Autism and the Eye Test

At Ethan’s last review appointment with the pediatrician, she noted that I wore glasses and said she would refer Ethan for an eye text just incase. I didn’t start wearing glasses until I was 25 and we have never had any concerns over Ethan’s sight but being that he couldn’t make us aware if he has issues I thought it wouldn’t hurt. 

Knowing Ethan’s sensory issues and how long it has taken to get a dentist near him, we laughed about how this appointment would even work. We forgot all about it until the new year when we had a letter come through confirming his appointment. The appointment was going to take place at school which meant we would have their support which is always a bonus. The appointment was even sent to us with visuals to prepare Ethan. Unfortunately in the chaos of last weeks hand, foot and mouth experience I totally forgot to show Ethan these visuals.

So last week we attended Ethan’s appointment without any expectations that Ethan was going to actually get his eyes tested. We also didn’t know how Ethan was going to react to us being at the school because he freaked out during our last visit and we had to leave to ease his distress.

We were shown into the appointment room before Ethan and he came in a few moments later with his TA. Thankfully, although Ethan was unsure of our presence, he didn’t freak out about us being there. He sat on the TA’s lap whist the optician checked his eyes.

The optician started by holding cards up to and quite close to Ethan’s eyes asking him if he could see the characters. Thankfully this all went well. He next had to do the test where they ask you if you can see the letters in the circles. This is where we lost Ethan, he took over the situation and kept putting the slides in and out of their box.

When we got Ethan’s attention again the optician moved onto testing his eyes for distance. Ethan had to play a game of matching, so instead of reading out the letters that he could see on the chart, he had to match the objects. Ethan did amazingly well and matched all of the objects no matter how small they got.

We then had to go into a different room so that Ethan’s eyes could be examined. This consisted of different torches being used to look into Ethan’s eyes. I was sure this would freak Ethan out but he let the optician examine him, and with that his eye test was over.

We were amazed at how well Ethan did, I honestly thought Ethan wouldn’t let anyone near him to check his eyes. I’m sure the appointment being at school and the presence of his TA really helped him. They said he will have another eye test in the future but I have no idea when that will be, I’m just glad this one went so smoothly.