What is eye patching? Eye Patching is where a child wears a patch over their strong eye to help correct vision in their weaker eye. There are a few different reasons a doctor prescribes eye patching, and I am not going into that here, but I am going to give you a few ways to make eye patching easier for you and a little more fun for your child.
If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I have four children with glasses…FOUR. One of these sweet blessings was legally blind when she got her first pair. As in, 20/600 just for fun the Ophthalmologist said..
“Wow, at her last appointment, in August (which was just 4 months ago at the time) she was 20/30?”
“Yes, sir”
“Just for fun, since she is already legally blind, let’s see how far on the scale she is… We stop at 20/600, and she is there”
“OUCH, can you fix this”
“We can make it better, but you are going to be working very hard for the next several years. She is going to need to wear an eye patch on her good eye for several years, an hour to hour and a half a day.”
And so the time is now over three years later, and with glasses she has 20/30 to 20/40 vision. Unless you are asking her to read, you probably wouldn’t notice a thing was wrong, but when you are diagnosed as legally blind at the age of three and you are walking around with a patch on your good eye a good part of the day, you fall behind on a few skills. Reading is one of those. She is at a kindergarten level right now and making leaps and bounds. If you happen to make a comment to her about being behind, this momma bear comes out in full force. She doesn’t understand that the patches are NOT causing her to be behind. In her mind the patches kept her from being able to learn to read, when really it is the amblyopia that has caused it.
So, imagine if you will, last summer going to Sunday School after “finishing” your first grade year at home and you are asked to read aloud something from the paper in class. You can’t read, and know some letters, but when you look at that page, the letters are bouncing all over, and now you have tears running down your face, you ask to go potty and you actually go find your mommy because you can’t read and don’t want anyone to know it. You tell your mommy you aren’t wearing the patches anymore, because they make it so you can’t read.
Now, imagine being the mom of this six year old little girl, who hates wearing these patches, even at home, and trying to find a way to make them fun. You know that reading is the least of your concerns.
So, I dug out the craft supplies and we went town learning what would and wouldn’t work to decorate her patches. Let’s just say she has some of the snazziest blingiest patches around.
What works to decorate eye patches:
- Sticky back foam shapes…get the girls some with glitter.
- Sticky backed jewels
- Glitter Glue
- Scrapbooking stickers (they are “stickier” than regular stickers
- Markers
- Rubber Stamps and Ink Pads
- Sequins and Glue
Be creative, there are many ways to allow your child to decorate these. Boys would have fun making crazy faces on them with paper, glue and googly eyes.
How to get your child to wear the patch. This is where screen time and special activities come in. This is not the time for bike rides, and Physical Education classes. Their vision is not going to be that great while patching, and we don’t want them to get injured.
Activities we do while Eye Patching:
- Reading Eggs
- Decorate the patches for the next week
- Coloring pages
- Math Apps on our tablet
- Angry Birds—This is awesome to help them track with their bad eye.
- Watching a Movie
- Playing board games
- Computer Games or Education Computer activities, many times they don’t know they are learning.
- For the older child, have them do math and phonics, even copywork, but go easy on the messy handwriting, and have them go over the answers orally, in case they missed something due to not being able to see it very well.
Make a patching box of activities they can only get out while wearing their patch
We buy our eye patches from Krafty Eye Patches. They have kits for decorating, and that is how we started the whole decorating eye patches. However, she wanted more variety and fun the older she got. We are still eye patching nearly daily and she is nearly eight years old. She doesn’t mind near as much now, as she used to. However, during allergy season, patching doesn’t happen much, as she soon looks like a raccoon due to her eyes swelling and face turning bright red. Her doctor understands and works with us on this.
This is another area we use technology in our homeschool to help her have fun while wearing her eye patch. To learn more about technology use in homeschool, check out Sidetracked Sarah and Raising Arrows
Do you have a child who has to wear an eye patch? What do you do to make eye patching fun?
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mother, christian, wife, woman, child of God. It is about my life as a farmer’s wife, as a cook, a baker, a nurse, a teacher, a woodworker, a housekeeper, a farmer (yep, I drive tractors, pick up hay bales, and other farm duties), a gardener. So, what you read here, is me, as a transparent sometimes hot headed, passionate, and opinionated person.
Thank you so much for writing this! It just about had me in tears! Yesterday, I had my 4 yr old DD in to the eye surgeon to hear that her eye has gotten worse. We’ve been struggling with patching for over a year now. At first I tried making it fun by putting them on her dolls & decorating her patches but the novelty wore off incredibly fast when she couldn’t see well enough to walk across the floor. She was terrified! She clung to me & screamed anytime I tried to put her down or walk away so I slacked off & quit making her to wear them like I should have. I felt so bad seeing her like that but now I feel worse knowing her eye has gotten worse…can anyone say “mommy guilt”? I digress. We left the Dr’s with a prescription for Atropine drops to use in her good eye 2-3 days a week, patching on the other days & a mommy that decided to pull her big girl pants up and do this, oftentimes difficult, job of being the Mom!
I will be praying for you. It is hard to get them to wear their patches.
(((HUGS))) and ditch that mommy guilt. 