My wife and I never had glasses when we were kids. My eyes have deteriorated a little since then and I now where glasses but since neither of us wore them growing up we didn’t really know what to look for in our kids.
When Ali was a toddler she used to stand about two feet away from the TV when she was watching a show. I used to tell her to go back and sit on the couch because standing so close would hurt her eyes, little did I know she couldn’t really see anything further than two feet away. Thinking back on it after Ali got her glasses that was about the only sign we noticed that she couldn’t see well.
When Ali turned 4 we took her in for a doctor visit and they did a simple eye test with Ali to see if she could name some shapes from about 20 feet away. I remember being completely astounded that she couldn’t do it. I felt horrible standing there watching my beautiful little girl turn her face a little and try and see out of the side of her eyes. We got Ali in to see an optometrist the next day. After her eyes were dilated the doctor said “Oh wow, she has a really bad astigmatism in both eyes.” He also asked if Ali went crossed eyed very often, I was a little scared at this question. The very next thing he told me was that she would have to have glasses until about twenty at which point she could have corrective surgery and he reassured me that new lens technology makes it so a prescription as strong as Ali’s doesn’t require thick coke-bottle glasses anymore but that we would still notice that her eyes were magnified a little.
AlisGlasses1
I’ll never forget the trip home from picking up Ali’s glasses once they came in. Ali was so excited to be able to see, as we left the store she made a comment as we came down the escalator at the mall, “Wow, I can see everything.” As we drove home she looked out the window of the car and said in surprise “there are trees out there and mountains.”
AlisGlasses2
 If I put on Ali’s glasses of course everything is very blurry but I also see double. Ali’s right eye is a little better than her left and while she never had to patch, the optometrists for the first few years balanced the prescription so that her strong eye was held back a little to let the weak eye catch up. Now both of Ali’s eyes are equal in strength and with her prescription she see’s 20/20 out of both eyes.
AlisGlasses3
One of the things that Ali loves to do with her glasses is show people how big her eyes can get if she holds them just a few inches from her face. Since her glasses enable her to see, she is never without them and from the beginning we have never had an issue getting her to wear them.

AlisGlasses5

 

Ali has a +6.25 prescription in her right eye and +7 in her left