I took Monkey to the eye doctor yesterday. There was no indication of anything being wrong, but I figured with him starting school in the fall, it couldn’t hurt to check.
He was great… a little nervous at first, but I assured him that unless there was a problem, they would not be putting any medicine in his eyes (yes, I called and asked before I made that promise). The receptionist took to him immediately and the chatted about their favorite superheroes as she set him up for his pre-doctor screening.
Upon entering the examination room, he was fascinated by the mirror that reflected the TV screen behind him – in the mirror, the letters on the screen were correct; on the TV itself, they were backwards. He checked this several times, just to be sure.
The doctor joined us and gave him a pair of magic glasses. She held out a page of images I couldn’t see and Monkey quickly ran through the list of objects he discovered through his magic glasses: Triangle, circle, square, etc. Then he paused and pointed to the square on the bottom right. “Wait a minute! This spot doesn’t have anything in it!” He thought she was trying to pull a fast one on him. She was impressed with his accuracy and skepticism.
We made a group decision to use pictures for the eye exam instead of letters. Even though Monkey is pretty good about identifying his letters, I thought using images would take some of the stress away (from me, that is). He correctly identified most of the pictures: A hand, a bird, a house, a car, a cake.
The horse he had trouble with and I can’t blame him. Having not seen it big, it was difficult to make out, mostly because of the fact that the horse had a man riding on its back.
He leaned over to me and whispered, “Mama, what is that? I can see it – I just don’t know what it is!” The doctor, realizing by now that his eyesight was fine, told him he could skip that one and she quickly passed by it each time it reappeared.
The image I was most concerned with was the telephone.
Nowhere in my house, his grandparents’ houses, or the house of anyone I know is there a rotary type phone. Cell phones and perhaps one or two cordless phones are the only ones Monkey has ever come in contact with. He answered correctly right away, but I think they might want to consider changing that soon.
And speaking of modern technology, my favorite response to an unknown image came when Monkey was presented with this picture:
This image of several curved lines that increase in size looked familiar to him, but was not identifiable. He hemmed and he hawed. He looked to me for an answer. I told him to try his best and take a guess. He examined it closely and said in an uncertain voice, “Is that the Internet?”
The doctor and I both turned and looked at the image before us and there it was… Wi-Fi.
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Photo credits:
The Children’s Eye Chart image was retrieved from http://www.pediatric-ophthalmology.com/html/faq.html
The Wi-Fi image was retrieved from http://www.clker.com/search/wifi/1
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