We went to see the Optometrist today, and the recommendation is that kids over the age of 3 should also have their vision checked. I was wondering how do you get a small kid to sit and peer through that big eye thingy (the one where you look at a chart and he asks you “Is 1 or 2 better?” while changing the magnification) and get a reasonably accurate response?
We’ve been seeing Dr. Wang for years, and the last time we were in his office, Erica was about Sam’s age (16 months).

Erica was first up, so I took her in and seated her in the big chair. On the LCD monitor, he then projects some clip art of common objects- a horse, a truck, a cake, etc. and asks what they are. I know that Erica know all the objects, but she goes all shy and whispers to me “I want mommy” but eventually comes around to answering. Dr. Wang is pretty soft spoken, but Erica was so shy that her answers were even softer, so I had to restrain myself from blurting out the answers. Anyways, once Dr. Wang was satisfied that she understood the objects, he then shrunk them down, and asked her to repeat the object names while covering one eye.

Next, he played a cartoon and watched her eyes as she focussed on the screen. From the tests he could determine that she’s 20/20 with a bit of far sightedness in the right eye.

I almost wish I got the kid version of the test rather than the regular “is 1 or 2 better?”

Everytime we come in, there seems to be a new gadget or test. There’s a camera which takes a photo of your retina, that was pretty cool to see… and to measure pressure, there used to be a machine that puffed some air on your eye. Now there are these eye drops that kind of sting and is like iodine mixed with glue.  It takes a few hours to blink that stuff out, but I guess it’s a better test.