Ashlynn's Eyes

Things happen for a reason and I thank God that Ashlynn had a vision screening at school this past Friday. The screener found that she has very poor vision in her right eye. Today we took her to the eye doctor and he found similar results. Her left eye is 20/40 and her right one is 20/100. I knew from one of my students last year that the condition is called amblyopia and that if the weaker eye is not challenged, it continues to lose vision to the point of blindness. Another challenge is that by having such unequal vision, you lack depth perception. The poor kid is so clumsy and always seems to be bumping into things, which we had just assumed was Ashlynn being a spacy 3 year old. Now we know there is more to it; The kid can't see! Fortunately the problem has been caught early and with intervention the poor eye should be strengthened.
So, Ashlynn will be getting some cute purple Disney princess glasses to wear full time. In addition, we will be patching the left side of her glasses to exercise that weak right eye. Hopefully she will respond well to having the glasses patched (which might be tricky because she might just take the glasses off so she can see) because otherwise she'll have to wear a band aid style patch, which is far less comfortable.
The other wonderful blessing about the whole thing is that her two closest buddies from school, Lauren and Rebecca, were also diagnosed with the same problem. The screener, who is at preschools on a daily basis, said that she sees 1-2 kids a month with this issue and was amazed that three kids from the same class had it. Plus, it's even more amazing that they're all friends. (If they were older and wiser I'd have thought they did it on purpose!) Lauren had her eye doctor appointment right after Ashlynn's. It was so cute to see them trying on glasses. (They got the same Disney princess ones; Ashlynn's are purple and Lauren's are pink.) It will be so great for the three girls to show up for preschool next week, all wearing their new patched princess glasses. I can only imagine that the other two girls in the class are going to want glasses too!
Here's Ashlynn and Lauren wearing their "cool" sunglasses after having their eye dilated: