Amblyopia, if left untreated, can lead to monocular blindness. That’s what I was told when I took my two year-old son Joshua to the eye doctor. I was really frightened, as I didn’t know anything about Amblyopia. The doctor told me that Joshua needed to be “patched” over his right eye for three hours each day so that his left eye would grow stronger. When I asked the doctor how I was supposed to get Joshua to not only put on the eye patch, but to also wear it for up to three hours each day, he replied “I don’t know.” That’s when I realized there were no good resources for parents dealing with children suffering from this condition.

Later that day at home, I tried to get Joshua to put on his eye patch. After struggling with him to wear the patch, he pulled it off after approximately 30 SECONDS! After fighting with him for over one hour, we were both very frustrated and I didn’t know what else to do. I eventually gave up, put the eye patch in the kitchen drawer and started to cry thinking that my son was going to go blind in his left eye and that I was helpless to do anything about it.

Later that day while Joshua was watching T.V., he saw a cartoon with a pirate wearing an eye patch. All of a sudden, my son, who originally wanted nothing to do with his eye patch, came running into the kitchen, took it out of the drawer and attempted to wear it just like the cartoon pirate dancing on television. I stood there speechless. After all the fighting and arguing, he put on the patch after watching a silly cartoon.

I then realized I could make a video just for Joshua with puppets wearing eye patches in order to encourage him to wear his. This lead me to perform further research on Amblyopia and I realized there were many other frustrated parents with limited resources to help them. That’s how my video for “The Eye Patch Kids” came about.

With the help of my wonderful husband, Allen (who was also just as scared as I was about Joshua’s eye problems), my sister Tracy who helped me write the script and perform various roles and my close friend Andrea who is the star of the video playing Princess and the Eye Patch, the “Eye Patch Kids ” came to life. They put in countless hours of rehearsal for their parts and I am forever grateful to them. Thank you.

Even after seeing the rough cut of the video, my son has been so good with his patching because he now associates wearing the patch to having fun with the puppets. I am so happy. He no longer feels different and in many ways thinks he’s special because of his new puppet friends. He now begins his morning ritual by picking out which eye patch he wants to wear and placing it on with the video. We no longer fight about him wearing his patch and we are both so much happier as a result.