Glasses (3.5 years old)

Our doctor decided that my daughter's glasses were not helping after her first eye surgery (2.5 years old).  As he put it, if they helped her see better, she would want to wear them, and she definitely did not.

Six months after her second surgery, he decided it was time to give glasses another shot.  Her left eye was still turning slightly inward and she was still having trouble seeing the small shapes during the eye exams.  So, after a year of not wearing glasses, we headed to the store with a new prescription.

 My daughter, like most 3.5 year olds, is picky.  Very picky.  We tried on every pair of children's frames in three different stores.  None of the frames were purple enough.  They had to be all purple with no pink on them (even though purple and pink are her favorite colors.)  She did fall in love with a pair of purple frames at the first store, but they were way too big to stay on her face, so we trudged on to a second and then a third store.  My thinking was that if she found a pair of glasses that she loved, it would be a lot easier to get her to wear them.

Finally, she tried on the very last pair of frames at the third store (just before I gave up and dragged her and her cranky little sister to a fourth store...)  Before she looked in the mirror, I said, "Those look just like your teacher's glasses!"  Her face lit up and she fell instantly in love. Ironically, these glasses had no purple on them.

Getting an almost-four-year-old to wear glasses has been so much easier than getting a barely-two-year-old to wear them.  They seem to be helping her vision quite a bit as well.  When we walked into the parking lot with her new glasses for the first time she turned me and said, "Mom!!  I can see ALL the cars!!"

She loves her new glasses and we haven't had much trouble getting her to keep them on, but the first day was a little bit of a challenge.

It took awhile for her to get used to wearing the frames and the lenses seemed to change her perspective in funny ways.  (I have never worn glasses before, so I have no idea what it is like.. but she stared at the floor and said the carpet looked like it was going downstairs..)

To get her to wear her glasses consistently, I revisited some of my tricks from our patching days.

My daughter responds really well to reward systems.
We chose a simple star chart as an easy way to give her a reward.

I drew a quick chart with pictures of daily activities.
Every time she wore her glasses while we did an activity, she got a star.

She LOVED getting her stars and it only took two days of doling out stars before I didn't have to remind her to keep her glasses on.

After the second day, she kind of forgot about the stars and left her glasses on without needing an incentive.

The doctor seems to have been right, her glasses are helping her so she wants to keep them on.