Are contact lenses safe for children?
Concerned parents often ask eye doctors this one specific question: "My child would like to wear contact lenses, is that suitable for him or her?"
More than just age, the maturity of the child and their ability to handle contact lenses well plays an important role.
From what age can children start wearing contact lenses?
From a purely physical point of view, a child's eyes can tolerate contact lenses at a fairly young age. Some young children are better suited to start wearing contact lenses than others because of congenital cataracts, or other specific conditions of the eye that are present from birth.
In a recent study examining children with nearsightedness aged eight to 11 years with daily disposable lenses, it was found that up to 90% of the children had no problem inserting and removing contact lenses, without support from their parents or other adults.
If you are considering letting your child wear contact lenses, you should first look at how your child handles other responsibilities and tasks. Does your child have good personal hygiene habits, keep their bedroom and bathroom clean, and are they good at doing schoolwork and other chores in the house that you ask of your child?
If you constantly have to remind your child to stay neat and follow good hygiene, then they may not be ready to take the necessary responsibility to wear contact lenses and pursue proper maintenance. But if your child is well able to perform all these tasks, then they may be a suitable candidate to start wearing contact lenses.
Children are naturally good wearers of contact lenses if they are willing to take responsibility for the lenses. Usually they are very motivated to wear contact lenses and they usually adapt very well.
Children are less likely to have dry eyes, a condition that can eventually contribute to lenses causing problems, especially in adults.
In practice, we also find that younger children often follow the instructions for wearing and maintaining contact lenses better than teenagers and young adults, and they often have fewer problems related to wearing contact lenses for too long or not using the correct solutions for maintaining the contact lenses.
Contact lenses when practicing sports
Children who are active in sports and do a lot of other exercise such as dancing will often find wearing contact lenses more comfortable than wearing glasses. If your child wears glasses when playing sports, even when it concerns specific strong sports glasses that can take a beating, there is still the problem that the frame of the glasses can break, especially in contact sports, and this can lead to annoying injuries.
Another problem is that the lenses of sports glasses can fog up during a match, which can negatively affect the child's vision and, consequently, performance.
Contact lenses, specifically when used during sports competitions, eliminate these problems and they have a number of other advantages such as an unobstructed view of the field and also a better peripheral vision that allows your child to react more quickly to other players and objects such as a ball that suddenly comes close to them.
Contact lenses also have the advantage that they always remain stable when he or she is running, and this ensures a more accurate and stable vision.
Many contact lenses, especially gas permeable contact lenses, offer better vision than glasses. This leads to clear vision, which of course promotes performance during the sport.
Building self-confidence by wearing contact lenses
Many children who previously lacked self-confidence have managed to boost it by wearing contact lenses, for the very simple and obvious reason that they do not always have to look through glasses.
Simply by wearing contact lenses, the feeling that the child has of himself, because he no longer has to wear such ugly glasses on his nose, can be taken away and thus increase self-confidence considerably.
So, to briefly summarize what was explained above: wearing contact lenses not only provides better vision when playing a sport than glasses, but it also improves self-confidence.
In the recent study conducted on 169 children who initially wore glasses on the doctor's prescription and then switched to contact lenses, the conclusion was simple: the researchers found that wearing lenses clearly improved the feeling with which children and teenagers evaluated their own appearance and participation in activities.
Among the participants in the study, 71.2% of children in the age category of 8-12 years and 78.5% of teenagers said that they preferred wearing lenses over wearing glasses.
The researchers also concluded that children up to the age of eight were just as capable as teenagers of wearing and maintaining the contact lenses prescribed to them in this study, which was admittedly sponsored by Vistakon.
In another study, 484 children aged 8 to 11 years were asked to wear either contact lenses or glasses in an unstructured manner for a period of three years.
At the end of the study, the research showed that children's image of themselves in terms of their own physical appearance, their athletic ability and their social interaction was remarkably higher among the children who wore contact lenses.
That being said, you should also take into account that when your child switches from glasses to contact lenses, this does not have to be a permanent decision.
In other words, if your child does not make the switch well, or if they are not yet able to take responsibility for wearing and maintaining the contact lenses, they can easily go back to wearing glasses. This does not have to be a final decision, your child can always try wearing contact lenses again later.
Trying to control nearsightedness by wearing contact lenses
Nearsightedness can be another reason to consider letting your child wear contact lenses. Even though the concept is currently still somewhat controversial, there are studies that suggest that for children who suffer from nearsightedness, wearing gas-permeable contact lenses can slow down or even eliminate the progression of this condition.
On the other hand, there is also research that still doubts the effect of wearing contact lenses with this specific condition, so we may have to wait for new research.
The more specific technique of gas-permeable lenses that we know as orthokeratology or ortho-k, which may combat nearsightedness, uses specially designed lenses that change the shape of the eyeball when the lenses are worn overnight during sleep.
Revolutionary about this technique is that you remove the lenses in the morning and that when the procedure is successful, the person with nearsightedness should be able to see clearly throughout the day without wearing glasses or lenses.
Please note that this technique can only have a temporary effect for the time being.
You must wear these specific lenses every night (during sleep) again to experience the corrective effect during the day.
Recently, researchers in New Zealand have found that experimental 'dual focus' contact lenses are able to reverse the progression of nearsightedness in children aged 11 to approximately 14 years, compared to people who wear ordinary soft lenses.
These specific lenses provide a central optical zone that can correct nearsightedness, surrounded by peripheral zones with slightly less vision.
The work of these lenses is based on previous research that indicates that reducing vision in the core of the eye could decrease during childhood in a person suffering from increasing nearsightedness during his youth.
Over a period of approximately 20 months, these lenses were able to reduce nearsightedness by 30% or even more in 70% of the children who participated in the study. However, the enhancement of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity was maintained compared to wearers of conventional soft lenses.