Jennifer Jean, the Cross-Eyed Queen
Naylor
1994
There truly is a book for everything! Again, the story centers on how bullying can be avoided if you just conform to standards. I don’t really understand the pathology of crossed eyes, but the main message of the book is correcting cross eyes is more about how you look than anything vision/health related.
Time to weed!
Mary
Seems like they waited a long time to get her eye problems worked on. She should’ve been checked as soon as it was noticed. My youngest daughter was sent to a specialist as soon as her pediatrician saw one of her eyes lean in- she was only about 18 months old. She grew out of it, but a friend’s child had an eye patch to correct her strabismus from when she was very young.
Mine was detected at the age of 6 months. (It runs on my mother’s side of the family — two cousins and two second cousins also had the problem.) I had surgery three times for this. I was never teased, though.
I’m sorry – they’re really giving an elementary school child plastic surgery to keep his ears from sticking out?! That is waaaay more disturbing than Jennifer Jean’s eyes getting “fixed”.
Agreed!
Really? I can’t see what is so disturbing about it. I wish *my* ears didn’t stick out…I suppose the thought was that as a girl, I would have hair covering them.
Cosmetic surgery on a child is a really iffy sort of thing. One thing if it’s a severe condition, like a hairlip or a cleft palette, or something that really hinders the child’s ability to socialize. But stick-out ears aren’t generally considered to be that.
Besides which, and probably more importantly in terms of “what is wrong with this doctor,” for a lot of kids, their ears stick out when they’re young, but don’t once they’ve grown older and their face has filled in.
Until I read this article in the New Yorker, I didn’t realize how it affected your ability to have binocular vision:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/06/19/060619fa_fact_sacks
Oh, yes. To this day, I fail the depth perception tests at the eye doctor’s office! And those Magic Eye things that were popular when I was a kid? I never saw the hidden pictures in ANY of them.
They don’t always do anything when a child is young. My brother is 10 years older than I, and I have vague memories of him having surgery as a teenager. It didn’t work. He still has to concentrate to not see double. It did keep him out of Vietnam though!
This child seems to be different ages in the pictures…..what’s up with that? And, yes indeed–why wait until the child is in first or second grade to address this issue. Parental neglect? And, while I am ranting…..how does one equate crossed eyes with ears sticking out?? Jeepers. What a book.
They definitely waited too long. I understand that the writer is not expected to be an ophthalmologist but indicating that “crossed eyes” only affects your appearance is just sloppy.
Good books come from good research.
I’m amazed Jennifer’s nasty school mates even registered her eye problem. I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t even notice.
I would have noticed. I don’t know what I might have said to the child, but I would probably have asked my parents about it. I think it is neglect verging on abuse not to try to deal with this problem as soon as it is seen! I had a “lazy eye” as they called it, and I had glasses and patches starting at age 2-1/2. When they didn’t fix the situation, my parents took me to the Lions Club clinic, where we did exercises with a steroscope, and those continued at home. Perhaps surgery was not a viable option in those days. But, because of those exercises, my lazy eye was strengthened, I was able to stop wearing glasses at 8, and I’ve had normal vision ever since (although I suspect reading glasses are in my not-too-distant future, being the age I am…). Blessings on the Lions Club and on my parents for persevering! I also think that, rather than jumping right onto the surgical route, the exercise approach should be tried more often. But I suppose the medical-industrial complex finds it not lucrative enough :-(.
Please make that “stereoscope.”
Pretty resilient kid, tho’, perfectly capable of her own “back-atcha” remarks and hex threats!
Seems like Jennifer Jean had a pretty good handle on the kids who bullied her. I’d have preferred to see a book for kids about the medical facts of crossed eyes and treatments for it rather than the old “well, just get yourself fixed,” though.
I had surgeries and other treatments as a young child for this condition and it’s still not “fixed,” and I’m in my 30s. I have to wear special glasses to correct the pull and I still cannot see in binocular. I just wanted to chime in because of people saying that it should have been fixed already by the parents. Well, sometimes it’s so bad it never quite is fixed.