Vision Loss

Parents: after you read the following, pick your jaw off the ground quickly. You don’t want to get it stuck that way, do you? And so goes the logic of this myth…

Kids are easily amused. No, I’m not kidding. There was a time in life when simply trying to focus on a freckle at the end of my nose would keep me entertained for a surprisingly long time – at least until my eyes got tired and my head started to hurt. The unfortunate side of this coin is that adults are easily annoyed – especially by those things that kids tend to find amusing. So, sooner or later, some grown-up person in my family would lose patience and snap, “Stop crossing your eyes like that or they’ll get stuck that way!”

Now among vision myths, this one is higher than most on the absurdity scale. Furthermore, its effect is, as often as not, the opposite of the adult’s intention, which is to convince the kid to stop crossing their eyes. I know more than one person who, as a child, responded to the threat with something along the lines of, “Really? Cool!” before proceeding to actually try to get their eyes stuck out of alignment.

Furthermore, there is a vaguely harmful element to this particular myth. Strabismus, the medical condition that causes the eyes to be out of synch with each other, is not acquired. Children who have it are born with it. However, imagine a child who has been afflicted with this condition constantly being told by other children, “Gee, you shouldn’t have crossed your eyes so much. My mom says that’s how they get stuck that way.”

So if your kid is amused by crossing his eyes on purpose, let him do it. It’ll eventually cause a headache – perhaps for you as well as him – but it won’t do any damage. It’s also better than him embarrassing himself – and you – the next time he meets someone with an actual visual problem.