When my daughter was diagnosed with Amblyopia, I was on a mission to find her all the tools to help make her diagnosis a bit easier. She was prescribed to wear a patch for a minimum of 4 hours daily, and in the beginning she did not want to wear it. Kelly Harmsen, the creator of The Eye Patch Kids DVD
has walked in my shoes before with her son's Amblyopia diagnosis. She created The Eye Patch Kids, to help kids with wearing their eye patch. I reached out to Kelly for advice and she agreed to send my daughter a copy of her Eye Patch Kids movie. This DVD features very silly looking sock puppets called Bjorts, and her company is called Bjort & Company. While the Bjort puppets are humorous the message they deliver is a serious one - wear your eye patch! The storyline revolves around Princess, a girl puppet, who doesn't want to wear her patch. By the end of the 20 minute program, Princess happily wears her very pretty eye patch. During the show, Princess and the Bjorts teach kids an "eye patch promise", an oath about wearing their patch every day. It urges kids to listen to their parents and keep their patch on until they are told to remove it. My daughter has watched The Eye Patch Kids many times an can recite the Eye Patch Promise. This movie has even been helpful in explaining Amblyopia and why my daughter has to wear an eye patch to my son who has Autism. Both kids enjoy the silly sock puppets, which remind me of the kids TV show Oobi.
The Eye Patch Kids DVD menu has the options of playing the movie, taking the eye patch promise or doing sing-alongs. You can purchase the DVD on Amazon
or directly from Bjort & Company - it goes for $15.99 which is well spent. Details - Released in 2005, Running Time is 23 minutes.
The Eye Patch Kids DVD is recommended by several vision organizations such as Prevent Blindness America, RNIB, and American Academy Of Ophthalmology.
Full Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this DVD from Kelly Harmsen in spring 2009 to help with my daughter's Amblyopia diagnosis.
