Four Year Old Needs to Wear a Patch

My doctor told me that wearing a patch while watching tv was of no help.

The eye needs to be patched while doing something with eye hand cooridination...I bought a jewerly making kit and she could only do this activity if she patched.

There are things in life we must do that we are not happy about. Like my son, she just needs to wear it. No cajoling no prizes. This is a non negotiable. Persistence is the key. My son was three. First few days were not easy, but he figured out very soon that I was not giving in. Never a problem. Stay strong. It is for her own good.

I know it's hard but I don't think this should be a choice, or be rewarded. I feel like safety/medical issues are separate from other, optional things. She NEEDS to wear the patch, just like she needs to wear her glasses, or a seat belt, get her shots, or stay with you in public.
If she's that resistant you may need to turn off the TV, and/or take away other things until she complies without throwing a fit.
Like I said, I know it's hard, but she needs to learn certain unpleasant tasks are simply a part of life. Maybe instead of wearing it during her TV time it might be more comfortable when she's playing, or while she bathes or when you're reading to her? Maybe being in front of a screen is annoying while wearing a patch.

I had to wear a patch due to amblyopia. In JUNIOR HIGH. At SCHOOL. You cannot imagine how much I did not want to wear that thing! So I do understand the issue.

As Mamazita and Patty K mentioned, this really cannot be something you reward for, or act as if it is her choice. This is to force her lazy eye to work. If it doesn't happen now, it will never happen. (Trust me, I know all too well...) What she may be having trouble articulating is that when you have a lazy eye, it literally cannot see. Even though the eye is in physical working order, the pathways in the brain that take the information from the eye and process it in the brain, have not been developed. So it's kind of like, you can physically see the images, but you can't process them. To this day, if I cover my right eye, I can see images with my left eye (clearly! Thanks, Lasik! ;), but I can't actually *read.* It's hard to describe, but very disconcerting. I imagine that this is what your daughter is experiencing, and it would be a little like going blind all of a sudden (but not, and it's confusing, and the lazy eye physically HURTS).

I'd explain to her that although it's uncomfortable, and feels like she can't see, wearing the patch is going to help develop the pathways in her brain, and one day, she WILL be able to see using that eye. Explain why it's important. Unfortunately, even though it's unpleasant, it's simply not a choice. She just has to do it. Such is life! This is lesson #1 in learning that all things worth having are worth working for. :)

My daughter had to wear a patch and she hated it too. She had a lazy eye and needed to blur her good eye to make the weak one work. So when we patched her good eye she couldn't see. Very frustrating.The first patch we got her was a traditional patch and she peeked out around it all the time, and it wasn't comfortable. We got her a fabric patch (Framehugger) that fit onto her glasses and that one was much more comfortable and it helped her willingness to wear the patch and not "cheat".
Someone at our opthmologist's office suggested that we put clear (opaque) tape over the lens that needs to be patched. We never did because we had already found success (after much frustration) but I thought it was a good idea.
You might also ask your Dr about drops that blur her eye. I don't remember the name of the medicine, but it lasts longer than a few hours. She may need to gain more visibility in her other eye before they will do that.
Good luck! It' s so hard when they don't see better, to help them understand that it will eventually help them :(

I had to wear an eyepatch for a couple years as a kid. When you have a lazy eye and first start wearing it, it really is hard to see anything. For me it was more like I could see general shapes but that was it. So I would advise that if she really wanted to watch the cartoon, it might be a bad time to introduce the eyepatch. It might be easier when she's doing something that doesn't require her to see relatively small things. I remember starting to wear it when I was playing with my dolls because I could still see them! Like you, my mom started with small periods of time until I was up to wearing it all day, every day.
I used to HATE wearing it to school. Randomly, one of my friends brought stickers to school and asked if we could decorate it together. Then a few other girls liked that, and for the next few days, they did this with me and I lost that hate for it. Maybe you could decorate it together?

My 4 year old daughter has a lazy eye, and a head tilt. We have patched her with Nexus sticky eye patches. She hates them. She will take them off, and her skin with them. We tried band aids and pirate patches. Problem is, if they are not fully blocking light and vision then they do NO good. It has to be a minimum of 4 hours daily.
We finally resorted to Atropine drops prescribed by the doctors. One drop a day dilates the eye to obstruct vision. We only have to do it for 4 days of the week. The rest of the week we let her rest, but the amount stays in her eye like your doing it daily. SO much easier, and better. She has significantly improved only after 2 months. Where she only marginally improved after 4 months of conventional patches.

My son is the same age and we will find out in august if he will need a patch. His doctor suggested to me that I could get the lens on his glasses scratched or blurred. I'm not sure exactly how they do it. That may be an option? I feel your pain :)

I'd go to Target and get these, $2 for 4, they're with the party stuff:
http://www.target.com/p/spritz-foam-pirate-eye-patch-favo... - I bought some for my guy's pirate tea last August and more of them for his birthday party next week. She can be a pirate.

I myself wouldn't reward her for doing something she's supposed to do, especially when it's for her benefit. My guy doesn't like taking allergy meds, and doing breathing treatments, but he complies because he has asthma and he needs them and the doctor said he needs them. He's not older than your daughter, he'll be 4 next week. I'm not into rewarding bad behavior, it sets a bad precedent. My thing would be, she had a tantrum and now she gets treasures, "cool, what else can I get?" ;)

I like the idea of covering the lens of her glasses. You can do that with a piece of paper.

As for the tantrum, I hope you turned the cartoon off until she could get ahold of herself.

It is really easy to get sucked in as parents, because we feel so bad for them.

My daughter wore the patch for a while, but then we found a doctor that did eye therapy for the lazy eye.

Not sure if this is a possibility but to avoid having to wear a patch when I was a child the doctor essentially used a nail polish to cover the lens I needed to not use. Perhaps if this is plausible you can get a second pair of glasses that is just for this at home, this way she won't have to wear a patch?

I had to patch both my sons, opposite eyes (of course!). I bought that actually go on the glasses themselves, as opposed to on the skin, and that helped. I used Framehuggers.

We had to start patching my younger son VERY early - like 18 months (he started wearing glasses at 9 months). From the beginning, he was okay with it. By the time my older son started wearing glasses (at his pre-Kindergarten screening), my younger son was old enough to encourage his older brother (instead of the other way around!). I made sure, though, that we patched at home as much as we possibly could, if that is what they wanted. By the end, though, the patches were "cool" (we had Cookie Monster on one, Spider Man on the other), and they didn't mind wearing them out of the house (unless it was HOT - they were fleece).

We did start out with five minutes, then 10, etc. building up to the 4 (!) hours I needed to do with my younger son. It didn't take long (a week?) for the eye to strengthen to a point where he could actually see out of the eye and focus on big things (tv, outside, large picture books) but we never did get to the point where they could focus on small things (print, other fine motor type activities) before they were out of patches.

I agree with those who mentioned the atropine drops. My daughter was patched when she was about 18 months old, but when she needed to be again at about 30 months, she kept taking off the patch and it was impossible and we went with the drops.
I think it would be really hard to start her at 4 and expect her to change if she's currently resistent.
Don't wear both of you out trying to make it work if you don't have to!
So say I.
S.