Do you wear glasses? Please share your memory of wearing them for the first time and your tips on getting them for the first time with Specsavers - you could win £250 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

The team at Specsavers would love to hear your story of when you first put on a pair of glasses and realised what you were missing - did you have that "wow" moment? How life changing it is to have your vision corrected for the first time? They'd also love to hear your tips for other people on wearing specs for the first time - whether they are for a long or short sighted prescription.

Specsavers say "when you choose Specsavers Opticians you are in safe hands - as shown by a YouGov 2014 survey*, Specsavers has been voted the most trusted optician in the UK. We always completely follow the guidelines set out by the General Optical Council - this means that all our glasses are professionally fitted under the supervision of a qualified optician. Every pair of glasses is individually made to meet your vision requirements and lifestyle needs - your dispenser will check that your new glasses fit properly and that you have clear, comfortable vision, making any necessary adjustments to ensure a perfect fit – making getting that first pair a easy!"

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

I got mine last year from spec savers. I filled in one of the little cards because I was so impressed with the trouble the staff took to help me. I didn't know what I wanted at all!

I have varifocals which took some getting used to. To start with I felt a bit sea sick, and had to walk very deliberately.

I went back in a couple of times and had them adjusted and to check whether things were normal.

I only bought cheap ones but the staff treated me as if I had spent a million pounds.

It took me even longer to get used to being a glasses wearer. I'm quite a disorganised person and so I spent a lot of time dashing back and forth between house and car collecting my glasses from where I had left them.

Now I'm used to it, and I actually think I look better with my glasses on.

I first had to start wearing glasses when I was just three. I am 48 now so they are part of me and I really cannot remember not having them. The year would have been 1969. No Specsavers back then, so they had to be plain old children's NHS frames, which were far from stylish.

Cutting a long story short (ish), I had to have two operations on my eyes at the ages of two and three to correct a very stubborn squint. The glasses were (and still are) to correct my long-sighted-ness and attempt to give me as much binocular vision as possible (it did not develop because the squint had gone on for too long).

I do use Specsavers now, and have had no trouble. I like the range of style and price available and I am now finding the BOGOF deal useful. I have bifocals (close-up vision deteriorated over the last three or four years) with reactions lenses as my main pair of glasses, and as my second pair I have some made up with just my reading prescription in so that I can use the computer at home and work more comfortably.

I started wearing glasses just to see the board at school when I was around 12/13. I hated it. I had horrible round disgusting things and I felt like an idiot in them.

Thankfully the next time I had to get glasses I had to have them full time and my parents spent a bit more time and money with me and I got some better ones.

I twas nice being able to see though!

When I got my first glasses at aged 11, my focus changed and going down a flight of stairs was scary. After a while I got used to my specs and it was amazing to see the bus from a distance and get sharp vision again!

I started wearing glasses when I was 15. I had known I was short-sighted since I was about 8 but was afraid to tell my parents as I always felt they expected me to be perfect and being short-sighted and wearing glasses would be seen as an imperfection. I finally plucked up courage to tell them. I couldn't believe the difference when I put them on for the first time. The following day I went outside wearing them. My mother's response was, "You're not going to wear them all the time, are you?" I did wear them all the time because I found life so much easier with them than without.

Being a teenager, he first day at college with them was scary! But soon got used to them and the big plus was being able to read what the teacher was pitting on the board.

I was first prescribed glasses at the age of 5 and found it an humiliating experience. Back then I was constantly bullied, "four eyes" was the usual comment and this did nothing for my self esteem. Children can be horrid!

Glass wearing is much more accepted now.

After a year of copying off my friend and then finally glasses-sharing with her (she'd put them on, remember the sentence to write and then pass them to me to do the same!) my Mum finally relented and took me, age 13/14, to the options to finally "prove" I didn't need them. You see I used to read books in semi-darkness and Mum was long-sighted so thought if I could read then I didn't need glasses, but I ended up being short-sighted and needing glasses. I was given the gold-rimmed round glasses of the time and later offered, but thankfully declined, the huge round "Deirdre" glasses in a "fetching" pale pink! Thank Goodness for a kids range and the nice styles in Specsavers!

I can SEE! Those were the first words I said as I stepped out of the opticians wearing my new glasses. I never knew what I was missing...that everyone else saw individual leaves on trees! I love the freedom of my contacts, but I love the comfort of my specs. It's lovely to get all cosy in your jimjams and swap your contacts for specs before hunkering down on a dark winter's evening. My first ever pair were blue 'nasho-s' but my daughter has the most gorgeous designer specs (from Specsavers as it happens.) How times have changed.

The first time I wore glasses I looked into the garden and I was astonished that it wasn't all just green. I could see each and every blade of grass and every leaf and I could see the wonderful different shades created where sunshine and shadow hit them. Simply stunning. I was about 12.

i remember getting my first pair of glasses when i was 11..it was nearly Christmas and i remember walking out of the opticians and looking up at the lights and thinking how amazing and sharp they looked..i spent the day walking around the shops in wonderment!

i would say always buy a spare pair, they come in very handy and it also nice to have another style..one for work one for play!

I am short-sighted and astigmatic and have worn glasses with intermittent forays in to using contact lenses since I was 10.

Being able to see individual leaves on a tree outside the opticians as I came out of the shop for the first time is still an intense memory! All colours seemed so much more intense because everything was so amazingly in focus.

I'd rather not have glasses, but now that I am in my late 40s I am rather enjoying the fact that my near-vision is perfect without them and that I am not very likely to ever need reading glasses

I wear my glasses to death (my current pair is 6 years old and going strong) and I have never had a pair from Specsavers, sorry.

