Talk to your opthamologist. They can normally adjust the power in one of your contacts to stave off the far sightedness a bit, so you don’t have to use cheaters as often.
I’m one of the people who tried contacts and went back to glasses. I was doing the ones you had to take out every night and clean - it just felt like too much hassle, especially since I’ve never felt badly about wearing glasses. Plus I was finding my eyes were feeling drier, I spend 8+ hours a day in front of a monitor.
I have no idea what my prescription is. The eye doc orders the lenses for me so I’ve never seen it.
I do know that even with brand-new glasses, I can’t read a menu board at your typical fast food place from any distance at all – I need to be right at the counter. That’s more than I want to deal with, and I’m happy with my contacts. I have no issues with them.
We tried a few different things - my prescription is severe and in the end the things we tried gave me headaches.
He keeps trying to talk me into lasik, but I’m not thrilled with the idea (too many of my “safe” surgeries went bad, and even though *intellectually *I know that eye surgery is very different than stomach surgery, I am not comfortable.)
I’ve worn soft contacts for 30 years - started when I was 13. Nowdays, I wear daily wear (Acuvue Oasys) for astigmatism. Every night I just take them out and put them in a case with some ReNu. I haven’t “cleaned” my contacts for 20 years or so.
I still wear my glasses in the evenings, and sometimes I’ll wear them on the weekends. It is nice to have that option.
My contacts are supposed to be the kind you replace every month, but I confess that I don’t usually thow them out until about 2 months has gone by.
Wanted to add - LOVE Costco for contacts. The price is reasonable and the eye doctors that I’ve seen have been great. There is a coupon for contacts a few times a year.
First, the OP’s attitude in her first post sort of touched a piss-me-off nerve. My stepmonster wouldn’t allow me to get contacts until I was 16. There was NO logical reason for this, except her daughters tended to lose theirs, so she thought she’d have to be constantly paying to replace them with my sister and I. So they told us when we were 16 and could get a job and pay for our own, we could spend our own money however we liked. The minute I got a job, I made an appointment and hooked myself up with contacts. The parents refused to buy the cleaning solutions, but that stuff is cheap and often, I could find two-for-one deals. I never ran out of cleaning solution in the middle of the night and I never dropped, lost, or tore a lens.
However, in college, I couldn’t stay sober long enough to care for them properly :D, so I kept getting conjunctivitis. I gave them up and went back to glasses because after 10-12 beers, it was much easier and safer to just take my glasses off than A) accidentally fall asleep with them in and B) try to take them out when I was drooling drunk. Other friends of mine had no problems in this regard; however, I also let my ear piercings grow shut for the same reason: I was too irresponsible to care for them properly and kept getting minor infections.
Now I’m old and have progressive glasses, although I understand I could probably get progressive contact lenses, meh. I can’t be bothered.
I’m glad to see the OP’s tone changed by mid-thread or so. Contacts should be covered by your insurance if glasses are. If the opthamologist offers replacement insurance, I’d take that for the first pair until you see how responsible the kid is about taking care. I’d probably recommend the diposables or the long-wear lenses for a teenager, but they are much easier to take care of now then they were last time I had them.
Technically, you don’t know me, so how ya’ doing?
Now you do know somebody who went back to glasses. 
Seriously, though, in my college days I realized taking care of contacts was too much of a pain in the ass (early 90s) and went back.
I’ve been wearing disposable lenses since I was 14. (Not the same pair all this time. Obviously.) The first kind I got had to be taken out and soaked nightly. I was late to school every damn day for two weeks. So we went back and got the kind I could sleep in. Problem solved. Note that you can take these out and clean them if you get stuff on them – they don’t evaporate or anything. But generally, if you request them, you can now get soft lenses that you stick to your eyeball once and forget about for somewhere between a week and a month.
It used to be that you needed rigid lenses if your prescription was especially heinous, but even a friend of mine who doesn’t have eyeballs so much as misshapen eyecubes (she’s been told that Lasik wouldn’t work on her, because she doesn’t have enough cornea to reshape :eek: ) can get overnight soft lenses in her Rx now. If glasses are covered by insurance, contacts should be as well – some plans will cover contacts PLUS emergency glasses, since there are unavoidably times when you must be lens-less. Price varies with type, brand, and strength. I have a common Rx in a common size, and I can usually get them from the optometrist’s cabinet on my way out of the exam, for <$20 a box.
I really wouldn’t worry all that much about lens hygiene, honestly. With soft lenses, it tends to be a self-solving problem. If your lenses are full of goo or have external gunk on them, you won’t be able to see anything, because you’ll be tearing like gangbusters and usually have to pry open your eyelid to get the lens out. The bubbly ClearCare H2O2 stuff will take care of most normal gunk, but if something catastrophic happens to a disposable lens, you just throw it away. The most fuss I’ve ever had to go to over it was making sure I had a lint-free cloth to dry my hands off after I washed them – in college, I used to wash my hands in the bathroom, then go back to my room, where it didn’t smell like a solid cloud of lavender, and put my lenses in using a makeup mirror on my desk. Both of my eyeballs are present, accounted for, and fine. 
I am also absolutely useless without peripheral vision, and the edge distortion of glasses make me seasick. I’m with the person up-thread that suggested your son might decide he can do more sporty things when he can see the ball heading for him from any direction, not just dead center front.
Thank you all. He had his exam and training session this evening. We left the office with a week’s worth of lenses and I’ve already placed an order to keep him stocked up through the summer.
