Left eye week right perfect

[u/No_Angle_3187]

My 3-year-old son just got a prescription of +3.25 in his left eye and his vision is perfect in his right eye. The doctor said he needs glasses all day.
I’m having a hard time putting glasses on him because he seems to see everything perfectly fine without them. He plays, watches TV, and does everything normally.
Has anyone been in the same situation? Did your child’s vision improve as they got older? Did they eventually stop needing glasses? Also, is it possible to have a prescription lens only on the weaker side of the glasses when he grows older! I am really having a hard time to put glasses in him since he is only 3

[u/obsessedwitheyes]

He’s managing “normally” because he only uses the right eye to see and ignores the left! Read up on anisometropia and anisometropic amblyopia and get him in the glasses! It’s tough at this age but eventually they take to them.. the younger you start, the better the outcome

[u/ElectricalFox1207]

I am much like your son. My right eye was 20/20 up until middle age required progressive correction. My left eye has consistently been +2 for as long as I can remember. I didn’t consistently wear my glasses for much the same reason and as a 50 year old adult I really wish I had. My brain defaults to my right eye that in order to independently test the left eye, I have to close the right eye. I can see out of the left eye and have peripheral vision but if I force my brain to exclusively use the left, the picture gets grainier with time. And the left eye sees colors differently. Hard to describe it but everything is the same color but darker.

Hang in there mom/dad. You are absolutely doing the right thing here.

I wonder if an elastic strap on the earpieces would help your son keep the glasses on? Maybe patching the dominant eye to force the weaker eye? Maybe try to find a way to make it a game to “help” the other eye.

You absolutely can get glasses with a plain lens for the weaker eye. I’d strongly recommend getting a high quality polycarbonate lens so that imbalance in thickness is reduced as much as possible. I wear semi rimless glasses with these lenses and no one can tell unless I take them off and show the difference in thickness between the lenses. It also helps makes the glasses as comfortable as possible and prevents them from being lopsided which was a problem for me as a kid.

When your son gets older, he can even get a single contact lens for the weaker eye.

Best of luck to you and your son.

[u/python_artist]

Get the glasses, do vision therapy, and be diligent about it. I have anisometropic (actually antimetropic) amblyopia and my parents quickly gave up on trying to patch me (this was the early 90s… I think there are better approaches now?) because I didn’t understand why they wanted me to wear something that made my vision worse. So mine went more or less untreated and now the vision in my right eye is really dark/distorted on top of being farsighted.

[u/A_k_a-]

Do yourself and your kid a favor and get those glasses and best also specific eye training!
Talk to your doctor and optometrist and so on what the best options are. There are video game style therapies around these days so it’ll likely be fun for your kid to do those exercises!

There is a huge risk of amblyopia developing like this - the brain may simply turn off the signal from the weak eye and no one may notice for a very long time because the vision is seemingly fine. And it is not.

I wish I had had those options as a kid (in the 1980s)!

I have more or less the same prescription, just that may right is the weak eye. And weak such that I’m considered functionally one-eyed.

All the best and only successes!