Whether your toddler has crossed eyes, lazy eyes, or a rare eye disease like coats’ disease, they will most likely need to wear an eye patch for a few hours daily. And like most toddlers who love to say no, you might face the struggle they won’t wear or will ripe it off.  We sure did; my son would refuse to wear it, cry and take it off. 

Playing Pirates

I tried playing pirates with him and had his older cousins wear an eye patch to motivate him, but it didn’t always work, and he would only get 30 to 45 minutes a day at most. I needed to increase the amount to make significant progress in his vision and decrease the drift in his eye.

Children's books with 

Eye Patch Theme

My son always loved books and loved me reading to him, so I quickly looked for books to motivate my toddler (he wasn’t even two years old) to wear an eye patch. Disappointed with the struggle of finding bilingual (Spanish and English) children’s books focused on vision impairment, I created my own. I spent a few nights drafting a story on google slides, then searched a few cartoon images and pasted them in. I printed the slides, ordered a blank canvas book via Amazon, cut them with pictures and my story, and pasted them into each page. I read my son my prototype book, a story about a boy who must find his magical eye patch to find his treasure. The story simply explains why the boy needs to wear an eye patch. My son immediately identified with the character and said it was him. He loved reading the story each night and was more motivated to wear the eye patch for extended periods throughout the day. 

We went from 30 mins to 3 hours. 

Get a Mascot with an Eye Patch

He would wear the eye patch watching videos, play with his toys, and run around the house. It became customary for him to wear the eye patch.  He even started putting an eye patch on his plush toys like his dog, rabbit, and PJ Mask toy. 

I highly recommend this encouragement and recommend buying small badges for those plush toys.

Offer them Options

As my son got older and went through regressions when we went on vacation or got sick, we did have to negotiate with him. Our doctor provided us with eye drops that would be applied to his good eye, serving as an eye patch. The drops would dilate his "good eye" for a few hours a day, forcing him to use his "weak eye". Since my son didn’t like when we would put eye drops, we would ask him to pick between the eye drops or using the eye patch.  Of course, he would always pick the eye patch.

He is now three years old, and I am close to publishing my book (details coming soon of El Pirata u su Parche Mágico). We continue to read his book at night, and he loves reading it. The combination of the personalized story of a  pirate and his magical eye patch and negotiating between eye drops and an eye patch have been the critical drivers to getting my toddler to wear his eye patch daily.