You may think it’s scary for children to wear contact lenses, but in fact, children as young as eight years old can wear contacts. Children who accept the responsibility for having and caring for contact lenses can take to them very naturally because they adapt to new things quickly and tend to follow instructions somewhat better than adults.
For children, contacts can have important benefits, including better optics than eyeglasses, better peripheral vision, possible slowdown of worsening vision, and improving your child’s self-esteem. These benefits may be worth the effort to skip the eyeglasses and get contacts for your children instead. One of the best options for proper contact lenses could be daily disposable soft lenses rather than the less expensive two-week disposables.
Before you venture into the responsibility of fitting your child for contact lenses, make sure they know the basics of cleaning and replacing their lenses. If they are willing and able to take on these important responsibilities, then it may be a good time to visit us for an appointment.
Basics of Cleaning Soft Contact Lens
It’s very important to keep your contacts clean and disinfected. Not caring for your contact lenses in a proper manner could lead to a variety of eye infections, including some that cause blindness.
To help you in cleaning, rinsing, and disinfecting your contact lens, we’ll provide you with some basic steps.
- Wash your hands before touching your contacts and eyes. Try to avoid moisturizing soaps because they are not good for contact lenses.
- Remove one lens and clean it with the recommended solution. Cleaning removes eye-produced build-up, cosmetics and other debris that impairs lens comfort. Even if you are using a no-rub solution, you should still rub the lens in the palm of your hand with a few drops.
- Rinse the lens again to remove the loosened debris, making sure to take as long as the package directs. It’s very important to rinse.
- Place the lens in your clean lens case or lens holder and fill with fresh solution. Disinfecting kills microorganisms on the lens so this is an important step.
- Repeat steps two through four for your other contact lens.
Why Replace your Contacts?
Often times, people forget to pay attention to the recommended replacement dates for their contacts and end up wearing their contacts for way longer than suggested. Because your contacts spend most of their time soaked in your tears, the lenses’ plastic can become coated and crusted with proteins and lipids from your tears. Debris and irritants can deteriorate your contact lenses.
Failure to replace your contacts can actually result in eye infections, eye diseases, corneal ulcers, and dry eye symptoms. To avoid these problems, you should make sure your contacts prescription is current, clean your contacts and disinfect them properly, and of course follow the recommended replacement dates.
Having the right information can help you make the best choices. We would be glad to answer any questions you have, and schedule an appointment for you if needed.
Contact Lenses Can Be Fun
Did you now that in addition to the many colored contact lenses, you and your child can also wear some fun and spooky contact lenses for Halloween? Visit our office to explore your options and take advantage of our contact lenses special this October.