Seeing Things Differently

Guess who is seeing things differently now?

I'm not entirely sure how she's been seeing anything, because her lenses are pretty thick.

She's actually getting two pairs, and this is one of two.  The other pair is pink.  Have you tried to get glasses for a small child?  The selection is very, very limited.  Katie, like many children with Down syndrome, has very small facial features (her nose is t.i.n.y.), small ears, and her ears are lower on her head than a typical person.  A tiny nose and low, little ears?  Not a perfect combination for glasses if you want them to stay on your face. 

The first pair we ordered is from a company called Specs4Us.  Specs4Us was started by a mom who got tired of her daughter's glasses always slipping down on her face.  Her daughter, Erin, has Down syndrome.  Erin's mom designed glasses that have shortened temples, extra wide frame fronts, and a lowered bridge to more appropriately fit children with Down syndrome.  There is a local optician who carries Specs4Us frames, so I just called Specs4Us and asked them to send the frames we wanted to try to our local store.  They did (super fast), and we went to try them on.  Those should be here in about a week.  Unfortunately, the optician we ordered from does not accept our vision insurance, so those glasses were a little expensive.  (No more expensive than they would have been for any other glasses, just expensive because they didn't take our insurance.)

Because we do have vision insurance, and I can anticipate some broken glasses with the extreme care that I've seen Katie display with things because she's so little, we used our insurance benefit at another provider and got her these little purple glasses last night.  We went to LensCrafters, and they were fantastic with her.  They were able to shorten the arms on these glasses and bend the ear pieces so they fit much, much better.  She's kept them on for about 90 seconds total.  It will be a long process to get her to wear them, but I hope once she realizes that she can see it will be enough motivation for her.  Until then, I'm off to find a strap for them.  

And, my public service announcement of the day:  If you are a retailer who sells glasses for small children, perhaps you should also carry straps for those glasses. Clearly Katie isn't the first child to need one.  Even if you just had one style, I would have purchased it.  That should not be a difficult thing to find.  You know, in a glasses store.  Neither of the places we bought her glasses had any straps, nor did they have any suggestions for me on where I could buy one.