Hi Mags,

I was around your sons age when I had to start wearing glasses, and i can relate. No one else in my family had glasses, and I remember crying and not wanting to wear them. I thought it was something for old ladies! What followed was years of me "accidentally" breaking my glasses, losing them, leaving them at home when I went to school. It has to be said though, the options for glasses on the NHS back then were most unappealing!!

You might well need to pull out some bargaining tricks here, you certainly have a challenge on your hands.

I think you need to start by dropping the matter for now, to take it off the agenda for a while. If you're at loggerheads over it, he will shut down every time the issue comes up.

A dangling carrot might be the way forward here. I use marbles as an example, only because thats what I use and I can explain best that way. Say, if he wears his glasses for an hour, he can earn a marble, you pop it in a small jamjar. When the marble jar is full, he can have or do something he really likes. You would know best what reward would appeal here.

Has he worn them for school and had some teasing perhaps? If so a quiet word with teacher might help, in any case, getting his teacher on board with similar rewards might be a good idea.

It is hard for him, he will feel like everyones looking at him, and that it changes how people see him.

One thing that worked for my son was, I told him he looked sooo cute in his glasses that he was obviously going to get away with murder, since he looked irresistably angelic! He likes to pull his angel face in his specs now, when he wants something badly!

Good luck

Liz xx

Hi There,
Hav u actually been to the opticians and seen whats on offer for kids nowadays? My son wasnt very happy about wearing specs at first, but when we actually went and started to try them on he actually got quite excited. I now put a bit extra money to them and let him choose sum designer ones last time (just like a famous film star wears!)