Answer
Dear Lisa,

I can understand your concern. Firstly, do not worry. This is a very common problem in today’s times with more Game Boys and Video Games and TV compared to earlier times of outdoor sports.  It simply means your child having to use a spectacle correction, even though it may seem a huge number to you.

The most important thing is to see your ophthalmologist regularly.

He is not going to go blind, but these jumps are normal in their growing years.

Your child can plan on continuing contact lenses till suitable for LASIK and then can plan a Permanent correction with laser technology when older (18 years plus).
  
Till then you will have to go for regular eye checks and keep the records safely.
  
You can also try eye exercises (though there is no research committing to their benefits completely, but no harm either). These are available on our website www.shroffeye.org.
  
Hope this information helps,
You can keep me posted on the progress.
  
Hope this helps,
Regards,
Dr Anand Shroff, MS (OPHTH), FICS
www.shroffeye.org  

From Eyezercise.com

This doctor from Mumbai, India is spewing the company line. -5.00/-5.75 diopters normal? We don’t think so. To his credit, he does relate the extreme nearsightedness to excessive near work, which we believe is the underlying cause of most nearsightedness in the world. Many eye doctors and optometrists will not even acknowledge that near work causes myopia, or nearsightedness (because of the paradox that I will point out in the next few paragraphs). The good doctor seems to downplay the degree of myopia in this case, telling Mom not to worry about it….just keep her son coming into the clinic year after year for his new spectacles (at a huge pricetag for the visit and lenses), and finally having him come in after most of the myopia has progressed to it’s limit for laser eye surgery (again at a HUGE expense).

This is a perfect example of the INDUSTRY leading people down the road of misinformation and demise. Remember, most eye doctors receive little to no training in natural vision improvement, and they usually have no interest in it when asked because they believe that it will affect their bottom line profit center which is examining eyes for “error”, prescribing lenses (which encourage the problem to get worse), and finally treating the extreme situation with completely preventable and expensive eye surgery.

Let’s take a look at the company line paradox. I call this a paradox because it simply makes no scientific sense. Here it goes: If near vision work leads to myopia (as this doctor clearly states), then our eyes are responding to a larger DIVERGENCE of light entering the pupil (the closer something is, the more the light diverges from it). Look at the difference from top to bottom in the diagram below. The bottom image represents a distant object (beyond optical infinity, or approximately 20 feet). Notice how the lens is pulled to a thin shape. This occurs because the muscles that control the lens are AT REST. In the top diagram, the eye is looking at a close-up object.

To counter this excess divergence of light from the close-up object, the eye must tense the ciliary body muscles in order to relieve the tension on the lens, encapsulated within the muscles (and attached by zonules). The release of tension on the lens causes it to become more convex, or spherically shaped (notice that the lens at the top is fatter). This higher degree of curvature on the lens CONVERGES the light to focus on the retina at the back of the eye. So, the eye must, by natural laws of optics, over-converge light as it enters the pupil. Over time, a very real and important stress develops within the eye itself. This stress is medically documented and well understood. Nearpoint stress is what causes our distant vision to deteriorate BECAUSE our eyes are ADAPTING to excess near work. In other words, our eyes say, “Hey, I don’t like having to do all this work just to let Johnny see this book!” So, the eye responds by LENGTHENING the entire optical sphere to the shape of a football. Now, this change is measured in AXIAL LENGTH, which can be precisely measured to the hundredth of a millimeter. A very small change here results in a HUGE change in one’s degree of nearsightedness. Many medical studies document this elongation of the eye in myopes. Now for the “anomaly”….

If we place a minus diopter lens over the eye, what does that do to the light entering the eye? Well, anybody who knows anything about lenses and optics knows that a minus diopter lens is a concave lens which DIVERGES light. So, we place this diverging lens over our eyes and somehow expect that this will have NO EFFECT on our visual acuity????? I thought this was the situation that caused all these problems to begin with!!!!!!! Yet, the entire optical industry claims that this is truly the case. They have even spent millions of dollars in “clinical” studies to “prove” this in order to justify their standard of practice. Those studies are HUGELY biased and throw out vast relevant data to the contrary of their conclusions. A person of science looking at these studies would be nauseated at the sheer disregard for truth! If I turned in work like that for my masters degree thesis (I have a masters degree in Aerospace Science), I would still not have a masters degree.

So it goes. The new eyeglass prescription diverges light, causing more nearpoint stress and the whole process starts over again! Mom takes her child back to the eye doctor for his annual checkup and guess what? His vision is even WORSE!!!! (I didn’t see that one coming)!

Year after year, Mom voices her concern for her son’s vision and gets the same company line from her eye doctor along with a new pair of even stronger glasses for her son, who really is going blind now.

So, the paradox begins anew, and nobody really cares. Not the eye doctor, not the state board of optometry, not the lens manufacturers, and more importantly, not the entire eye care industry really cares about this. The real victim is the child, who now has to live the rest of his life having to rely on glasses, contacts, or eye surgery to be able to see the world clearly.

The real sad part is that this whole mess could have been avoided. If you take away the nearpoint stress before it begins, a person should be able to live their entire life with healthy, clear vision, just like 99% of the world population prior to the industrial revolution (that’s documented, too)!

Eyezercise!