The Mother's Responsibility in Detecting and Treating Crossed Eyes

When a child is born, he is unable to fix his gaze on any object before he reaches six weeks, nor do his two eyes work together in seeing things before he reaches three months. It is known that a squint in infancy — that is, before three months — is not an important matter; what matters is that the eyes appear healthy and the gaze straight, whether the child looks at something far or near. If the eyes are not straight in their gaze, the condition is called a deviation of vision.

Many among us believe that the deviation of the eye is caused by some frightening accident that befell the mother during pregnancy, or the child himself. Some mothers likewise attribute this condition to the envy of a neighbor, or to what common folk call 'he was struck by the eye,' while others insist that the child crosses his eyes out of deliberate mischief and 'devilment.' There is no doubt whatever that these beliefs are mere delusion — indeed, absurdities of no value.

Squint in the eyes has definite causes, which can be forestalled in infancy or treated when they occur — that is, if the mother is wise. But if she is one of those who believe in superstitions and trifles, she may deprive her child of the chance of treatment at the onset of the deviation, and leave him with disfigured sight all his life. There is, moreover, another belief among mothers: that squint in a child rights itself with the passing days — and this is impossible.

Crossed eyes cause two great harms:

First — the child develops from them an inferiority complex from his earliest years, which stays with him all his life as a result of the way others look at him. He is always difficult of temper, quick to anger, on his guard against others, withdrawn into himself. One must therefore hasten to correct the squint in his eyes before these painful traits, which never mend, take root in his soul.

Second — the child does not use his deviated eye, and so its power weakens gradually. If five years pass over the child and his eye has not been corrected, he will never use it. And if the defect in the eye is corrected after the five years have passed, the correction takes place in outward appearance only; the movement of the eye will never return to its natural state.

This is apart from the fact that long waiting to correct the crossed eye means the loss of sight in it forever.

It is a difficult thing for the doctor, or for anyone who grasps the truth, to convince the ignorant of the causes of squint in a child; it is enough to mention that everything that affects the eye, such as the contraction or slackening of the muscles of vision, causes squint in the eye.

And since squint is seldom found in a child at birth, the responsibility of detecting it falls upon the mother, who by nature's decree is always with him. The detection of squint depends, then, on the mother's intelligence and her power of observation — unless her envious neighbor gets ahead of her and detects it first, which shames the mother, who feels her negligence and so resorts to hiding the defect and covering her shortcoming, instead of carrying her child at once to the doctor.

Among the familiar signs of squint is the tilting of the head to one side — that is, the person carries his head inclined toward one shoulder. In this case, the first thing the mother does is scold her little one, instead of taking him to a specialist in ailments of the eye. Moreover, squint in its first stages, before the mother detects it, causes a passing dizziness which no medicines taken by way of the stomach avail to cure; the only treatment is at the hands of a specialist in ailments of the eye.

And since parents know well that a surgical operation must be performed in a case of squint, they waste precious time waiting for the little one to grow up so that, in their reckoning, he may become strong enough to 'bear' the operation. This is a great mistake, for treatment must begin the moment the defect is detected, with certain exercises that help the eye to keep moving, so that it does not lose its function. The mother must supervise these exercises and make certain that the little one performs them daily as required; they may take several months, and sometimes several years. The doctor has only to direct her to what must be done and how it is to be done; after that she must rely on her long patience and her intelligence to carry this difficult process through. These exercises have been performed on many children, and they were cured of their defect without resort to a surgical operation. And there is no mother in the world for whom any sacrifice, however great, is too much when her little one's eyes are in danger.

★ André Gide said: 'A boy once spoke to me, when we were in (Bringal). He said: "The public is dreadful. It remembers of men's deeds only their endings. This Paris sees in me today only the man whom the court has condemned. So I shall not go down to Paris before I bring out some stage tragedy..."'

★ Happiness is like eau de cologne: you cannot sprinkle it on another without keeping some of its fragrance for yourself.
(Emerson)