Photo: For Little Eyes

How to Get Your Child to Wear a Patch

If your child has a visual impairment, they might have a prescription for eye patching. An eye patch is either an adhesive sticker or a cloth patch that’s worn over one eye. You may be wondering, “How on earth am I ever going to convince my child to wear a patch over their eye?” The teachers from A Shared Vision get this question all the time. They provide strategies and support for families who have very young children, from birth to age three, with blindness, visual impairments, and vision concerns. Click HERE to read more.

Transition to Preschool

Transition to preschool for children who are blind or visually impaired is a big deal. Your little person is transitioning from the routine that parents set up to the whole new world of school. Here are two articles to help with this big transition.

• Parents’ Tips on Getting Your Child Who Is Blind or Visually Impaired Ready for Preschool
• Pre-Preschool Anxiety for Parents of Toddlers Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired (en Espanol)
  

How to Plan a Successful Birthday Party!

Birthday parties and other special occasions are an important part of our culture but can be challenging for children with special needs. Parties are noisy, the setting is typically unfamiliar, people are talking and moving around the room, and unexpected decorations are hanging everywhere. There is a lot to make sense of for a young child with a visual impairment. Your child’s energy may be devoted to making sense of the commotion, leaving little left for having fun. Here are some proven strategies that will make birthday parties and other similar events more enjoyable for both you and your child. Click HERE to read more.

Please discuss your interests with your teacher from A Shared Vision.

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Neurological/ Brain-Based Visual Impairment (CVI)

What is CVI? Cerebral/Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) is a neurological visual disorder. Vision loss or impairment due to brain injury or disease can occur at any point in the lifespan. CVI can be found in children who function at levels equivalent to typical peers as well as in children with mild to severe disability. The degree of neurological damage and CVI depends upon the time of onset, as well as the location and intensity of the damage. It is a condition that indicates the visual systems of the brain do not consistently interpret or understand what the eyes see. For more click HERE.

CVI: The Conversation Continues… Anyone who has spent time researching CVI knows that there are a variety of names and definitions for this neurological visual impairment. The fact that it is caused by an incident to the brain complicates the search for one definition because there is much that we still do not know about the brain. There is a need to organize what we currently understand about CVI leaving room for new information as it is researched and made available. For more click HERE.

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Routines

The Importance of Routines for Children with Visual Impairments.  Routines are an important part of any child's life because they help children develop a sense of stability and order as well as give children the information and experiences necessary to complete tasks with increasing independence. They're especially important for children with visual impairments, who often have difficulty observing what's going on in the world around them.  For more click HERE.

Routines: Tools for Your Child's Development.  Darius, who's almost three and has albinism, was playing in the living room when his dad came in, carrying a yellow rubber duck. "Darius, let's go wash Mr. Quacker," he said. Darius laughed as his dad squeaked the duck and immediately headed toward the bathroom. As soon as they got there, Darius began pulling off his clothes and, with a gentle reminder from his dad, put them in the laundry basket. His dad then had him touch the water before getting in to make sure it wasn't too hot.  For more click HERE.

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Building Communication Skills

Teaching Empathy to Visually Impaired Children.  Have you ever considered the value of empathy? We think through the words or actions we are about to impart and consider how our suggestion or contribution will be taken. It's the reason we know how to treat others; it allows us to know what not to say, and it allows us to contemplate how to present ourselves during a job interview, at a work meeting, in a recreational club, to a customer, or to a potential friend.  For more click HERE.

Social Communication Skills.  Successful communication depends a great deal on what we see around us. In the absence of vision, blind children learn to recognize what is in their world through touch and sound and the language input offered by others. The language that you use to support your blind child's understanding and to help build and support communication skills is more than labeling what you see.  For more click HERE.

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Strategies

Basic Strategies for Engaging with Children (birth to age 3) with Blindness or Visual Impairment. Children who are blind or visually impaired learn about the world differently. The following strategies are tools to help providers and caregivers build trusting relationships with these children. Ensuring positive interactions is key to helping children become active learners and fostering their independence. For more click HERE. (En Espanol.)

Non-Visual Multi-Sensory Experiences for Students with Multiple Disabilities. Vision is a motivating sense. Therefore, when a student has a visual impairment, teachers need to offer experiences that utilize students’ other senses to increase engagement, participation, and support their concept development. For more click HERE.

Talking the Language of the Hands to the Hands.  This paper examines the importance of hands for the person who is deafblind, reviews hand development, and identifies specific teaching skills that facilitate hand development and expressiveness in persons who are deafblind. It notes that the hands of a deafblind individual serve not only as tools but also as sense organs (to compensate for their missing vision and hearing) and as the primary means of expression.  For more click HERE.

Hand-Under-Hand and Hand-Over-Hand Instruction for Blind Babies.  If your child has a visual impairment, she can use the senses of touch, hearing, and smell to obtain information that typically sighted children gather visually. To help her learn about the world and the things in it, try to involve all her senses when you are engaged with her and explaining something new.  For more click HERE.

