Recently, I visited the eye doctor, ready to finally make the switch from glasses to contacts. I checked in with the receptionist and noticed a 40-something woman and her teenage daughter perusing the backlit racks of frames. Before long, the young woman had decided on a pair she liked, apparently having lost her glasses almost a week before. Her mother took them up to the receptionist.

And that’s when it started. The mom turned to her daughter and said, “Go ahead and pay for them.”

Her daughter looked shocked. “I can’t afford that,” she said.

“You have a job, don’t you?” her mom quipped. She turned to the receptionist, who was a friend, and started going on about how her kids were always losing things and she didn’t have the money to keep replacing every pair of glasses, etc. The receptionist agreed and the two continued to trade stories about kids not understanding the value of valuable things.

All the while, the daughter was texting feverishly, occasionally lifting her head to make a comment about how it wasn’t her fault that her job didn’t pay well and she didn’t have the money.

At this point, the daughter’s doctor, a young guy wearing a red button down shirt and tan slacks, said quietly but firmly, “It’s important to wear your glasses or you’ll keep having headaches. You shouldn’t wait to buy them.”

The mother was unfazed. “Save your money,” she told her daughter, “and buy the glasses when you can afford them.”

The daughter looked like a victim, but her mother insisted they discussed payment in the car on the way over. She was clear that she wasn’t going to pay for the glasses. Even though the daughter acted like this was all news to her, it probably wasn’t.

I sat there watching the scene. Ultimately, the daughter walked out of the office without her glasses. And like the doctor said, headaches are only one of the side effects of not wearing corrective lenses when you need them.

Something went wrong in that conversation and the ultimate goal of any doctor’s visit – leaving healthier than you were when you walked in – wasn’t met.

Of course, I can’t lay blame because I don’t know the whole story. But I do know the conversation was adversarial as opposed to goal-oriented. The daughter was in a subordinate position and publicly ridiculed by the mother and her friend. She also wasn’t honest and instead of owning up to the responsibility her mother placed on her, the daughter played the victim. The doctor was on the sidelines, unable to get his concerns across to the mother. I’m sure he felt defeated when they left.

But it was really the doctor who had the power to change that scene. He was genuinely concerned yet not overbearing – a rare trait in doctors. I suspect that if he had educated both the mother and daughter as to the importance of wearing glasses from the minute they walked into his office, eventually his message would have sunk in. They would have listened to him, but I don’t think he had the confidence in his position to push the issue.

But here I was, having worked with lots of families on similar issues, sitting quiet as a mouse.

For more information on teen eye health, check out the new guide I wrote for the Center for Young Women’s Health at Children’s Hospital Boston.