Thursday, October 29, 2009

Bad Mommy Moment

Think I'm batting a thousand it seems over the past week- so why not add to the list? lol

Ok- so both Rick and I have glasses. Rick ahs had them since 2nd grade and I got them in 7th. So it's pretty inevitable that our children will need them sooner or later. (of course i was hoping for the later versus the sooner)
It all started last week when I got a letter in the mail from Kaylebs school saying he had failed the vision screening they give the students. This.. was no surprise to me. He's failed the test the past 3 years.

Now... why- you ask- would I wait until now to do something about it? (and here enters the bad mommy moment) In pre-school, his teacher said "don't worry about it, most kid this age fail because of lack of letter recognition."

Then in Kindergarten, his teacher said "well, some kids stil have letter recognition problems. He's a smart boy, maybe he just doesn't perform to his full capabilities under pressure"

And then this year hits.

As I'm talking to a friend about it.. a lightbulb went off. For the past 2 years... Kayleb will get up and walk directly in front of the TV to watch it. This whole time, we just thought it was something he did because he did it.. no specific reason.

For 2 years, my son has had vision issues. For 2 years, he's been seeing the world like this:
He hasn't known anything else... so why would he think something was wrong? He can tell his colors, he can tell if you are holding up 3 fingers from across the room, but it looks completely distorted and blurry.
so now I'm slapping my hand and crying silent tears. His teachers had never said anything contrary, he's never mentioned anything (why would he? He doesn't know anything else)
So I made the eye apt. and when I went to pick him up from school, I asked his teacher if she had noticed anything and for the first time, a teacher was actually paying attention. She said that she was going to call me today and fill me in on her opinion on the matter. I am so greatful for his teacher- she's seriously one of the coolest teachers ever :)
So we went on to the eye dr. and got him in. He was restless- didn't like sitting in a funny chair with all these weird lights shining in his eyes. But he did SO GOOD. after about 15 min. or so, the dr. explained that he has astigmatism in both eyes.
now watch me and my fancy knowledge on the matter....lol..... astigmatism is when your eye is shaped more like a football than a baseball. when that happens, your vision is distorted and you can't see near OR far. So he's neither near sighted or Far sighted...he's both. And the Dr. said that he typically doesn't prescribe glasses for kids..even if they are borderline. He likes to wait a while and check them out again before deciding. So the fact that he thinks Kayleb needs them.. suggests that his eyesight isn't that great. And he has to wear his glasses ALL the time.
So we treck out and I say "Kayleb.. you get glasses dude! you get to join the cool club now!"
His response " What's the cool club? What's it look like?"
I had to backtrack on that joke and explain that the "cool club" was just meaning he's gonna look cool once he has his glasses. lol
so we found some glasses- He looks adorable in them.
they won't show up for about 2 weeks... so i'll post pics once he has them.
the nice thing out of all this: Once he has his glasses, I know that his focus problems will more than likely go away. and by focus.. i don't mean eye focus. lol He struggles with focusing on tasks at hand- so i think this will help relieve that problem for the most part.
*SIGH*
bad mommy moment over. lol

4 comments:

Nicole Martel said...

aw :( Well... it's not totally your fault you know... The teacher had you second guessing.

Anonymous said...

ok, lil ms smarty pants here....astigmatism is not both near and farsighted, it just means that what you see as vertical, he sees as slanted and therefor blurry. kinda like when your contact is sitting funny on your eye and you get weird halos around things, thats astigmatism.
And that sucks for kayleb. :(
But, glasses ARE cool. :)

Kayla said...

You're not a bad mommy! I'm glad that you got some answers though. I'm excited to see Kayleb's glasses... he'll be quite the little stud in them!

BiblioBags said...

My 4 year old niece just had eye surgery because she's cross eyed and far sighted majorly, but her eyes never started crossing until a year ago. For the longest time, we thought she was doing it on purpose. After her surgery, she goes, "I only see one of everything now!" Poor kids!! Kayleb has always been in my cool club! : )