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Question:  Can wearing glasses make a child's eyes get worse, even though they  need them to see the blackboard in school?

Answer:    Many parents note that each year after their child gets the first prescription pair of glasses they need a prescription change. his certainly makes you wonder.  Optometry believes that wearing a prescription can cause a need for more prescription,  in some cases. Optometrists do special testing of eye coordination to identify  those children who are likely to get nearsighted when wearing the prescription they need to see the blackboard.  For these children we have frequently prescribed a bifocal that reduces the prescription strength when the child looks down to copy notes from the blackboard (after all, many do not need any prescription to read close).  A recent study in Nature Medicine, funded by the National Eye Institute, seems to confirm this uniquely Optometric Preventative Care Treatment. In tests of infant rhesus monkeys wearing prescription glasses, investigators found that prescription glasses could influence whether the eye became nearsighted or farsighted.  The comparison is not directly valid because children do not start wearing  prescription glasses at an age "as young" as the monkeys did.  Nevertheless, it makes a case for bifocals for some children. work it must be diagnosed early by your optometrist. Unfortunaely, some pediatricians have been influenced by out of date writings that deny this very benificial option.