This is a self help book Written by the parents of a child affected by Microphthalmia (Small Eyes). It is not meant to replace the fantastic work that the staff at a proper education facility will do. It is simply to assist and enhance the education of a Visually Impaired child.
We would like to offer to anyone who has experience with a Microphthalmic and Anophthalmic child or virtually anyone with experience in Vision Impairment please if you can help out with this book it would be great.
Before you read any further in this book you need to understand and question yourself on "how do you see". What is sight and how does every other sense merge together to assist with "sight" as we know it.
Ask how do you see an object. Try to describe that same object without using anything that describes what can only been "seen". For example a Red Ball. How can you describe a red ball without using the descriptive "red" or "ball". How do you know that it isnt an orange in your hands or an apple??
This is something that as a parent of a VI child you need to ask yourself. How can you describe to your child the things that you as a sighted person take for granted each and every day. Remember that they will never get to see a fantastic winter morning sunrise or a beautiful orange/red glow of a Sunset. They will never see the beauty of dew on Rose petals first thing in the morning. To them these are just objects that are felt, smelt or heard. They cannot comprehend what red is because they are not able to see red. They only know that red exists as something that people talk about.
We as Human beings live in a very sight dependant world. Every day of our lives we use our sight to help us get around. We rely on being able to see to get information from TV, Internet, Newspaper etc. To get to work we use street signs. To find out the bus times we need to read the timetables. The use of Braille will assist a visually impaired person but the availability of Braille is still in very short supply.
One of the biggest questions i keep getting asked as a parent of a VI child is can she still hear. I find this to be a strange question when my daughter is already responding to their voice. Some people seem to think that Eyes and Ears are attached and depend upon each other to function correctly. They also ask can she smell and taste things. I believe that there is a general lack of knowledge of visual impairment in the general community.
Please keep this in mind as you go further through this book.
To begin this section you have to attempt a few little tasks so as to understand how a blind child will learn.
1. Purchase a couple of simple kids wooden puzzles. Get someone else to blindfold you and then choose one of the puzzles. THey are not to tell you which puzzle it is. They then put the pieces into a group(not piled up) on the table in front of you. The base for the puzzle needs to be put in front of you also but ask them to choose a random way for hte board to be aligned (i.e. turned 90 degrees or 180 degrees etc.). Without removing the blindfold attempt to put the puzzle pieces into the baseboard.
2. Get someone to gather about 5 or 6 things from around the house. You need to be blindfolded. The friend needs to put the items in front of you and you then identify each of them simply by touch, smell and sound only.
3. Using playdough or something similar try to form shapes while blindfolded. They are to be simple shapes (cubes, pyramids, sphere etc). See how you are able to go with this. If you do well, get someone to choose a "more complex" shaped object from around the house and then try to copy that shape. Try to limit your time on this one.
As you will soon discover, being an sighted person you will rely on your sight to do most of these tasks. Your sight gives you the ability to perceive depth, size and shape. When you don't have that ability you need to rely on your other senses to enhance your ability to "see" an item. A sighted person is able to make an assessment of an items shape, color, size, perceived weight etc simply by looking at it.
To give you an understanding of this, go back to simple shapes again. If i was to put in front of you a cricket ball and a cannon ball - you would obviously know that the canon ball will be much much heavier than the cricket ball. They might be the same size and shape but they are completely different in weight. This again is where the other senses come in to play.
If you have picked up a canon ball in the past you will know that they are rather heavy. Get a blind person to do the same. To them this object might be a cold hard sphere. Give them the cricket ball and see how they perceive that.
From personal experience with my own Daughter, we have had to learn ourselves how she will need to explore the world. For her anything that she touches you can see that she firstly tries to feel what it is with her fingertips. Secondly just about everything go straight into her mouth to taste. Sometimes she might shake things if she immediately recognises that it makes noise. This shows straight away the use of her other senses straight away. She is able to make an assessment on what something is within a few seconds of picking it up.
