Even young kids can swap glasses for contacts

Children as young as 8 can handle the responsibility of wearing contact lenses, researchers reported last week. The conventional wisdom among optometrists has been that children younger than 12 shouldn’t use lenses because they aren’t responsible enough to care for them.

A three-month study of 10 nearsighted children showed nine of them handled daily disposable contact lenses with little trouble, according to researchers writing in the Journal of Optometry and Vision Science.

“Many parents don’t realize that their 8-year-old child can handle the responsibility of contact lenses, so they don’t think to ask,” said Jeffrey Walline, an optometry researcher at Ohio State University.

The researchers said they used daily disposable lenses to relieve the children of the need to clean and disinfect lenses.

Studies show 8-year-olds can put lenses in and out without help from their parents.