Taking Care of Your Eyes as You Age

If your child is starting to participate in various sports at school, his or her eyeglasses might get in the way during these activities. To help your child play his or her best, you might want to consider letting him or her switch from eyeglasses to contacts. If you're not convinced that this is a good decision, here are two facts that may help persuade you.

Kids Can Handle Contacts

According to All About Vision, studies reveal that 90% of children between the ages of 8 to 11 had no trouble at all wearing, removing, and inserting contact lenses. The eyes of children in this age range are physically ready for contact lenses, but it also depends on the child.

Children that are mature and responsible tend to do better with contacts, whereas children that are less mature may have problems keeping track of their contact lenses. You can judge whether your child is ready based on how you feel about his or her actions.

You should also realize that contact lenses now come in many types, such as daily contacts and monthly contacts. With daily contacts, the child replaces the pair each day. Both of these options are great for kids that are switching from glasses to contacts.

Contacts Offer Benefits for Sports

The second thing to know about this is that contacts offer numerous benefits for kids that play sports. If you think about your child wearing glasses while he or she plays a sport, you may have worries about the child breaking his or her glasses. This can easily happen during any type of sport, but you will not have to worry about this with contacts.

There are other benefits too, which include:

• Less obstruction – Glasses obstruct vision, especially peripheral vision, but contacts do not.
• No glare – Glasses also tend to glare up in certain environments, whereas contacts do not.
• No fog – Foggy glasses make it hard to see when playing sports, but it is hard to prevent this from happening.  
• Less chance of injury – If your child is hit in the head while playing a sport and is wearing glasses, the child could actually get injured from the glasses.

When your child has contacts, he or she will be able to see better than with glasses, and your child may be safer on the field or court. If you would like to find out if your child is ready to switch to contact lenses, make an appointment with a doctor, like Byrne William, at an eye care center.