I got my first glasses when I was 11. I remember getting out of the car on our drive, looking across the road to our neighbours garden, and their line of trees inside their fence. I was mesmerized as I looked at the details of the leaves fluttering in the wind. I had never imagined that trees would look anything other than a green blob over a brown trunk from a distance, like you see in cartoons.

My first pair of glasses this year (September) after starting work and. Realising I couldn't read off the white board (in a school) and tbh am adjusting to wearing them & don't like it much.

I am still at the at age where my balance feels odd wearing them (don't need them for reading a book) and will when cash allows book for lazer eye surgery. However it is a revelation being able to "see" properly!

Take your time purchasing frames, and dont be pressured by the salespeople. You're the one who will have to live with the frames for several years, so choose wisely!

Take your time purchasing frames, and dont be pressured by the salespeople. You're the one who will have to live with the frames for several years, so choose wisely!

Oh YES! I "broke up" with my longstanding optician when they persuaded me to take out a second pair of glasses, sunglasses with strength, and told me how great I looked in a fifites style BLUE frame. Dont know what I was thinking spending several hundred pounds on the ugliest glasses in the world. The sales person possibly felt good about getting rid of a pair of frames that was difficult to sell.

She also got rid of a customer who spent a lot of money on glasses, daily disposable contact lenses, saline solution, and also bought other things in that store at ever visit. I guess £1500+ per year lost (not counting new glasses and other things bought in the shop) was worth it, for the sake of making one extra sale.

Take your time purchasing frames, and don't be pressured by the salespeople. You're the one who will have to live with the frames for several years, so choose wisely!

Yes from me too. I have a very strong prescription (-10 / -11) and the dispensing optometrist took a great deal of time measuring me (including looking at the bridge of my nose, position of ears etc). Took account of the fact that I struggle a bit with loss of peripheral vision in glasses compared to contact lenses, especially when reversing my car, found me the best pair of frames in the whole shop which can take thin lenses, give good width, are comfortable and fit properly, they are comfier and give me better sight than any other pair I've had. But they are UGLY! I hate them. And they started to look dated almost immediately. They make me look like Ronnie Barker. I should have held out for something else or shopped around. Thank goodness I only wear them minimally because I have contact lenses.

I was four when I started wearing glasses, I hated them and threw them over a wall. I now wear them all the time, I wear contact leanses when I go out. When I need new glasses I always take my contact lenses with me or I would not be able to see what the glasses look like on.

I got my first pair of glasses when I was six years old.

They were NHS blue ones. Not the usual square shape we associate with NHS glasses but oval and a bit granny-ish.

I was late for school because I'd had my glasses fitted. I walked into the classroom. The teacher stopped, turned and said, "Just look at Winky!"

The whole class turned and everyone burst out laughing. I.ve no idea why. The teacher joined in.

I just burned with embarrassment and shame and scuttled to my seat like I'd done something wrong. Just awful. I still feel deep embarrassment when I think about it. What on earth did that teacher think she was doing?

But then I could see. My eyesight was -4 from the off so it was a revelation to me to actually start to understand what was going on. And I never made a fuss about wearing them despite that dumb teacher making me feel like an idiot.

I was 7 when I got glasses for the first time. Typically for the 70s a lovely pink NHS pair with the arms that book right round your ear . But my parents spent a small fortune that they didn't have on a nice gold rimmed pair too. However, I refused to wear them and continued to squint at the blackboard and miss what was going on at school.

Teacher made matters worse by nicknaming me the Professor with the Golden Glasses (this will totally out me). Consequently I was about 19 before I accepted that I couldnt see.

Since then I've totally grown to love my glasses to the point where in the unlikely event of me having laser eye surgery I'd find myself a nice pair of clear ones to wear anyway because they make me looks better!

I got my first glasses at the age of 18 and I was surprised on the difference in my vision. I could finally recognise people in the street and more confident in going down the stairs.

At first I had mixed feelings, I was happy to look different and to be able to change my glasses when I wanted and I also felt like something I had to get used to.

I now wear contact lenses but when I want to feel a bit different I put my glasses on, a friend on mine keeps saying I should wear them more often...

I was 13 and I remember walking home from the optician feeling slightly overwhelmed by how much I could see. When I got in my brother and sister were watching cartoons and I said "Cartoons have edges!" I hadn't thought about it before but it was a shock to see that there were hard lines on cartoons!

I took my eldest with me to Specsavers when I went for an eyetest, I think she was 4. I asked them if she was old to have a test because I wanted to get her used to it. They tested her and said she needed to see the hospital because they weren't sure if she was being honest about what she was seeing or not. The hospital said yes her sight wasn't good and sent us back to Specsavers for a test with drops. While we were waiting she wanted to look at the children's frames. She had already chosen which pair were going to be her normal ones and which ones her sunglasses! If they had told her that day that she didn't need glasses I think she would have been heartbroken! She never really told us what it was like wearing them but the optician said she was so long sighted that she could barely see anything and was probably really struggling at school.

I got my first pair of glasses half way through university, had been plagued by headaches throughout my a levels but had never had an eye test.
Suddenly - wow! I could see the screen at the front of the lecture theatre clearly! More brain space available for actually concentrating on what was going on rather than trying to see! Have a similar, small scale revelation every time my prescription goes up!

I was 5 or 6. Previously, I thought trees were like cartoon pictures, with a mass of green on top. I was astonished to discover they were made up of individual leaves, and I could now count every single one if I so desired.

I went through a phase of wearing contacts in my teens / early twenties but they are a lot of hassle, whichever type you use - either cleaning them or having to pick up new supplies - and now I have DD I rely on my glasses to disguise the bags under my eyes!