Crossed eyes

We noticed when our youngest grandchild was just turned 2 that he had a (very slight, hardly noticeable) lazy eye, but didn`t say anything to son and DIL, as I thought it would be picked up by the health visitor. As it happened, it wasn`t, and it was when he started at nursery last September that the nursery staff mentioned it. He was taken to the doctor, sent to the hospital for an eye check up, and now wears glasses, but they think it will correct itself within a couple of years. We thought there`d be problems getting him to keep the specs on, but, bless him, he`s very good there.

I was thinking about a thread on a very similar subject as I'd like some advice about my GD who is 7. When she rolls her eyes [well, she can be a drama queen on occasion] one eye gets a life of its own and takes a second or two to settle. This doesn't happen much but doesn't sound normal to me. Should her mum take her to the GP?

My eldest son had what was called a "lazy " eye, it was picked up at the age of six months. He had to wear a patch on his good eye ( and teddy did as well ) for an hour every day to try and correct it. That sadly did not work so when he was 18 months old he had a little op to correct it and it worked ! The only thing we noticed was when he was a few months old part of his "bad " eye was a sightly different colour than the other, and it still is as to the very day !

It depends a bit on what the cause of the squint is. If it is weak muscle, then it does correct itself (lazy eye), but there can be other causes.

My D was born with one eye closed - it gradually opened and she had an obvious squint. She saw specialists who said she had a sight error (very long-sighted) in that eye (and perfect vision in the other) and there was a danger that the brain would never develop proper binocular vision as it supresses (and does not process) the messages from the faulty eye. In effect, she would go blind in one eye. She had glasses tied on with elastic from a very tiny age. She is fine now.

I think what I am saying is that it should always be followed up. Some children's squint is intermittent and my not be obvious when the HV is present. The thing to do is to take a flash photograph with the child looking straight at you - the little flash circle in her eyes on the photograph should be in the same place on both sides. Worth doing a few times over several days to see what you get. Then you can show to HV if there are concerns.

Thanks for the advice and support, fellow gransnetters. I'll wait and see what happens.

Many babies are still squinting at this age. Now that you've mentioned it to them I'm sure both parents will be on the lookout and take action as necessary. My son had a dreadful squint until after he was two, but it righted itself without intervention.

On the other hand my daughter had an outward/downward squint that I had to point out to the health visitor. They watched it for several years but when I noticed that when she was playing the piano she was tipping her head on one side to read the music she had surgery to correct it. This was at the age of 12 and she has been fine ever since.

Don't worry - health visitor, clinic nurse and GP will be seeing the baby, milestones will be checked out and anything like that will be picked up if it's a problem. My son inherited a discernible squint from father and paternal grandmother, and health visitors and opticians gave me varying opinions over the years as to whether he needed it correcting or not. Specs were issued, exercises given, some argued do nothing, others argued for intervention. I left it to my son to put on his specs when he wanted to - he rarely did. His eyesight was fine by the time he was 9 or 10, having ditched the specs to no ill effect.