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".