A visit to the consultant last week led to us being told that unless we patch our little girl for most of the day, she will be blind in that eye by the time she is sixteen. We have been patching (covering her good eye to force the poor eye to work) her for a while now but she does not like it and has become very adept at removing it .....in about thirty seconds!
We are now matching little Miss determined with our own determination as we know it is up to us to make her lazy eye work again and obviously we do not want her to lose the vision in that eye. If I put the patch on as well as a hair clip, she is not sure which one to remove first and if we then focus all our efforts into entertaining her after a while she seems to have forgotten about it. We have been having much more success but it is a very time consuming process, very much worth it though.
Today we played in the garden and even patched up her baby.
However despite my best distraction efforts I noticed Ruby had pulled the corner of the patch up a tiny bit, after watching her I realised she was using it to see. This is not the point of the patch, which is to force the poor eye to be used before the brain learns to see using only the good eye.
Just as well her determination is totally matched by mine; the opthalmologist suggested putting armbands around her elbows to stop her bending her arms, I will be searching for them this afternoon. I am also spending time doing craft and play doh with her in an effort to occupy her and take her mind off the patch.
Has anyone got any tips or suggestions about how to keep an eye patch on a toddler?
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