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Colored Lenses for Children

The American Academy of Optometry says that children can safely wear contact lenses to deal with some sight issues. In fact, children who are merely months old can wear contact lenses with help from their caregivers, according to the AAOP. Colored lenses are also available for use by children to help them handle some specific eye conditions.

  1. Prosthetic Contact Lenses

    • Prosthetic contact lenses are colored contact lenses that help a child hide a disfigured eye or cut down on the amount of light that reaches the back of his eye. An eye could become disfigured as a result of an injury, it could become infected, or it could suffer as a result of other such problems. Prosthetic contact lenses can be made to order to match the healthy eye, or they could be custom painted to match the healthy eye.

    Uses of Prosthetic Lenses

    • Prosthetic contact lenses could help children who have albinism, a situation in which a person does not have adequate pigmentation and is very sensitive to light. Colored contact lenses also are useful for children with a condition called nystagmus, which makes for involuntary shaking of their eyes. These prosthetic contact lenses used to hide a disfigured eye are typically soft lenses. This helps since these lenses are larger and move less.

    Light Sensitivity

    • During the 1980s, school psychologist Helen Irlen noted that many children with reading problems had the same kinds of issues. For instance, they complained of visual distortion, were sensitive to glare, and suffered from headaches and tired eyes. Moreover, these problems were most common when the children attempted to read black print on white paper. Therefore, Irlen came up with the thesis that those with reading disabilities suffer from a condition in which their retinas are too sensitive to certain light frequencies. She called this condition scotopic sensitivity syndrome.

    Overlays

    • As a result of scotopic sensitivity syndrome, the brain distorts and misunderstands the visual information it receives. The solution Irlen came up with is the use of colored lenses, or overlays, to keep out the light frequencies that cause the distortion, so as to cut down on the glare. This is done with the use of a machine called an intuitive calorimeter that helps find out a person's color preference. As many as 7,000 different shades of the overlays are available, and one of these could be chosen depending on the child's color preferences.

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