Ophthalmologist visit.

[rivka]

We took Alex to the ophthalmologist this morning. She's being checked annually for strabismus, because I had surgery for it as a child, and Michael probably needed surgery for it but didn't get it. This time last year, we had a pretty stressful trip to the opthalmologist - as I recall, she fussed the whole time, and was pretty much hysterical all through the dilated eye exam. Today's visit went much better.

We did a little preparation beforehand. Several times over the past few weeks, I told her that soon we would be going to the eye doctor and rehearsed what the eye doctor would do. This morning, I got out her toy otoscope and a flashlight and gave an eye exam to a teddy bear and then to Alex, and then Alex gave me one. That got her very excited about the whole trip, and she went to the exam room eagerly.

In my job before grad school, I gave vision tests to infant monkeys. So I knew that it was possible, if not easy, to test the visual acuity of someone who can't read an eye chart. I was interested to see how they tested Alex.

First the tester showed her a sheet of paper with some stylized pictures that had a stenciled look. She asked Alex to name each picture. Then she projected the pictures on a screen and had Alex continue to identify them as the sizes got progressively smaller. She had been uncertain about naming a couple of the pictures initially (the images were kind of weird), and so when she said "I don't know" about one of those images the tester switched to another image of the same size instead of assuming that it was a visual acuity problem. Alex thought this was a really fun game.

Next she asked Alex to try on a pair of toddler-sized sunglasses which I guess had polarizing lenses. She showed her a group of cartoon drawings of animals and started to ask her "which one looks funny" - but she didn't need to, because Alex immediately tried to pick one of the drawings up. Apparently, this was a test of stereo vision. One cartoon animal looks 3-D when viewed through polarizing lenses... but only if you have working stereo vision. (Michael tried on the glasses later and couldn't see the 3-D at all.) I thought it was really cool that the test makes use of a toddler's natural tendency to explore, rather than requiring the ability to answer questions or follow directions. I think any young child would probably want to touch and handle a 3-D picture; following a stranger's directions is a much more chancy enterprise.

Finally, she put another pair of sunglasses on Alex. This one had a red lens and a green lens. She turned on a little device with colored lights (red, green, and white) and asked her to show her Mama where each light was.

The actual ophthalmologist's exam was much more boring. She basically just wanted Alex to look at various toys, close up and far away, while she covered one eye or the other, or shined a light in one eye or the other. Alex did cry when the eyedrops went in - there were only a couple of seconds between the supposedly numbing eyedrops and the painful dilating eyedrops, which didn't seem to be enough time. But after her eyes dilated she went willingly back to the exam room to see the doctor again. She marched right up to the exam chair and announced, "I want to sit in the chair by self." (The previous exam was done while she sat on my lap.) And she did, too. She sat quietly in the chair and kept her hands away from her eyes and followed all the doctor's directions. I was proud and amazed.

Interestingly enough, when we came home she said she was tired and insisted on being put to bed for a nap. That almost never happens! I think that cooperating with such a new experience was a bigger strain than it appeared.

The upshot of it all: Alex's eyes are perfectly fine. So fine that we can skip next year's exam and just follow up again when she's four. Yay.

I did notice one thing today. Alex decided that she wanted to wear a dress, so I put her in a pretty but practical plaid cotton sundress. All through our trip to the opthalmologist, she got much, much more of a particular kind of attention than usual: syrupy, fawning comments from the office staff and from strangers in the elevator about "Aren't you beauuuutiful. You look sooooo pretty in that dress, but I bet you aaaallllways look beautiful."

It seems as though just putting her in a dress instead of shorts - and it's not that fancy a dress - is enough to trigger a huge explosion of hyperfeminine assumptions. I hated it. Alex seemed embarrassed by it, but also pleased. I swear it's almost enough to make me want to permanently dress her in shapeless gender-neutral coveralls.

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Yay! for Alex's eyes.

Boo! for gender stereotypes.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Elena gets a lot of attention, though I haven't noticed a big correlation to what she's wearing. Maybe because I so often dress her in T-shirt and jeans (or equivalent). Lately, she's been getting lots of notice from older folks when she's driving the truck-shopping-cart at the grocery store. And then she's not exactly looking girly - she's driving a big truck!! (And they can't see what she's wearing, because of said truck.) Usually, it's the braids or pigtails or whatever configuration her hair is in, which attract notice.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

re: Tired

I always find that the dilating pupil thing makes me *really* tired post-exam. I almost always need/want a nap afterwards, and I'm not a big napper.

