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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

When you first need glasses it can surprise you. Towards the end of my uni days I got an eye test after just assuming nothing was wrong for several months. That first set of glasses was a revelation, like entering a new HD world that I didn't know I'd slowly left.

For schoolkids it's probably even bigger. They don't even know that their eyesight might not be just like every other kid. Worth testing, I did so with my kid and she got a light prescription.

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> For schoolkids it's probably even bigger. They don't even know that their eyesight might not be just like every other kid.

This is definitely true. I got my first pair of glasses at 7, and I hadn't realised I needed them. Luckily my mum is also short sighted and she noticed me straining to see things.

Also interesting: my eyes worsened to my current prescription of around -4 relatively quickly over the next 4-5 years. But I only started wearing my glasses full time when my optician mentioned that he was amazed that I didn't. Until that time I'd been quite happy wandering around with blurry vision most of the time. Kids truly are very adaptable.

My vision for much of my first 30 years straddled the line where I could get a driver's license that said I didn't need glasses¹ although I started wearing glasses in kindergarten. I was pretty inconsistent about glasses wearing for a lot of that time, but now, my vision has deteriorated to the point where I need glasses for both near and far correction—I've had progressive lenses for almost a decade now.

1. More precisely, I didn't need glasses in California. In Illinois, I did—I got my first CA driver's license in 1990, replacing an IL driver's license. Then I moved back to IL in 1997, then back to CA in 2004, and back to IL in 2011². All my IL licenses required me to drive with glasses.

2. If the pattern held, I'd have moved back to Los Angeles in 2018, but it appears I'm in Chicago until I retire.

There's now a treatment using low-concentration atropine eye drops to more-or-less stop the further deteriorating of the eyes (at least for near-sightedness).

Our ophthalmologist told us about this when we took our oldest there after noticing she had some issues in seeing things properly from a distance. Since my wife and myself have on average -8 we were keeping an eye out (ha!) on our kids for any signs of vision issues.

Basically every night before bed you put a drop in each eye and keep this up for as long as they're still growing. If you can start early enough this means they can end up with e.g. -1.5 or -2 instead of regressing all the way to e.g. -8.5 like me. Definitely a quality-of-life improvement, less chance of other eye issues later on, reduced cost of glasses and easier treatment with a laser to get back to 0 in case they want that.

It's fairly new, at least here in Europe, so not all doctors are familiar with it. Same for pharmacists: they need to prepare these eye drops themselves since they are not available directly from a manufacturer in this low concentration.

How does this compare with corneal moulding?

I had my first set of glasses at 7. I was diagnosed with myopia, -1.5 and went to get some glasses done. I hated the glasses and my parents insisted I wear them, but I could not frigging see with them and kept saying I have blurry vision with them. High source of friction with my parents. 1 year passes and we visit the optician again, it turns out the glasses were +1.5 - no wonder they were useless to me.

>Luckily my mum is also short sighted and she noticed me straining to see things.

My parents just kept scolding me for sitting too close to the TV. I had to ask for them on many occasions and eventually got them to get me tested. It had got so bad that I couldn't read anything written on the blackboard for a long while.

So true! In High School, we sometimes had to take turns reading out loud from textbooks of literature. I sucked at reading out loud, often reading out words that were not there or losing the line. That was embarrassing, which did not help. Turned out my vision was just not good enough to clearly see the characters when sitting with a straight back! But I never noticed it, because my vision was good enough for everyday situations. I don't remember clearly what finally triggered me to take a vision test, maybe it was for the drivers license.

> That first set of glasses was a revelation, like entering a new HD world that I didn't know I'd slowly left.

That same thing can happen even when you already have glasses. My lenses were something like 10 years old and I thought they were just fine. Until I got new glasses.

I remember the same! I was amazed that my friend could read the number on the front of the bus while it was still 300 metres away. How can you read that? I asked. I just read it, why? can't you read it?

I was 14 but fortunately was not really short sighted, although I found that I was instinctively sitting closer to the blackboard (rememebr those!), maybe because I couldn't see clearly from the back of the class.

It's funny how a relatively small investment early on could help avoid a load of unemployment, crime, etc. even if there was no money, just make it a loan that you only pay back once you earn, say, $30 a year or more!

This. I finally convinced an optometrist to grant me a perscription in my third year as an undergraduate. It was a weak perscription, but it made the difference between getting a C average and suddenly getting an A average because I no longer had to put so much brain processing power into seeing what was on the board and could put the same processing power into understanding what I saw.

Then it happened again as I got older and my arms grew too short to be able to read a book and the fonts grew too large to display enough information on a single screen.

> For schoolkids it's probably even bigger. They don't even know that their eyesight might not be just like every other kid.

During 6th grade I transitioned from being able to read the blackboard to not being able to read the blackboard, unless I was sitting closer.

Not realizing there's a problem is something that might come up for kindergarteners, but not for kids who are already in school.

I disagree, at least somewhat.

I got my first pair in grade 3 and the next day, it looked like the teacher had dramatically upgraded the chalk she was using. I could actually read it and follow along easily, but the day before I didn’t know anything was “wrong” and I was sure “I don’t need glasses!!”

I think people in general are slow to notice gradual changes. “Maybe the new school’s board is different. Maybe the teacher sucks at writing. Maybe this lighting is worse. (But mostly,) I’ll just squint a little and get by.”

I was also in grade 3 before we realized I needed glasses. I had changed schools mid-year, and my old school had me sitting front and center because I learned quickly, but the new one had me seated in the back in the corner because my last name starts with W.

I also didn't realize what was wrong, but it turned out I was only nearsighted in one eye.

I'm grateful my parents were paying enough attention and had the resources to recognize that it wasn't just a problem adjusting to the new school that was making me struggle in class, but that there was actually something physically making it harder for me to succeed.

Walking out with my glasses on, I immediately panicked about the fact that the clouds were bumpy, so it had probably been a problem much longer than we'd realized!

I did not have my vision tested (beyond infancy/toddler blindness tests) until I was 15. In hindsight (so to speak) my vision was probably similar all through childhood (both parents needed glasses in childhood). I could read (and loved it) so no problem right? My vision loss is asymmetric and I was aware of that -- but I also knew everyone tends to have a more dominant eye so I never thought much about it. The idea I had poor vision never occurred to me (or anyone else!)

I've worn glasses daily since. I can still legally drive without them (passed the vision test) but the prospect is a frightening one given that I can't read the text on my computer monitor at my usual preferred size without my glasses unless I squint.

> Not realizing there's a problem is something that might come up for kindergarteners, but not for kids who are already in school.

That's only true if your eyesight degraded while you were aware, not if it was already bad. I didn't get glasses until I was 16 and I never knew I needed them until I almost failed the vision test for my driver's license.

> Not realizing there's a problem is something that might come up for kindergarteners, but not for kids who are already in school.

That's just not true. You're an exception, actually. Most vision changes are way too gradual to notice.

The moment I realized I needed glasses was when we got our first HD TV. I was the only one who didn't notice any difference in quality.

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