The doctor said, when he was trying a pair during the exam, “oh he’ll do great with lenses. He didn’t flinch at all when I was manipulating his eyeball.”
I really didn’t mean to seem so against getting him contacts - I chose the wording of the thread title poorly. I truly was aware of my own ignorance and anxious to have it fought.
Coming in late to the thread, but I’m another person who tried them - on numerous occasions - and wound up going back to glasses. Our family ophtalmologist was frothing-at-the-mouth AGAINST soft lenses (this was 1980 or so and admittedly they were a relatively new thing) and INSISTED that I get hard lenses… which were agony. I’d try them, building up the time I wore them each day, and be miserable the whole time. He’d check my eyes, say they were doing great, and here try these other eye drops, those’ll help. He always got in digs about how awful soft lenses were, you had to boil them, you might as well gouge your eyes out with a grapefruit spoon…
Those lenses were 200 bucks, and my 21st birthday present, and I’m still bitter.
A couple years later I tried soft lenses - and could wear them without being in agony. Now, they were NEVER all that comfortable. My eyes always felt tense, I always felt like I had a slight headache, but I could wear them if I really wanted to.
Off-and-on for a number of years, and I finally gave 'em up for good about 15 years ago.
Now that I need progressive lenses (which is a whole 'nother tale of misery), I won’t even make the attempt.
Gwendee, I think it’ll be great if your son happens to do well with them. Some kids are highly motivated, and their eyes adjust well. One suggestion though: make sure he always has a reasonably up-to-date pair of real glasses as backup; there will be times where he can’t wear contacts for whatever reason, and will need adequate glasses. A fellow I worked with years ago wore contacts daily, something happened and he had to go back to glasses for a week or so - and his glasses were 10 years out of date. Oops.
At least the care regime is a LOT easier than it used to be. When I first got soft lenses, you were encouraged to sterilize them daily using a heating device, and use an enzyme-based cleaner at least weekly to remove protein deposits (and OMFG, that stuff stank). Then they developed the cold disinfecting solution which of course you had to rinse thoroughly… then the all-in-one solutions… then the wear-and-toss ones became affordable.
I switch between glasses and contacts, and my reasons for wearing glasses at all are entirely irrational. I’ve had shitty vision for most of my life, and at times it seems I was born wearing glasses. I was an adult when I tried contact lenses for the first time, so I like wearing glasses because they remind me of me.
That said, my experiences with contact lenses have been entirely positive. I wear the 30 day overnight kind which are super breathable, and are the next best thing to having Lasik. I wake up in the morning and don’t have to fidget around for my glasses, I can see what the hell I’m doing in the shower, my lenses don’t get blurry when I come inside from the cold, and peripheral vision is nice.
I’m a 53 year old grandma (if it matters). IMHO? Life is tough enough as a teen, so any help (especially in the coolness/looks arena) a kid can get is a good thing. Yeah, there’s a possibility of 10pm trips to the drug store…but then, that’s a teenager in almost all areas of life, maybe set up some sort of chart, or put reminders to yourself in your smartphone or something to prevent last minute runs?
I’m 34, worn glasses since I was 10-ish. Never switched because I’d feel naked w/o glasses at this point.
I started wearing glasses at about age 17, got contacts when I was around 20, and switched back to glasses about 7 or 8 years later, I guess.
I still kind of miss contacts, though. I did buy a small supply of Focus Daily contacts - 30 of them for each eye - that can be worn one day and thrown away. Those last me a year or so since I only wear them weekends or special occasions. (They can also be cleaned and stored like regular lenses and worn for a week, if you are thrifty, but they are also somewhat thinner and smaller in diameter than regular contacts. I just use them once and throw them away, usually.)
Probably the main reason that I don’t wear them every day is the expense of replacing them.
I wish I could get LASIK.
Regarding the late night trips to the drug store. If he’s responsible, just buy two bottles of saline and tell him that when he opens the second one to let you know so you can pick up a new one…when he opens that one, let you know and you can pick up a new one. A bottle of saline goes a long way. At least a month or two. So when he tells you he opened it, you have quite a while to worry about it. It’s not that he’s going to open it and it’s gone three days later, before you’ve even had time to get a new one. If he’s not responsible, you’ll just have to suck it up and make it your job. Put the second bottle somewhere where you’ll see it. When it disappears, put it on your list and make a point of picking up new one (or a new box if you go with Clear Care which come in two packs).
My daughter wore contact lenses for several years in her teens. Then, out of the blue, she started reacting to them. Her eyes started out itching and got a little bloodshot, but gradually deteriorated to the point where they were flaming red. At first, we assumed that it was her seasonal allergies acting up, and she kept wearing her lenses. but none of the allergy medicines helped.
After several weeks of resting her eyes from contact lenses, they cleared up and the ophthalmologist switched her to different lenses. We did that, but she reacted the same way, except this time her eyes were quicker to get to the flaming red point. He then theorized that she was allergic to a preservative in the lens solution and switched her to daily disposables. It was her last option before he was going to prohibit her from wearing contact lenses again.
Turns out he was correct. We switched her to daily disposables, which are packed in saline solution, and she hasn’t had an issue since. They are more expensive, but so much more convenient. No cleaning is required, no danger of bacteria building up on them. And they are very convenient for traveling because each pair is quite small, and she no longer has to lug around contact lens solution.
P.S. It was an expensive lesson for us, because I had to pay a $50 co-pay every time I visited the ophthalmologist. Luckily, I’d bought her lenses at Costco and they took back the unused lenses and refunded my money. Otherwise, I’d have been out the cost of 6 months of lenses.