My 2 year old grandchild's left eye deviates slightly inward. But, the eye does not stay in this position.

Question

When the child looks at another object the left eye swings back into midline position. My daughter does not see this. Is she in denial? Or, am I being a worrisome grannie? I have another child that was diagnosed with "lazy eye" at age 5. She used drops, then a patch to strengthen the lazy eye. I did not pick up on the problem as a young parent. Is a lazy eye stuck in the midline or lateral position? ( If my daughter's eye was grossly misaligned I would have noticed.) Is it momentarily? I asked my daughter to have the nurse practioner exam the child's eyes last visit. At age 2, he is not into coorporating for exams of any type. I guess a child has to be mature enough to allow an exam. Meanwhile......If there is a problem, will it delay his development?

Answer 1

it sounds like lazy eye to me. My son had it at 3 or 4 years old, and I never was able to see it myself. my husbands  cousin noticed it one day, and my husband was so adamant about it that I went to a pediatric opthamalogist. My son had lazy eye in both eyes, but one eye was worse than the other. they patched the worse eye for about 6-9 months, then scheduled surgery. He had the surgery at like 4 years old, and still wears glasses for near sightedness (I think).

Answer 2

My mom noticed the same thing with my daughter (it wasn't very noticeable at all - I didn't see it until looking closely after my mom pointed it out) - she was about 5 years old - I took her to a pediatric eye doctor. Because we didn't catch it sooner her vision in the lazy eye was compromised - basically her brain stopped using the bad eye and made the good eye work even harder. We had to do months of patching her good eye to make the bad one strong again - eventually the vision in her bad eye got better but it still occasionally turned in so she needed surgery. She's 9 now and so far so good - she doesn't need glasses at this point.

I would take him to a pediatric eye doctor - they know what they are looking for and can notice even the slightest problem - it wouldn't hurt to be sure.