Last week I took my son to his first tennis practice. It didn’t go so well at all. At first, it looked like it would be a lot of fun. He was decked out in his fancy little exercise gear, I’d given him a gigantic water bottle to lug onto the court with him, and he even had his own stash of fluorescent yellow tennis balls. The problem arose when his coach started hitting the balls. Instead of moving around the flying object and hitting it with his racquet, my son stepped directly into its path. Not once. Not twice. Not even three times. They were playing for more than an hour and his body made contact with the ball at ten times the rate his racquet did. At that moment I decided I would have to take him to the local optometrist clinic in Cheltenham. Clearly, he needed his eyes checked. How had I never noticed before? I looked back on all the times I could see him struggling with his vision, and I could honestly only recall a few. Did that make me a bad parent? Maybe. But I’ve always been kind of unobservant, so it’s really no surprise that something as small as this would have escaped my notice.
I guess when we finally take him for his eye test for children, we’ll know for sure exactly how severe his vision problems are. I’m hoping it’s something as simple as a quick, cheap pair of glasses with low-prescription lenses, but after his performance on the court, who knows? I would have laughed if he hadn’t looked so terrified and bewildered. Anyway, the optometrist appointment is next week. I’ve been easing my son into the idea, since he hates being around new people, but I spoke to the optometrist on the phone and she seems very friendly and professional. She is also specifically a children’s optometrist, so she understands how to deal with children who would rather be anywhere else.