Baby Girl has been complaining a lot lately about what she calls "neck aches". She had me confused, because I thought this was her five year old term for "sore throat". But I have been noticing a pattern: she often complains about neck aches when she is in the car booster seat, and her neck is in an unnatural position. Today, when she was doing her lessons, she was engaged in an activity long enough to complain once again of a neck ache. She always points to the back of her neck when she experiences this.

So I did a little analysis, and began a line of questions, and turned up this conclusion: Baby Girl has been reading so many books lately, but she has always been holding the book very close to her eyes. And when she does seat work, she often bends her head down close to the paper to write. I thought this was just a little habit of hers, but now I see that she is having difficulty seeing.

So we did a little test. I kept changing the distance between her eyes and the pages of a book. It looks like she cannot see to read until she is very close to the page. Could she be so dramatically nearsighted?

She was checked out at the optometrist 18 months ago, and she did fine. What would the result be now? Looks like I will have to schedule another appointment.

She did start to cry, though. When I asked her why, she said "I won't look good in glasses."

Now where on earth would she ever get that idea?