Isaac's Eyes

Isaac makes this really cute (rather mischievous-looking) little facial expression where he kind of squints with his left eye. He does this when he’s smiling really big, and sometimes when he’s frowning too. I never really thought much about it, but our friends’ son recently got glasses to help with a ‘lazy eye’ and one thing they said is that sometimes with that kids will start using their ‘good’ eye more, by covering up or closing their other eye. Michael and I both noticed Isaac squinting the last few weeks, so I was looking online and a squint is sometimes associated with a ‘lazy eye’ or with other visual problems, so we thought we’d better have him checked out just to be safe. Last night I looked back through our photos (just in case the doctors would want to know how long he’s been doing it), and realized that he’s been making that little face since he was a baby. (Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t squint all the time, but he does it often enough that I’ve happened to catch it on camera since he was very small.)

So, we went in this morning and had him checked out. The pediatrian did a normal vision screening – with the wall chart that has shapes instead of letters for little kids – and they said he has 20/20 vision. They also did a second test that is something that this office only started within the last year, and I guess they only do it for kids up to age 3 or 4 – they scan the child’s eyes with something that looks rather like the tool used to scan bar codes at a grocery store, it takes an image of the eyes, and the computer assesses if there are any vision problems. The doctor also looked at him and asked lots of questions. She said that since both the vision tests came back normal and she couldn’t see anything, and since we’ve never noticed any other problems and he hasn’t complained about it at all, she thinks he’s fine and it’s just an expression he likes to make. So, we’ll keep an eye on it in the future, but it all looks good. I’m just glad we don’t have to deal with glasses that would likely get lost and/or broken with a 3 year old.