Preface: Cleveland was the sweetest most well behaved mild-mannered infant and young child. It was almost to the point of being concerning. (When he was six weeks old and still hadn't 'really cried', I asked my father if that warranted a neurology consult...he said no). He was just a sweet baby. A lot of babies are. In contrast, Lucie wasn't as docile. She cried. You know. All. The. Time. She cried so hard in Labor & Delivery that the nurses actually laughed at me as they placed her in my arms and I made what I'm sure was a completely horrified face.
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So my children were different. That's not a surprise. Any parent with two or more children will tell you how different they all are. That being said, there were some differences that surprised me. These had less to do with the kids’ dispositions and were more behavioral. For example, when I breastfed Cleveland, I could do anything (literally anything) in tandem and he was never bothered. I especially remember watching television and observing that he was completely unengaged in it. At the time, I perceived this to be a reflection on my superior parenting skills☺ When Lucie was born, she was immediately interested in everything, and keeping her focused on breastfeeding was a challenge. I began using a feeding cover not for modesty but just to keep her on task.
There were a few other small things. I remember sitting on the couch feeding Lucie when her pacifier fell on the floor. I asked Cleveland to get it and noticed how much he struggled to find it. It was in a shadowed corner, however, and he was young. Maybe he just wasn’t paying attention to me. When Phil or I picked the kids up at daycare, Cleveland was often on the playground ‘trolling the fence’, as we referred to it. He was waiting for us. But I noticed that he didn’t run to the gate when we walked toward him the way so many other kids did. At least not until we called his name.
The moment it clicked came just a few days before his second birthday. We were playing with blocks on the living room floor and the television was tuned to PBS. (Of all things, it was a Bob Ross painting rerun!) Cleveland and I were sitting within feet of the television and several times I watched him turn his head in direction of the sound. Eventually he got up to explore, and went right up to the television, so that his nose was literally pressed against it. Phil came into the room and told him to move back. When he didn’t, Phil picked him up and sat him on the floor. He did it again, at least two more times. Finally Phil turned off the TV. I turned to him and said ‘I wonder if he can’t see it.’ For a moment, I think we both pondered this thought. It seemed entirely improbable. Still, Phil said ‘Well, let’s bring it up at his 2 year appointment next week’.
At the appointment (as so often happens), I was completely overwhelmed with information and immunizations and trying to breastfeed Lucie at the same time and I almost forgot to mention it. Thank goodness our provider asked if we had any additional concerns. Phil brought up that we were wondering about his vision. She cocked her head and asked if we ever noticed one of his eyes ‘turning’ in or out. ‘Um, no.’ She informed us that, generally, in children this small, vision deficits present with a lazy eye, because one eye is significantly weaker than the other, and effectively ‘turns off’. This becomes apparent to parents and can often be elicited in the doctor’s office by asking the child to focus on a picture held at a particular distance. Since we didn’t report this issue, and she wasn’t able to replicate it in the office, I could tell she was doubtful of any real issue. But she persisted and asked what made us think this. I relayed the stories of daycare pickup, the pacifier and the TV. She asked about family history of childhood eye issues. I piped up that my father had his eye patched as a child and wore glasses. Finally, she said in a supportive, though reluctant manner, that she would refer us to a pediatric ophthalmologist. She let us know that there was only one such person in the entire state (ha, Vermont!), and that we could expect at least three months before the appointment. As it happens, we received a call from the ophthalmologist’s office that week and had an appointment set up for later that month.
The eye appointment was in the afternoon. The kids and I picked up Phil from school and we all headed over. When we arrived, we learned that the appointment would be long involving dilation. I also realized that I’d forgotten Cleveland’s insurance card at home, and the receptionist was more than insistent that it needed to be processed today. So Lucie and I dropped the boys off and went home to get the card. When we returned, Cleveland had already been seen by a technician and had his eyes dilated, and he and Phil were waiting for the doctor’s exam. As I carried Lucie into the waiting room, my eyes met Phil’s, and he looked at me and gave me a quick shake of his head. I sat next to him.
‘What is it?’, I asked.
‘Em, he can’t see.’
‘What?’,
‘He can’t see’, Phil reiterated. ‘He’s effectively blind.’
