New Specs4Us

They arrived on Thursday but it took me until tonight to snap a picture. Forgive the cookie crumb face, please. Yes, Nutter Butters. No, they were not tainted.

(How about those dimples!)

She is gradually adjusting to the bifocals. She noticed right away that she could read better, but she doesn't always use the upper lens as much as she should. She also was sneaky and switched back to her old glasses twice today. I think we need to go back and get the ears adjusted, they may be too tight.

You can see that the bridge of the frame is much lower than on a regular frame. The temples have also been lowered. This keeps the lens up higher on the face, rather than dropping down. Individuals with Down syndrome have low set ears. Regular frames have the temples at the top of the lens. With low ears, regular glasses automatically are lower than they should be for optimal viewing. Add in the typically flatter bridge of the nose and you can get an idea of how difficult it is to get glasses to fit. They just droop.

If glasses droop down, then the first thing a kid with low muscle tone does is tilt their head back so they can see through their glasses. Well, I think the first thing anyone does would be to tilt back their head. But if you had low tone, when you tilt your head back, your jaw will jut out and drop open. If your jaw is open, your tongue is relaxed (try it and feel what your tongue does). A tongue that is relaxed cannot produce clear speech. Articulation is virtually impossible. Try talking with a relaxed tongue and a weak jaw. It doesn't work.

I can see that I'm getting off on a tangent--one of my pet peeves is the notion that everyone with Down syndrome has an enlarged tongue. I'll have to save it for a post of its own! Let me just say that individuals with Down syndrome are not born with a large floppy tongue. It's not caused by glasses frames either...but ill fitting frames can contribute.

And now you know more about glasses and tongues than you did before. Aren't you much happier and enlightened with your new knowledge? (I wish there was a font that was called "Sarcasm". Then everyone could automatically tell that I'm joking around. At least those of you who don't personally know me, who can't read the inflection of my typing.)