Spectacular!

Iris has glasses. She looks very grown up and sophisticated in them and has gone to sleep clutching them in their case. Hazel says she would like to have glasses too.

We went to the children's optometrist in Kilbirnie.

David Aldridge
Aldridge Optometrists
70 Rongotai Road
Kilbirnie
ph:04 939 0505
fax:04 939 0506

He does developmental and behavioural optometry and is the optometrist I've been recommended by several Wellington parents. He tested both children and said that while Iris has not yet developed short sight she has all 10 of the risk factors including a tendency to clench her eye muscles to do things very close to her face and so he's made her some glasses that make her relax her eye muscles and do things a bit further off. Using these glasses now should make her less short sighted in the future. They don't make it easier for her to see, they are making her learn to see in a better way.

It's best if she wears them a lot and especially for concentrated close work. She doesn't need to wear them when she's running around outside. At the least whenever she wears them she is teaching her visual system how to relax. As well as using the glasses we can get her out and about or looking at the horizon and the moon when we notice she's been doing concentrated close work for a while. To support her I am wearing my glasses a lot more and Sean isn't going to be doing laser surgery for his eyes in the next little while. We are not going to force her to wear them but I've told her I'm not reading to her unless we're both wearing our glasses and, like a sun hat, I've been putting them on her when her hands are busy a minute after she's rejected them. Even in just one day I've learnt that if they're on they're fine and I should not fiddle with them.

David Aldridge measured her sight today with her glasses on and said that her brain was already beginning to make the adjustments and that we should keep an eye out for behavioural changes (not putting things right up to her face and recognising people a bit further off) and come back in 2-3 months.

I have been trying to find the 10 risk factors and a nice explanation of it all on the web, but haven't managed yet, tell me if you do, and I'll tell you if I do. Sites the optometrist recommended were

http://www.babousa.org/ | http://www.covd.org/ | http://www.acbo.org.au/

Http://www.babousa.org/behvis.html is an interesting short explanation of behavioural vision care in general rather than for reducing myopia in small children in particular.