Hooray for healthy eyes!

n.

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

Me too! I refuse to get dilated eyes unless they give me areally good reason, as migranes afterwards are not fun.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a number of daugthers of very feminist, fannish, un-dressy parents turn into girly, super-femme clothes horses at apallingly young ages. As in, well established by the time they're two.

I can also think of one who was, in addition, manipulating her father into relenting on parental strictures by flirting and being deliberately cute with him by the same age. I keep wondering if this doesn't happen partly because of the sort of reception Alex received, and the way she responded to it. When people can tell that a baby or a toddler is a girl, the incidence of effusive praise and attention based solely on looks goes way, way up, IME.

If you really want to counteract that, tho, you might consider a haircut in addition to the gender neutral dress.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think some feminist parents shoot themselves in the foot by strongly preferring that their daughters have an androgynous or butch gender expression. Kids don't have to be very old to figure out, "Wow, this stuff drives Mommy crazy, and it seems to be very powerful in the outside world, too. It must be mine!!"

I honestly have no preferences about whether Alex does or doesn't wear traditionally feminine clothing, or does or doesn't develop traditionally feminine interests and hobbies. I don't secretly wish she'd play with her trucks instead of her toy kitchen, and although I really dislike the color pink I am happy to dress her in pink clothes as well as blue ones. I don't know if that's the whole reason why she is fairly even-handed in her preferences, but I think it contributes.

If you really want to counteract that, tho, you might consider a haircut in addition to the gender neutral dress.

Never. Never. NEVER!!

...Well, at least, not until she's old enough to clearly and consistently express a preference for short hair. Otherwise I just couldn't.

short hair

[(Anonymous)]

Trouble is, Rivka, by the time you are combing headlice three nights a week, her preference for long hair will be established (because "girls have long hair" is a very powerful idea in the culture, even for girls with short hair, with mothers with short hair). And I'm here to tell you that combing nits out of long hair is a huge pain. And you will be combing nits, like every other parent in the western world, whether they admit it or not.

For a decade or so, if my experience is any guide. (6-16 and counting ;-)

Emma

Re: short hair

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

And now I find myself wondering if I'm raising an actual human at all, let alone a female one! When Agent Weasel was two or three, we put her in a pink dress (that had been given to her by friends of ours). She howled her head off until we took her out of it and put a t-shirt and jeans on her instead.

I'm a butch/fannish mum with a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl. With short hair, because that's what she wants.

And as for the nits -- get a Robicomb! It's a battery-powered lice comb that electrocutes lice and eggs, and it's brilliant. A comb once a day for ten days will get rid of lice, with no chemicals for the lice to become immune to.

Re: short hair

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've never heard of the Robicomb, but I've sure heard about lice from friends with kids. That sounds great!

[(Anonymous)]

I know you already are really aware of this due to your thoughtful parenting, but I am interested in your take on whether you think Alex picks up on the nonverbals of your frustration with the syrupy attention and compliments when she dresses girly? Feelings on gender role treatment just seem to go so far below the surface and kids are such keen observers. It seems it would be hard to feel strongly as you (and I) do and still come off as unbiased regarding the issue. I know it would be for me...for me, I am honestly unable to say that I truly have No Preferences. (bk)

[naomikritzer]

My kids both had opthamologist exams as infants, because my husband had strabismus that went untreated, and my maternal grandfather and a paternal uncle also had or have it, so there's a strong family history.

I was fascinated to see that they could test visual acuity (up to a point) even on non-verbal infants. They showed Molly a series of cards with lines on it that got closer and closer together, and watched her eyes to see if she followed the lines. It's hard to explain exactly, but I could see watching her that she was seeing them (or not seeing them, once they got to the one that turned into an indistinct gray blur, from her POV).

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's taking advantage of infants' natural preference for patterns over solids. With the baby monkeys, we did something called a "forced preferential looking" test. We had a grey box with two slots in it, and a peephole in between. One person stood holding the monkey on the front side of the box. The other person put up pairs of cards in the slots without looking at them: one black and white striped, and one gray matched with the stripes for brightness. Then they looked through the peephole and tried to figure out which side the monkey preferred.

