My 12 year old wants contacts. Should I let her get them?!

The older one that has already experienced glasses is definitely old enough and he would definitely like loosing the glasses. However, with the younger one she should have to follow the rule already set down to wait until 16 for contacts. If you can afford glasses you can afford contacts.

Most children are capable of taking care of contacts, and the 16 yr old son should definetely have them. You could wait until Christmas or something and suprise your daughter with some, but nowadays children are getting contacts at the age of 8 and being responsible with them.
It's more convenient because with glasses you can't run and do cartwheels, etc with them on and it's as if you're looking at the world through rims that you can't lose and when you look sideways your great vision goes away. It's just much easier to wear contacts.
Also, look into the latest types of contacts, because now some companies have created correcting contacts, meaning they slowly correct vision problems and well......that's awesome! (:

First of all most 16 year old boys and 12 year old girls can take care of contacts just fine. She picked kind of a poor time to ask for them, just after had purchased new glasses for her. While we do want all contact lens wearers to have a back up pair of glasses, her old ones may have worked, or you may have been able to just purchase new lenses, or you might have left off some features. She does have some responsibility for this situation.

Being fair to children of different sexes and ages is impossible. If you buy them both contacts now, your son can say that he had to wait until he was 16 to get contacts while your daughter got hers at age 12. On the other hand, if your daughter cares a lot about her appearance, plays sports and has a very strong prescription while your son doesn't care how he looks, barely needs his glasses and is not active, it might be fair to buy your daughter contacts but not your son.

I think it is important to communicate to your children that you will help them get things that they have demonstrated they really want. This may mean helping them find ways to make the money, paying half while they pay the other half of at least wait to buy until they have mentioned it more than once.

optometrist and dad.