first pair of glasses for kids – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

In the previous post, I described how I found out that I needed glasses when I was twelve-year-old. Fast forward to 2012, when my daughter is twelve, and just got her first pair of glasses.

We found out she needed glasses because she had routine eye screenings at school, as well as periodic full eye exams from an eye doctor. We knew a year ago that she would probably need them within a year or so…so we kept a close eye (ahem!) on her vision in the interim.

We took her to the eye doctor, Dr. Poulin in Sanford, who did an eye exam and rendered the glasses verdict almost matter of factly. My daughter’s response? “Yay!”. Thank you, Dr. Poulin. 🙂

She had many frames from which to choose, many of which looked so cute on her that it was hard to choose just one!

I’m thankful that my daughter didn’ t have to lose half of one of her front teeth to find out that her vision wasn’t optimal.

I got my first pair of (many, many) glasses when I was twelve years old. I was playing tag in my grandmother’s yard (with a friend-who-was-a-boy) and so of course not only was I running around like a nut, I was also distracted. So first I was chasing Scotty, trying to tag him, and the next thing I knew I was on my butt in the grass, holding my mouth, bleeding.

I said, “Oh, crap!”

Scotty said, “Oh, bye!”

He left quickly.

What the hell happened? I had somehow managed to smash my mouth into the front of my father’s car, which was parked on the grass where we were playing. To my horror, as I went into the house to tell my mother what happened, I realized that I had shards of…what, tooth? Tooth! Shards of tooth were in my mouth! Not only had I gotten a fat lip from my “car crash”, but I’d also broken my front tooth.

My parents were more annoyed than sympathetic (this was gonna cost them). We didn’t have dental insurance so the fix was minimal (“I’ll just file it down so the sharp point from the tooth doesn’t puncture her tongue,” the dentist offered cheerfully). Worse than this was that the cause of the crash. I hadn’t crashed into the car because I was clumsy (well, not just because of that), as was first thought, but because I couldn’t see how close I was to it.

I was nearsighted.

The state provided my glasses. I had no choice about which frame I got since there was only one option: the lovely cat’s eyes that you see pictured above. Although my dad tried to be upbeat about it, there was really not one bit of excitement involved.

So, I’d lost half a tooth, but hey, I gained a pair of glasses soon thereafter.

Yay.