Strabismus in Children Should Be Corrected at a Young Age

Studies show that kids with squint are often marginalized by other normal kids, especially 6 year olds

Being a child is hard enough and now it seems that kids who suffer from strabismus are more prone to be left out of birthday parties or children’s gathering. A new study based on kids aged 3 to 12 shows that kids who are about 6 years old are the ones who neglect most kids with squints.

The study was undertaken by researchers and published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. What they write in there is that kids who have a squint should definitely undergo an eye surgery to correct it at the age of six or even earlier, because that’s the basic cause for which they don’t get invited to birthday parties and left alone.

For the study, the researchers digitally altered 6 photos of identical twins, making one of them look as if he had strabismus. Then, they asked 118 children in the age range of 3 to 12 to choose which of the identical twin they would invite to their birthday party. Moreover, they were asked to choose 4 of them, to make sure children with strabismus would have a chance at getting chosen. If squint made no difference to the choice, about 2 children suffering of strabismus would have been chosen.

Furthermore, the researchers said that factors like age, color of skin or economic situation did not make a difference among the kids and that kids under the age of six did not make a difference between a twin with a squint and a normal twin. However, it seems that discrimination starts at six years of age, as most kids aged 6 or older were more likely to choose children with no visible squint.

Among the kids who were asked to choose who they would invite to their birthday party were aged 6 to 8 and the study shows that 18 of them did not choose a kid with visible squint, 17 of them selected a kid suffering of strabismus once, 11 chose a kid with a squint twice and two of them selected a child with a squint three times, while no one chose 4 kids with strabismus. Now, the remaining 31 children who were to choose people for their birthday parties were aged 4 and 6 and 1 of them did not select a kid with a squint, 21 selected a child with a visible squint once or twice and 9 of them chose a kid with strabismus three or four times.

After they have chosen, the researchers asked them if they had noticed something strange about the twins and 19% of the 4 to 6 year-olds mentioned the eye alignment, while 39% of them mentioned it only after the researchers told them to focus on the eyes. In what concerns the 6 to 12 year-olds, 48% mentioned the eye alignment, and 77% mentioned it only after they had been told to focus on the eyes.

The researchers said that a squint during childhood is something that can have a very big impact on kids and that “visible differences in general have a negative impact on how children are perceived by peers.” Moreover, they concluded that “our results show that schoolchildren with strabismus seem less likely to be accepted by their peers, so corrective surgery for strabismus should be performed before the age of 6 years, when negative social implications may arise.”

So, if you have a child suffering of strabismus, you should make sure he or she gets a good pair of glasses to correct it, if he or she is younger, but if they get to the age of 6 and the squint is not corrected, get them to surgery, or else they will suffer a lot because of the rejection.