Is Your Child Ready To Switch From Eyeglasses To Contact Lenses?

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If your child currently wears glasses to help him or her see better, there may come a time when he or she asks for contact lenses. As a parent, you can make the decision whether to allow this or not, but you should talk to an eye doctor before you decide. Switching from glasses to contacts is not as easy as it may seem, and you will want to make sure your child is ready for this and that contacts will be a good solution for the child's vision problems. Here are several things to consider as you think about this decision.

Your Child's Age and Responsibility

Most eye doctors will not tell you what age is the best age to switch a child from glasses to contacts; however, most eye doctors will not recommend contacts for really young children. Kids that are responsible can often make the switch when they are around eight to eleven years old, but there are times when kids should wait until they are older.

While your child's age does play a role in this decision, most eye doctors are more concerned with how responsible a child is. As a parent, your opinion of your child matters a lot, simply because you know him or her very well. In other words, you will probably have a good idea as to whether your child is ready to make this switch.

If you feel that your child will handle it well and be responsible with this new task, then you can go ahead and give it a try if the eye doctor agrees. If you switch and find out that contacts just do not work well for your child, you can always go back to glasses.

In fact, you should always purchase a new set of glasses each time your child's eye prescription changes just so that he or she can wear them during times when he or she is not wearing contacts. You should encourage your child to give his or her eyes a break from time to time, simply because the eyes need a break. They cannot handle having contacts in all the time, and this is one of the reasons doctors recommend removing them before bedtime.

What Having Contacts Entails

A lot of kids want to switch from glasses to contacts due to embarrassment. While glasses might have been the cool thing to have when they were younger, glasses are not always viewed this way as kids get older. If your child is struggling with self-esteem issues, making the switch could help with that; however, you should make sure your child fully understands what having contact lenses entails before getting them. Here are some of the things you may want to discuss with your child:

1. The importance of keeping them clean – Before you remove or insert contacts, you must wash your hands, and this is not always something young kids think about. If your child uses dirty hands while doing this, it could cause an eye infection to occur.
2. The frequency of replacing the contacts – Eye doctors often give children daily or monthly disposable contacts. Your child will need to learn to replace the contacts as needed without you having to remind him or her of this.
3. The risks of sharing contacts – If your child forgets his or her contacts and wants to wear someone else's, this could damage his or her eyes or cause an infection. Your child must learn that contacts are not for sharing.

You can talk to an eye doctor about this decision, and you should thoroughly think it through before agreeing to it. To learn more, visit an optometry clinic in your city today, or click here to investigate more.

1 September 2017