GLASSES ARE FOR SUPER-COOL DUDES…

Site Default - 13 Jan 16

I’m guilty in the past of looking at children with glasses and thinking, ‘Poor him/Poor her’. Of looking at really cute boys or girls wearing thick-rimmed frames and thinking, ‘What a shame they have to wear those’.

Then, a year ago, I got a letter from school saying that my son Jack, then aged four, had failed the reception class vision test and would be referred to a hospital optometrist for further checks. From that moment on, the way I viewed little ones with glasses completely changed.

I went with Jack to the first hospital appointment where the optometrist gave him drops to check the back of his eyes. The drops stung at first and Jack clung on to me, but soon the pain stopped and we were told to come back once his pupils were enlarged. I took Jack to a café while we waited and bought him the biggest hot chocolate they had (with extra marshmallows) and tried to bring up the subject of glasses. I said it would be so cool if he had to wear them because then he’d have super-hero vision – and he agreed. We then went through all the children at his school who wore glasses and talked about what colour frames he might want. I also said how his little brother Otto would be very jealous because he’d want some too, and this made him smile.

We then went back for Jack’s eye tests. He sat alone, with me watching, while the optometrist made him wear some funny-looking frames and placed different lenses over his eyes. I tried to make him laugh but he went very quiet and I could tell he was feeling anxious. As the letters decreased in size, Jack struggled to see them and turned his head to me, prompting my help. I felt myself welling up because I couldn’t do anything to make him see better. The letters he couldn’t read were clear as anything in my own eyes and I suddenly realised how bad his sight actually was. All I could do was reassure him that he was doing everything right and that the smaller letters were really tricky – ‘Even I can’t see those!’, I lied.

Not surprisingly, the optometrist told me that Jack was long-sighted and that he needed to wear glasses full-time until the age of eight, possibly for the rest of his life. So we went that weekend to all the opticians in town and tried on lots of pairs until he found some fun red and blue ones that he liked.

Jack was so good about wearing glasses at first, but there were moments – such as his birthday or big family gatherings – when he refused to put them on. And I felt for him when the lenses got foggy on cold days and he didn’t think to wipe them or when the frames got stretched by over-inquisitive classmates at school. There was also the time we went to his friend’s house and he started sobbing, saying he didn’t want to get out of the car because he ‘looked odd’. No five-year-old should ever feel like that.

The only way I could get Jack to wear his glasses when he was feeling so self-conscious was to say that glasses are for super-cool dudes. He liked that. He also liked the fact that his brother Otto had an eye test and was told that he had to wear glasses occasionally too.

A year on, Jack is a pro at wearing glasses – he puts them on as soon as he wakes up, keeps them in their case for sport and takes them off and cleans them before bedtime. Of course, being a boy, he has managed to break them, stamp on them, stretch them and scratch them countless times – I am forever going back to the optician to get them fixed – but the fact that he now feels super-cool in them makes it all worth it.

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Fiona Pennell lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their two boys, Jack, 6, and Otto, 4. A former YOU magazine sub-editor, Fiona now spends her days being trampled on, going on slug hunts and dreaming of lie-ins. (Twitter: @fiona_pennell)

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