Saturday, 09 January 2010
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Glasses or Contacts for someone with Autism?
Recently, my daughter had to go for an eye exam. We'd tried contacts once before, and she hardly wore them, so we skipped the next year. This year there's a boyfriend, hence the new interest.
The visit to the optician caused me to wonder. What happens when an autistic child needs to visit the optician? Is it a struggle for the parent, the doctor, and the child? Is it a fearful experience?
My next question is: how does a parent tell if the autistic child needs eyewear?
Please send your comments on this subject to help me learn yet another aspect of the autistic experience.
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- From: autismlearningfelt
- About Me: I am a WAHM, with two children. My daughter is 5 and my son is 10. My 10 year old son is diagnosed with Autism. I have a home-based business, www.learningfelt.com . Great creative and fun activities with felt for children. This blog is for sharing my experiences raising my son, product reviews, giveaways and sharing whatever items I find and want to share with all my readers. Read more at my blog: http://www.autismlearningfelt.com/
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Comments (3)
hi! i wear eyeglasses, and both my sons wear glasses. We're all autistic. I can't do contacts myself cause i don't like poking my eyeballs. My sons have never asked and would be kinda young to have them yet anyway.
But both boys enjoy the eye doctor's visits as do I. The struggle comes with trying to make out these pictures they put up there and ask you "What is that?" and I have to guess. I hate those cause i never get them right because of my visual spacial issues. My sons also struggle with that but they like how far off their guess are when the doc tells them what the pictures really are. For instance, my 11 year old last year guessed he saw a weasel and it was really a train going through a mountainside tunnel... :)
As far as knowing they had vision problems, my boys squinted a lot and failed the public school vision screenings.
My son is autistic and non-verbal, he is seven and wears glasses. I'm not sure how the eye doctor was able to tell, she just put a different strengths of lenses in front of his eyes and said he needed them?? He did well the very first visit we got his first pair of glasses but the follow up checkups he would scream horribly and we had to schedule appointments at the hospital where they were able to put him under and then check to see if he needed a new perscription. To be honest, I think the hospital appointments were more traumatizing for my son and myself then the screaming eye appointments. :-/
We took our son when he was about 4 to a DEVELOPMENTAL OPTHAMOLOGIST. He is specifically trained and does a 4 visit series of tests. My son at the time wasn't speaking and his receptive language wasn't the best, but they figured it out somehow. He put him in glasses after the 4th visit. He said he could see fine, but one of the muscles he uses needed to be stretched. (He used to go up to things really closely, we thought he couldn't see)
We went to the eye doctor after we heard Temple Grandin speak about checking their eyes. The first time he put them on he looked up, he looked down and he looked all around... like he had never seen the surroundings before. The doctor explained it was like he had been looking through a straw and didn't have much peripheral vision. The glasses have stretched out all this.
Glasses have helped my son and when he is not wearing them he looks for them, like he needs them.