Recently, part of Jennifer’s glasses broke. It was the
temple part – though a lot of people call it the “arm.” Anyway, they broke
while I was carrying them to her classroom at her school and I’d stopped to
talk to a secretary. Jennifer had forgotten her glasses that morning. On the
way to the bus stop, I told her I would bring them at lunchtime. But that plan
was a bust when they broke in transit and I asked the secretary to notify Jen’s
teacher that her glasses broke and she won’t be able to wear them after all
that day. (She had gotten into trouble one day when she had forgotten her
glasses, so you can probably understand my tension over the situation. I didn’t
want her to get into trouble again for something that was out of her control!)
So she’d gone that day without wearing her glasses. The next
day, she was asking if I would be able to fix them and bring them to her
school, but I let them know to tell her I was unable to fix them. So that’s two
days without her wearing her glasses!
It seemed to be two days too many, though, because last
night, she started to panic. She came up to me looking worried and saying she
will go blind if she doesn’t wear her glasses.
This made me pause. Why on earth did she think she was going
to go blind if she didn’t wear her glasses? The only reason why she was even
supposed to wear her glasses in the first place is because she was born with a
lazy eye. At that time, we were unable to get the corrective surgery she needed
for her eye, so we went through the whole “eye patches and glasses” episode.
Her vision has been closely monitored since then. We were told that wearing
glasses did improve her eye, but that she would, unfortunately, have to
continue to wear glasses.
There has been the occasional day or two in which she did
not wear her glasses, though. And sometimes she didn’t wear her glasses when
she was supposed to, and when told to put them on, she would whine about how
much she hates wearing glasses. (I hate wearing them, too, but I prefer glasses
over contacts, so here we are.) We have explained to her the same thing her eye
doctor told us: She has to wear her glasses every day or else her vision will go
bad again. Contrary to popular belief, not wearing glasses does not strengthen
our eyes. Actually, I’m quite convinced that eye exercises strengthen our eyes.
(Well, that, and carrots!) Granted, this could mean we’ll all forever be
dependent on wearing glasses to keep our eyes strong, but given that the choice
is to either have poor vision or good vision, I would opt for good vision! So,
yes, she has to keep wearing her glasses.
I started to wonder if these past lectures are what
influenced her sudden panic that she’ll go blind if she doesn’t wear her
glasses every day. I explained to her that not wearing her glasses would not
hurt her eyes that fast. It had only been two days and I reassured her she
would be getting new glasses on Monday after her dentist appointment. (That’s
the plan, anyway.)
This, however, did not make her feel any better. She REALLY
wanted to wear her glasses again!
So she asked me to give her the broken glasses and let HER
try to fix them. After I did that, she grabbed some tape and got busy.
And she was able to fix them! Wow. Good for you, Jennifer!
So she was happily wearing her glasses again last night. And
she is wearing them right now as I type this. She is calm and confident again, and that’s a good thing. If it
takes a pair of semi-perfect glasses to make my kid happy again, I’m all for
it. Calm has been restored and she is doing something good for her vision
again.
I guess it’s like the dieter who goes off the diet for a
couple of days. The dieter realizes “Hey, I can’t keep eating all this junk
food! I gotta get back on track with eating right again!" (Of course,
exercising, too, but as with vision, that is just one variable to keep a person
healthy.)
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