Contact Lenses for Kids? Often Their Maturity Is the Key Factor

At what age should a child be allowed to wear contact lenses instead of eyeglasses? The answer depends, eye doctors say, on a number of variables, such as the child’s desire to give up spectacles and the child’s maturity level. Here, two doctors elaborate.

Art Corish, Irvine optometrist; assistant clinical professor of optometry, Southern California College of Optometry:

“I prefer for the child to be mature enough to take responsibility to clean the lenses and handle them carefully. Most are ready for that about age 9 or 10. Physiologically a child could wear contact lenses at age 6 or 7, but most don’t want them as badly as do junior high age kids. At 6 or 7, they are not as mature or capable of taking care of them, although there are exceptions. Kids are better off not wearing extended-wear lenses. Taught properly, though, most kids do well with (daily wear) contact lenses.”

Irene Sang, South Pasadena optometrist:

“I have fit a child as young as age 6 in rigid contact lenses, but more often they are age 9 or 10, because of maturity levels. The child has to want them, not (just) the parents. I do not believe in fitting extended-wear contact lenses for cosmetic purposes in children under age 16, even though the kids all ask for them. Extended-wear lenses are slightly riskier (in terms of such problems as eye infections), and kids are not always as good as adults at reporting problems.”