Today, I Am Going to Call.
Shane wears glasses.
For years, I’ve been leaving little notes in his lunchbox – now mostly cute pictures. But in third grade, he got a lot of Far Side cartoons.
One day when I asked what he thought about his cartoon, he said, “Oh, Alan read it to me.”
“Why didn’t you read it yourself?” I asked.
“Because I couldn’t see it,” he said, quite matter-of-factly.
And that’s how I learned that Shane was having eyesight problems almost a year after he’d finished his vision therapy.
I have great faith in vision therapy. It changed Shane’s life. Vision processing disorder is serious business – and with the letters jumping around all over the page, Shane simply wasn’t able to read – or do much else. The vision therapy exercises he did for two years completely changed his life.
Shane wore “non-corrective” glasses for years during vision therapy. The doctor insisted that they would help him focus when needed – like a back-up plan, since he was so young.
But after he couldn’t read his note, and I finally took him to a different eye doctor for a check-up, they said there was no prescription at all in the vision therapy glasses.
Yet I bought two pairs, at $389 each. Shane may as well have been wearing plastic rims with no glass in them. I have great faith in vision therapy – but I do not have great faith in those “prescribed” glasses with no prescription.
So now Shane is due for an eyesight check-up, but I haven’t made the appointment. Worse yet, I have encouraged him not to wear his glasses.
When I finally did get his eyesight checked, I was told that Shane had something very minor, and that he might grow out of it as he gets older. I can’t remember the specifics – something like one eye wasn’t fully developed yet. It sounded like a very minor thing, and his corrective glasses were only supposed to be used for reading.
But Shane reads a lot – and he also loves his glasses. So he wears them all the time. But they don’t fit his little nose, which means they are always sliding down his face. And no matter how often we have them adjusted, they sit on the tip of his nose. He looks out over them, like a stern librarian from the 1950’s.
So I’ve told him just to take them off, wear them sometimes, only wear them for reading, not worry about them today – blah, blah, blah. As a result, since I haven’t made his appointment for a check-up, I feel like a terrible mother.
I’ve no idea if they’re creating a dependence on glasses when he doesn’t really need them. And I’ve no idea if they are helping him read. I just keep ignoring the whole thing, hoping it will go away.
But today – and I’m saying this for all the world to hear – today, I am going to call the eye doctor and set up an appointment. It may take three weeks for us to get in there, but I am calling and making the appointment.
So at least I can stop feeling like such a bad mom.