(Hahahaha, I thought. No way.)
When we met with the doctor, she examined Cleveland’s eyes and gave us his prescription for glasses. She explained that the reason we hadn’t noticed one of his eyes turning was because he had an equal visual deficit; both eyes were equally bad. In fact, she told us she hadn’t ever diagnosed that degree of deficit in both eyes before. She applauded us for picking up on it, since without the lazy eye, it would be easy to miss. She assured us that Cleveland’s vision was correctable with glasses and that he would face no long-term consequences, other than having to wear glasses. She also told us that, had we waited another year before this became apparent, it was very possible that his vision would have been permanently damaged and not correctable. The reasons for this are complicated, but it involves how the eye and brain develop to form and understand images. Because Cleveland wasn’t able to focus on objects at close range, he couldn’t form an understanding of what they looked like from afar. (If you can’t see a picture of a school bus clearly, then you’ll never understand what an actual school bus looks like correctly.) If his condition were to go uncorrected, his brain would eventually lose the ability to make the connection between objects at close range and at distance. Basically, he was very far sighted, but this effectively rendered him near-sighted as well. And the only way to correct this was to bring objects at close range into focus so that, eventually, he could learn to recognize them at a distance.
The moment of truth: Despite Cleveland’s having been without glasses for two years, once we had a prescription in hand, Phil and I had a mutual compulsion to get him into glasses as soon as possible. We rushed to LensCrafters, chose frames (there weren’t many options for a child so small, though we did benefit from Cleveland’s larger than average-size head), and had a pair made on the spot. Initially, we were told we would have to wait a week or more since with his strong prescription, they didn’t have the capacity to build the glasses in house, so we were pleasantly surprised to hear that they would be ready ‘in about an hour’.
We waited in the mall, then went back to pick them up. The glasses were tried and fitted, and tried again. During this time, I asked the technician what we should do about him wanting to take them off all the time (if you have a two year old, this question will make sense, as I didn’t know Cleveland to leave anything on his head/face for more than a few seconds at a time). She replied ‘Oh, for kids who really don’t see well without the glasses, they usually don’t ever want to take them off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to go to bed with them on.’ (She turned out to be right, and Cleveland has slept with them on his face or in a case next to him since that time). After the final fitting, Cleveland hopped out of Phil’s lap and walked to the store entrance. We followed, trying to gauge his reaction to this newly acquired sense. Once the carpet of the storefront changed to the tile of the main mall flooring, Cleveland immediately squatted down and started scratching at the tiles, his small fingers moving over and between the grooves of the variegated floor. I looked at Phil, tears in my eyes, realizing that this was the first time he was able to appreciate this degree of detail. He wandered a bit through the mall and we followed, letting him take in his surroundings as if for the first time. It was a magical moment.
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Epilogue: Months after this experience, when Phil was on his pediatric rotation, he had the opportunity to work with our pediatrician in the clinic. Prior to his first patient encounter, she reminded him that the most valuable thing in the exam room is the information the parent provides about the child. ‘Listen to them,’ she told him ‘Always listen to the mother; she knows the child in a way you never will. If she has a gut feeling, trust it.’
If there’s a moral to this story, it is to follow your parental instinct. In the chaos and uncertainty or parenthood, it’s so easy to ignore our gut feelings, and even easier to be swayed by people who feel/sound as though they have expertise that we don’t. The advice of others can be invaluable, but a good doctor knows that she can only base her advice on the quality of information that we, the parents provide. We must remind ourselves that, when it comes to our own children, we are the true (and only) experts. Phil and I are the only people in the world who have the knowledge, the insight and the incentive to recognize those characteristics in our children that may need to be addressed. And we don’t just have a right to express our concerns to our pediatrician, or our teacher, or our nanny or friends. We have an absolute obligation.
We are the parents. We brought our children into this world, and in doing so, we became obligated to them.
However thankless parenthood can sometimes feel, the truth is our children owe us nothing.
We owe them everything.
Cleveland in August, 2010, on his 2nd Birthday, 12 days before getting his first pair of glasses.
October, 2010, sporting his handsome specs, and taking in the fall leaves.
