[Closed] Children and contact lenses.

at risk of hogging the first page of the forum...any views of anyone on tonight??

Optician would not prescribe contacts for my daughter until she was (iirc) 14 years old.

Edit: this was quite a few years ago now.

I had contact lenses when i was 13.. rigid gas permeable ones..

Bloody painful and uncomortable but 20 years on i can cope...

I think with soft lenses it should be OK...but depends how old they are I guess.

does she have them now?

rockhopper - yes, after ten years she is still wearing them although now daily disposables!

Be warned though, it is an expense! They have to be prepared to put in some effort with remembering to use the solution daily.

Tried very hard to persuade her to wear her glasses but, as a teenager, was self-conscious. She showed incredible determination to get the hang of putting them in.

thanks for the reply....
my girl has just gone ten and I am mindfull of the old glasses teasing thing when she starts secondary school and also she is getting in to Karate and glasses really don't help.

rockhopper - yes, girls tend to be very self-conscious. Mine stopped wearing her glasses, was as blind as a bat, and frankly I was worried about her!

Yes, sport can make it difficult for them.

If it's cosmetic then teenage years, monthly disposables. If it's necessary for huge prescription, then monthly non-removeables are a possibility. I suspect the former. Your optician will advise.

i have worn them for 19 years now - since the age of 11. No real problems bar fighting and footie at school when i lost several

My optician wouldn't let me have contact lenses until I was 16 (again many years ago now)but one of my friends had them from about 12. Not sure how much of this was due to responsibility of cleaning them. I know when I first used them it had a 3 step solution that was a pain in the bum. I would have thought that with the daily disposables available these days they'd let you try them earlier.

I used to break lots of glasses playing sport, it would have been a lot easier if I'd had contacts. Was never particular self concious about wearing glasses though and can never remember any teasing because of it (started wearing them age 7) and glasses twenty years ago were hideous - think Deirdre Barlow from Coronation Street-esque.

no cleaning issues with daily disposables - assumes a simple prescription i guess - guess would need spares and spare glasses just in case
unless there is some specific logic to opticians refusing can see no reason why not - i believe some hospitals teach under 10's to self inject for diabetes- kids can walk and talk!

They have to be prepared to put in some effort with remembering to use the solution daily.

What about night and day ones aka extended wear? Put them in, change them once a month. No solutions (unless you get some irritant or something or need a rest) - perfect for forgetful kids or out-all-night students etc.

I was, I think, 14 when I too had gas permeable lenses. Suddenly, I could see again, though of course they were no use for rugby.

Sadly, I think the time of not wearing lenses playing sport hampered my coordination on a permanent basis (though I would certainly not consider myself badly coordinated).

As for the glasses/stick at school thing, specs are fashionable now (and have been for the last decade) and so there are lots of really nice frames available. They ought not to be such a stigma at school as once they were.

Tried last week with a very patient optician but the problem was the putting in. Pulling eye lids apart was just too much on this occasion. Going back in new year.

Had soft lenses since the age of around 10 i am now 33 and have had (touches wood) no issues. Lenses now are amazing. I had yearly replaceable ones with a two step cleaning solution up until about 10 years ago. Now i ge new lenses every 2 weeks and a onr step solution. Not wearing glasses helps so much when it comes to sport. Also glasses were astetically a bit yuck up until the last 15 years or so imho.

Rockhopper, the best advice I had was to use the edge of the tip of my little finger to put the lens in with. Until then it used to take 5 or more goes to get the lens off my middle finger and onto the eye. Open eye wide and use the lashes to hold the upper lid, then pull the top of the cheek down to 'open' the lower lid. Best of luck, and it does get way easier.
Not a problem any more, due to a condition I turned out to have I can't wear contacts or have the surgery, back to bl**dy glasses!

My son tried then at 10 and gave up

His eye sites not to bad and glasses seem to be quite aceptable at the moment

OK, some opticians are a bit reticent to provide contact lenses for younger children due to compliance with wear (this applies for all types of lenses from over wearing monthly night and days by forgeting to change them to dirty hands on daily disposables and forgetting to remove them at bedtime) however there is no physical reason not to have them as your eyes are the same size at birth as they are at death and the vision from contacts can theoretically be better from contact lenses than glasses the best thing to do is tbh speak to your optician about a trial/assessment.

Just spoke to one of our optoms, one of the major dificulties is children being able insert/remove their own lenses if that helps, if they can manage this OK then all should be fine, and as abiove that should be part of the assessment process