Polycarbonate vs. Plastic Children's Eyeglass Lenses

Video Transcript

We're going to talk about the lenses that go into the frames for your child. Almost, probably 9 times out of 10 we're going to recommend polycarbonate lenses over plastic lenses for your child. There are going to be a few exceptions to the rule but I tell you why we do recommend that. Especially for children, I would say, between the ages of 5 and obviously younger. Even though we don't see younger children here but 5 to about 13. If they're going to be rambunctious and they're going to be playing in the glasses. You want to have shatter resistant lenses. You don't want to have a call from your school saying that your child was hit in the face with a ball while they had their glasses on and their lenses shattered back in their face. You don't want to have that. You would never, ever consider glass lenses for a child. Plastic still has the ability to shatter. Polycarbonate is the safety resistant lens for a child. They will not shatter back. Drawback to polycarbonate is it will scratch easier. So there's really just no getting around that. The child is going to be rougher on their glasses. They will wind up with scratches on them. But you definitely want to protect the child's eye from any type of impact. So even though that the plastic is more scratch resistant. If your child is going to be active in the glasses then you want to do polycarbonate. If the doctor says: Mr. and Mrs. Jones your child needs glasses but they only need them for when they're studying. Then you might consider doing a plastic lens if the child is not going to be wearing their glasses with the possibility of getting hit in the face or something like that. If they're using it just to do their homework. Just in the class room only then they can get by without using the polycarbonate lenses. Other than that. Like I said, 9 times out of 10 we recommend polycarbonate lenses. If your child has a very high prescription. gain you kind of have to weigh the protection of the lenses with a thickness. Sometimes a child comes back with a really high prescription. And that's unfortunate. If you go with a high index plastic, which would be considerably thinner then polycarbonate you still have a risk of that lens shattering back. So you kind of have to weigh those factors in the decision of what lenses to go with. And like I said, 9 times out of 10 polycarbonate is going to be your choice.

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