Translation: “To Miss Heidi. I can’t find my glasses. I looked everywhere, and I need new glasses again, Miss. Heidi. I have to get glasses, Miss Heidi. To Miss Heidi.”
Previously I worked in a psychiatric facility that housed about 60 children ages 4-12 years old for months at a time while they received intensive treatment and in-house schooling. One of my main responsibilities was the children’s glasses, and when you’re providing glasses for over a dozen violent children at a time, you learn a few things.
Kids who truly need their glasses and notice a difference without them will generally learn faster the value of taking care of their glasses and require fewer repairs/replacements unless they are filled with self-blame (see chart). If the child has extremely high self-blame or significantly low self-esteem, the child will probably need to be without glasses until their personal sense of value improves and their guilt/shame decreases. That’s the way it goes, and it’s not actually the end of the world even though it does make life harder for the child – a situation the child (not the parents) is choosing by not being responsible with the glasses.
Fact #1 You can’t make a child wear glasses and not break them. You can incentivize, but you cannot force / control every decision in every moment.
Fact #2 Forcing a child to have responsibility that is too big for them (i.e. breakable glasses) is not respectful of the child.
Fact #3 When a child damages glasses, it’s another hurt in their heart and another scar on their behavioral record. It’s better to have low quality vision (that can be alleviated later when the child is ready) than to set the child up for failure, further damaging the child’s self-esteem and relationships.
Should I risk buying glasses for my child?
*Some self-blaming children are especially destructive of things that are supposed to give the child help or value and only violent against their own person. They have extremely low self-esteem. This is a distinction from kids who are generally violent and destructive against anyone and anything.
There can be situations where you need to provide the glasses even though they won’t last 48 hours in order to demonstrate to legal, medical or school authorities that you are more than willing to meet this need in your child’s life. Sometimes the community doesn’t understand that providing glasses is not a question of your willingness to care for your child, it’s a question of the child’s ability to be responsible with the tool. Propose the facts and issues raised in this post. If they still insist that you provide glasses then do so. In this situation spend as little money as possible, keep reminding yourself that you are doing what you need to do as a good parent, choose to rejoice for any length of time that the glasses help your child (who knows, maybe your child will realize the benefit that glasses can be?), and choose to not be angry when your child breaks the glasses because afterall you knew your child wasn’t capable of handling them yet anyway. Document the damage with photos and a written report ideally written and signed by the child to the teacher/doctor/caseworker and move on.
Highly Structure Provision of Glasses: A How-to Guide
Rule #1 “On your face or in your case”
This is your new household slogan. If the child leaves the glasses anywhere but in the case, the glasses and case become yours, and the child must do a restitution (generally one basic household chore) to earn them back. If the child refuses to complete the restitution, the child is saying through their behavior that he/she isn’t ready to handle the responsibility that glasses are. For this reason I don’t require glasses restitution to be done immediately or even at all. If the child wants to earn your glasses back, then they’ll do the restitution. If they don’t want or can’t handle the responsibility of their glasses, then they won’t. It’s better for the adult to hold onto the glasses than the child receive them back before the child is ready and then have to express with their behavior again (usually via damaging the glasses) that they don’t feel ready to handle the privilege and responsibility that glasses are.
Rule #2 “The case stays in its place.”
The glasses case stays in a pre-determined location. For instance, this is usually the child’s back pack and a household location like a nightstand or kitchen counter for non-school days/summer.
It’s really hard to misplace your glasses if you follow rules 1 and 2. It also stands to reason that when children don’t follow rules 1 and 2 and do lose their glasses, it is abundantly clear who is at fault. Caring for glasses is the child’s responsibility.
Tips for Parents
Tip #1 When a child is moving toward a tantrum/rage, remove their glasses.
Sometimes I just walk over calmly with the case and hold it open in front of the child. Or I hold out my palm and gently say, “Glasses.” The kids will sometimes almost subconsciously just take off their glasses mid-argument and put them in the case. Not a word needs to be spoken. I don’t have to grab or get into a tug-of-war. It’s lovely when that works. Practice your subtlety skills.
Tip #2 Buy a flexible frame and warrantied, extremely durable lenses
Consider requesting a flexible frame or try the words “sports frame”. (Little do they know the kind of “sports” our children engage in! LOL) Miraflex (www.miraflexglasses.net) is a great brand, and Nike even has a fashionable frame (www.sportrx.com/nike-4259.html). I was shocked that the kids usually loved the flexible frames and thought they looked great!
Warning: The frames can be bent so that the lens pops out. I have had one child then try to swallow the lenses. Fortunately, we intercepted this in time and eventually that child earned his glasses back.
Request the most durable lenses they provide. One type of extremely durable lens is the “Trivex” by Zeiss.
Tip #3 Repair, repair, repair until you truly can’t repair anymore.
Buy a cheap glasses repair kit (often sold at the counter in Walgreens/CVS or dollar stores) and learn how to use it. Gorilla glue and duct tape are also helpful. Feel free to use duct tape with attractive colors. The repairs are NOT about shaming or punishing your child, so don’t go out of your way to make it look horrible. It’s horrible enough as is. Repairs are about helping your child re-gain a useful tool and ideally learn to appreciate the value of not damaging it.
My absolute favorite was a boy who had torn the arm off one side of his glasses. Since the glasses could not balance on one ear, I told him, “I guess you’ll have to hold your glasses up to your face with your hand!” I cracked up as I walked past second grade and saw Little Mister holding his glasses up to his face like a character from history. But you know what? This child realized his glasses help him, that he wanted that help, and that damaging his glasses just made things harder for him. Those are all the right lessons.
Tip #4 Charge restitution to pay for replacements.
Losing or breaking glasses does not entitle a child to a free replacement. Just because mom and dad may receive a free replacement through the insurance, mom and dad still have to pay for that insurance and the company still has to pay for those glasses. It’s not free, so why should it be free for the child who was irresponsible? Consider accepting early bedtime (1 hour earlier than usual without activities in the room; voided by being loud) for 30 days as payment.
Tip #5 Get a paper copy of your child’s prescription AND the measurements the optician takes for the lenses so you can re-order online.
Check that you have a PD measurement! If you have all this information, then you can easily order replacement glasses online from cheap sources like ZenniOptical.com. This is helpful if/when you exceed the number of replacements provided by your insurance. If you will need to pay for the frames according to your insurance, then have the optician set your order aside and call them back after you compare prices online.
Fitting glasses to a person’s face involves more measurements than you might realize. Here is a resource for figuring it out.
