How To Help Your Child Get Used To Wearing Contacts

When you purchase contacts for your teen, it's a huge investment on your part. You are trusting your teen to act with the responsibility needed to make this investment of financial resources worthwhile. One way to help ensure that you did not waste your money is to help your teen get used to wearing contacts and improve his or her overall contact hygiene before he or she develops bad habits. Follow these steps to get your child used to wearing contacts.

1. Model Good Habits Yourself

If you wear contacts yourself, the very first thing that you need to do is make sure that you are modeling good habits with contacts. Show your child that you are committed to washing your hands before you ever touch your eyes or your contacts, making sure that you never sleep in your contacts, and regularly cleaning the containers where you store your contacts. You need to show your teen what responsible contact usage looks like so that he or she will understand how to protect your investment. 

2. Don't Push

Some kids might spend years begging for contacts because they hate their glasses, only to discover that putting contacts in for the first time is a hard and scary experience. They might not want to go through the hassle every day of having to essentially touch their eye, especially if they have to get ready for school. If you notice that your child does not wear his or her contacts on a regular basis and instead chooses to wear glasses, don't push him or her to wear contacts. He or she will eventually wear contacts when he or she is ready. You might have to wait until summer when your teen can take all of the time that he or she needs to practice putting in his or her contacts so that he or she is a pro by fall.

3. Accessorize

Finally, let your teen accessorize his or her contact lens case by purchasing him or her an embellished case. Tell your teen that you are celebrating the fact that he or she is now responsible enough to wear contacts. This will show your teen that you have confidence in him or her to not waste your money and will make him or her more likely to wear the contacts in the future.

Talk with an optometrist from an office like A New Vision to learn about other ways you can make the transition period to contacts easier.