Exam rooms with dancing cows and machine wash friendly eyeglass frames are just a few features of the facilities, catered specifically to children.
"This is beautiful, this is a gorgeous building and it's nice and colorful," said his mother, Kelly Gately, standing in the shop decorated with a colorful banner reading "We Love Children."
The new wing includes eight exam rooms equipped with computerized eye charts that show cartoons and project symbols like apples and triangles for children too young to recognize letters. There is also an electrical testing area where doctors can check for blindness through electrical activity in newborn patients. In rare cases, when babies are born with cataracts, they can even fit newborns with contact lenses.
"We have a lot of tactile things for the kids to play with for in between testing when their eyes might get a little blurry," said Dr. David G. Hunter, chief of ophthalmology for Children's Hospital. He said the hospital recently expanded the pediatric eye care facilities, formerly made up of three exam rooms shared with other departments, to meet heavy patient volume.
Hunter said the optical shop allows parents to make sure their child is getting the best frames for the prescription. When children have an eye exam and have to go to an outside location, he said, they sometimes come back with frames that take away from the prescription by not fitting properly.
"We found kids were coming back with glasses that didn't really fit their faces," he said. "When kids' glasses don't fit, they're not going to say it's hurting me right here. They're just going to drop them in the toilet."
Licensed optician Dana L. Cohen, owner of the optical shop, said eye care for children is all about getting it right the first time. For 30 years, Cohen has been operating his Medford Optical store with a decidedly pediatric focus. Since many of his referrals come from Children's Hospital, he said it was only natural to partner with them and open the hospital location.
"If you make the child happy and comfortable, then you have a happy mom and dad," said Cohen, who said he always tries to direct his conversation to the child when fitting frames, squatting down to make sure he is eye level. "Our motto is the child's our customer."
Instead of fashion designer brands, this optical shop features a selection dominated by names like Disney, Fisher-Price and Pez. The frames come in a variety of bright colors and are specially crafted to form-fit a child's small features. The shop offers one frame made out of a flexible nylon material with no hinges or screws that is guaranteed indestructible and is machine wash friendly.
If a pair of glasses is broken, Cohen said the shop's computer software can track down the exact frame to match a broken pair out of about 10,000 options.
Hunter said a portion of the shop's proceeds will go to the Children's Hospital Ophthalmology Foundation, a nonprofit entity.
Nicole Haley can be reached at nhaley@cnc.com or 781-398-8004.
