Intermittent exotropia in my 21 month old :(
Hello, I’m reaching out because my 21-month-old daughter was recently diagnosed with intermittent exotropia.
Her right eye drifts outward when she’s tired, sleepy, or crying. It often happens after a blink, and then seems to correct itself when she blinks again. She also sometimes closes or rubs her right eye when she cries. We always thought this was just one of her cute little habits, and we used her drifting eye as a sign that she was getting tired. We didn’t realise how much more drastically the eye turned away when she was crying until we started monitoring her closely today.
She was diagnosed a few days ago. Her children’s eye doctor said she was concerned that it has appeared quite early, at 1 year and 9 months, as she said intermittent exotropia more commonly emerges from around 3 years old.
She recommended trying an eye patch for two hours a day and monitoring her over the next couple of months. She also told us that intermittent exotropia tends to get worse with age, and that if it does become significantly worse, surgery would ultimately be the treatment option.
Hearing that, especially when she is still so young, has left me quite worried.
For parents whose children have intermittent exotropia, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences. How old was your child when you first noticed it? Did it become more frequent over time, or did it remain stable or even improve? How is your child doing now?
What treatments have you tried—patching, glasses, monitoring, surgery, or anything else? Did anything seem particularly effective? If your child eventually needed surgery, at what point did the doctor decide it was necessary, and how did things go afterwards?
And if your child started showing signs at a similarly young age, I’d especially appreciate hearing how things developed as they got older.
Thank you. I’m still trying to understand what this diagnosis might mean for her and what we should expect, so hearing from other parents who have been through this would mean a lot.