We where lucky enough to be given access to a "little room" and a "resonance board". These are 110% needed for a vision impaired child. They provide a way for them to learn that items can be in "space" around them. They also learn that if they drop something that it "should" be direct down from where they dropped it. The resonance board echoes when the item is dropped to ensure that they hear when it hits.
The biggest requirement for a Vision Impaired child is allowing them to explore their world. If you wrap them in cotton wool then they will never learn by experience. They need to learn the hard way that some things feel nice, some can hurt. Some things might taste nice but others will taste really bad. Kids learn by experimenting. As a parent you just need to guide them and help them when they hurt themselves, Be there for them when things taste bad with a nice drink and generally just be the support network they need when they fall.
I have found that the hardest thing of all to explain to people if that they need to let the vision impaired child explore their surroundings at all times. Some people find it offensive when my daughter tries to feel their face and neck etc. They tend to pull back and often they will hand her back to us. This is just her way of "looking" at people. We often will try to explain this to them but they still refuse to allow it to happen. This is something that people are normally taught as a child themselves to protect their own personal space.
In summary, a Vision Impaired child will need to "search" their environment by using the available senses they have. A Vision Impaired child will "see" by combining what they are able to touch, taste and hear to form a mental picture of the world around them. You as a sighted person needs to understand that they see things differently to us. "seeing with my fingers" is something i keep saying to people and i think it should be the way all people think who are involved with a VI person.
Play time is very important with a VI child. The bonding that you can form by simply playing games with the VI child is essential as time goes on. It must be understood that a VI child requires lots of bonding with various people so that they feel comfortable and secure. Without the ability to see they are unable to learn the various senses required to make judgements on people.
A VI child needs to be able to learn how to sense if a person can be trusted or not. They are unable to see if there is danger or something that will upset them. Playtime allows them to understand that the person they are playing with is trustworthy. They learn that if someone doesn't play nicely with them then that person isn't someone to trust. It is amazing how they quickly learn who they feel comfortable with.
The comfort factor that a VI child has with someone will soon develop once the child is able to recognise that "my big sister" will play with me but the next door neighbours daughter will not. They will soon start to show expressions based on this learnt experience. It might be as simple as a little noise or a smile but you will see once they are comfortable how well they show it.
Playtime is also a way for the VI child to expand their sensory knowledge too. They learn that if i bang this wooden spoon on a saucepan it will make lots of noise. To encourage them to play with these noisy items sometimes requires you as the parent to play with the items yourself firstly. You then encourage the vi child to copy you. This may mean holding their hand and showing them that they can feel the saucepan with their feet or hands. They can then move their arms around holding a wooden spoon and suddenly "BANG" it made a noise. It will take time and practice but they will finally get it. There will also be times when you will need to comfort them initially until they learn that sometimes loud noises do occur.
By the use of items such as a wooden spoon in play time the child also learns how to judge distances etc. This comes in handy in the future for mobility training and sensing etc. Without a doubt the best thing to give a VI child is a long wooden spoon when they start to crawl around. They will learn that if the spoon hits something then they will most likely hit that same thing. It will encourage them to learn how to judge distance etc using this extension of their hands. We often consider my daughters spoon as her first "cane".
One of the hardest thing as a parent of a VI Child is understanding a providing enough stimulus for your child to ensure they enjoy life and learn to interact with the rest of the world. I have been asked on several occasions now "what can she see". Yes i know this sounds like a stupid question to be asked but people still do ask it.
It brings me to the point i need to make. VI Children are still able to see but not in the visual sense. They build a mental image of their surroundings by combining sounds, touch and taste together to form their own image of an item. It is hard to understand as a sighted person how this occurs.
To give youself a small insight into how this occurs, try the following experiment.
Get someone in the house to collect 6 or 8 items and they are not to show you what they have. Get some of them to be similar in size/shape/texture so as to make it harder to recognize the items. Blindfold yourself and ensure that it is very very dark and you have no chance of seeing any glimpse of the items. Then one by one ask your assistant to pass you the items. By using your touch/smell/taste (be carefull of this last one) build yourself a mental image of the item and then compare that to your visually obtained image of the item. You may be very suprised.
Supporting your child while they are learning these experiences is not an easy thing at first.