We'd go through a set of ten pairs of cards with varying sized stripes, each time noting down which side the monkey seemed to prefer. If the monkey seemed to prefer stripes of a given size 70% of the time, we figured that he or she could really see them.

It was a pain. In. The. Neck, I can tell you that.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

My brother said that it tore him up to watch his eager-to-please but apparently vision-impaired 4yo try to give the right answers on identifying the little pictures that she could barely see. But then when they put the glasses on her, she confidently narrated each of the lines of pictures "bug, house, dog, fish, bicycle" or whatever and would end each slide with "and a flower". They couldn't figure that out until they realized that the testing slides were marked with a tiny company logo in the bottom right corner.

"and a flower"

[hazelchaz]

So, really good eyesight? That must have rocked.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Shades of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon, where he ends up reading the tiniest line of letters, and finishing with "Acme eye test chart (and more stuff I can't remember)".

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Alex, and for her eyes.

As for the gender stereotyping, it might be fun to teach her a snappy comeback or two. (See, now this is why it's a good thing I was never a parent...)

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Miss A was brave and smart and I don't blame her one bit for being tired. After a day like that I'd want a nap too.

I was the primary caretaker of the most beautiful human being under the age of 5 on the planet, once upon a time.

Seriously. Think mixed race; color of cocoa skin, wide gorgeous 'Seven-up bottle' green eyes and natural dark chocolate brown ringlets with natural honey colored highlights all in a heart shaped face of almost unbearable sweetness.

Strangers would cross the street to tell her how pretty she was- in high tourist season in Honolulu. And that was before she turned on her considerable high-power charm. The kid could stop traffic.

And did. After a while she was doing it on purpose. It was very disconcerting to be a witness to a toddler working a crowd.

So I mentioned it to her family, who allowed as how they'd been noticing it too. (Dad said 'I feel like I'm in some superstar's entourage.')

Which led to not a few conversations where a trusted adult (me, among others) would try to explain to her that 'pretty' is not a job, and that 'pretty' does not make you a better person. And that people will react to 'pretty' very strongly but that it's not where you should base your sense of self.

Punky: I'm really pretty, huh?

Me: So's a flower.

Punky: (thoughtfully) Flowers don't DO anything but be pretty.

Me: Huh. Sounds kind of boring to me.

Punky: I like doing things. I don't want to be a flower.

Me: Then don't. Can't nobody make you.

Punky: Because I'm a person. Not a flower. And because I can say STOP IT! and flowers can't?

Me: Yep.


After a while she took to responding to all compliments about how beautiful she was with a perky cheerful 'And I'm efficient too!'.

I strongly suspect her Grammy had a hand in that one.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Effient, too! Hee.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Alex's eyes are perfectly fine.

Thanks be. I'm sure that's a relief.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's nice to hear, yes. "Relief" implies that we were worried, and I don't think we were. Worried that the appointment would be stressful, yes; worried that there was something wrong with her eyes, no.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I had my first eye surgery at 7 months, and my second when I was about 5.

The eariest eye chart I remember was a capital E at various sizes, turned different ways, and I was supposed to point which way the openings were turned. I may have been a bit older than Alex is now when they tested with that one, but it was clearly designed for non-readers -- the subject did not need to know it was an E, only be able to point left, right, up, or down.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I remember that one from kindergarten, and from the pre-kindergarten eye screening. We were supposed to make our fingers go the same way as the lines of the E.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

My eyes went suddenly crossed when I was 10 and the doctors thought it might be a brain tumor, but it was just strabismus (I loved the week in the hospital). I wear progressive lens glasses now because it drives me nuts to wear contacts and have to keep putting on and taking off reading glasses, but I can't wear soft contacts because of the scar.

I remember after I had glasses (age six, 1961), the testing at school were those E charts and they had me take my glasses off. I said "what chart?"

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of glad that my supply of baby-talk has nothing to do with pretty or handsome. I'm more likely to say "Now, the first level of mathematical abstraction is when you realize that numbers exist. If you have three sticks, and three deer, there's something that relates the sticks to the deer. Then, you realize that you can manipulate numbers without even knowing what they are, and we call that algebra. Then, it turns out we can play with things that are just plain impossible by looking at limits, and at that point, we venture into calculus."

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

My supply of babytalk is mostly calling them kitties. I apologize, but I do talk to kitties most of the day.