their glasses they will wear them. The best way to do that is to give them the choice, let them pick their glasses themselves without me interfering or trying to dictate which ones they should wear. If they want them, they will wear them.

DS1 always said he didn't want glasses but after seeing an episode of Charlie and Lola about getting glasses he was suddenly desperate to some himself!

It took a while for DS to get used to them when he first had them, and a couple of times he left them at school. However his eyesight deteriorated quite sharply last year, so the pair he has now really make a huge difference to the amount he can see, and he wears them for every waking moment; he actively needs to be reminded to take them off before the lights go out.

DD started wearing glasses just after she was 3. At the time she was Minnie Mouse obsessed aand loved purple so we were very happy to find purple Minnie Mouse glasses in Specsavers! Never had any problems getting her to wear them, or the several other pairs we've had since. She loves her current ones which are still purple but with Hello Kitty. The only problem we have had is that if she gets up in the night she puts her glasses on but may forget to take them off again resulting in some bent frames! A plea for specsavers through, please do some more rounded styles for 6 years plus. After this frame size they are very rectangular which does not suit a +7 prescription. I don't want to change opticians but may have to if there are no frames to suit her.

My 7 yr old DS is forever forgetting to put his glasses on in the morning, so I have started putting them with his toothbrush Also no TV or computer unless he has his glasses on.