Supermarketing. My daughter Serena loves our weekly trips to the supermarket. Her fun begins outside the store, where she chooses just the right basket to sit in. Then we make the automatic doors open. This must seem like some sort of magic to a child, opening onto an interesting world of smells and sounds and tastes and people and, from a parent’s point of view, learning opportunities. Serena was three years old when we began our supermarket routine. You can adjust your “lessons” to the level of age of your child. For more click HERE.

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Eye Conditions

Albinism is an inherited genetic condition that reduces the amount of melanin pigment formed in the skin, hair and/or eyes. Albinism occurs in all racial and ethnic groups throughout the world. In the U.S., approximately one in 18,000 to 20,000 people has some type of albinism. For more click HERE.

Amblyopia is the condition where one eye has not developed vision as fast or as completely as the fellow eye. The eye with the poorer vision is called the amblyopic eye; it is commonly referred to as "lazy eye." Usually only one eye is affected by amblyopia. For more click HERE.

Coloboma is a congenital defect in the structure of either the eyelid or the eye.  For more click HERE.

Microphthalmia is a condition in which one or both eyes are unusually small.  An individual with microphthalmia may have accompanying birth defects, as microphthalmia is a genetic mutation.  For more click HERE.

Optic Nerve Hypoplasia is a congenital condition in which the optic nerve is underdeveloped.  For more click HERE.

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a potentially blinding disease caused by abnormal development of retinal blood vessels in premature infants.  For more click HERE.

Strabismus is characterized by unequal action of the six extraocular eye muscles, causing a misalignment of the eyes. The imbalance may be of the horizontal or vertical axis and results in difficulties with functional vision.   For more click HERE.

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Eating Skills

Supporting the Development of Eating Skills for Children with Multiple Disabilities. Learning to eat and drink can be a challenge for many children who have multiple disabilities including a visual impairment. The way your child responds to food can be affected by factors such as his medical conditions, physical abilities, or resistance to trying new foods because of the texture or taste. Here are some ways you may help your baby develop normal sleep patterns. For more click HERE.

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Sleep

Getting Your Baby to Sleep on a "Normal" Schedule. Some infants and toddlers who are visually impaired struggle when it comes to sleeping on a “normal” schedule. No one knows exactly why they have such a hard time learning to regulate their sleep. For more click HERE.

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Meeting with Your Ophthalmologist

How to Prepare for Your Child’s Eye Exam in 10 Easy Steps.  #1. Get a blank spiral bound notebook and bring it to ALL doctor appointments (not just the eye doctor!).  For more click HERE.

Top 15 Questions to Ask Your Pediatric Ophthalmologist.  #1. What is my child’s eye problem or diagnosis? What caused it?  #2. Should my child have any other tests? What are the tests, what is involved and what information will the tests give us? For more click HERE.

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Eye Glasses for Your Child

Choosing Glasses for Your Child - The Perfect Fit.  Glasses that fit well will stay put, encouraging your child to look through the appropriate part of the lens. They are more comfortable, which encourages compliance, and frankly they look more attractive.  For more click HERE.

Choosing Glasses for Your Child - Lens, Materials.  Warranties can be a life saver for many families. Glasses – especially glasses worn by children – can be broken, lost, or damaged easily, and they need to be replaced. Many children have frequent prescription changes, especially in the first couple of years of getting glasses.  For more click HERE.

How Will I Ever Get My Child to Wear Glasses? If your child has a visual impairment, chances are they’ll have a prescription for glasses. You may be wondering, “How on earth am I ever going to convince my child to keep glasses on their face?” The teachers from A Shared Vision get this question all the time. Here are some of their tips on how to get a child with a visual impairment to wear glasses. For more click HERE.

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Early & Emergent Literacy

Eight Tips to Introduce Reading to Your Young Child Who Is Blind. You’ve just been told your new baby has a visual impairment, or that your toddler is losing her vision. Reading may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but at some point you’ll most likely think, “How will my child learn to read?” For more click HERE.

Cozying Up to Literacy: Getting Started with Interaction and Bonding. Learning to read, like learning language, begins the moment we’re born. They are immersive processes. A child learns through sensory-rich experiences with words like warm, sour, soft, and bouncy mean. It is playing on the floor with the family pets that teaches her the difference between Ruffin’s “dogness” and Fluffy’s “catness.” How does this immersion begin? For more click HERE.

Reading Tips for Parents of Babies.  It’s never too early to read to your baby. As soon as your baby is born, he or she starts learning. Just by talking to, playing with, and caring for your baby every day, you help your baby develop language skills necessary to become a reader. For more click HERE (English) or HERE (Spanish).

Reading Tips for Parents of Toddlers.  Being a toddler is all about ACTION. Encourage continued language development
and interest in books and reading by keeping things lively and engaging.  For more click HERE (English) or HERE (Spanish).

10 Tips to Introduce Reading to a Young Child Who Is Blind or Visually Impaired.  One of the first and most important things to remember when introducing books and literacy experiences to a young child with a visual impairment is that the child is a child first. While there are certain tips and techniques that will make reading more meaningful and pleasurable for children who are blind or visually impaired, many of the same principles apply to ALL children.For more click HERE.

How to Make an Experience Book.  Children who are blind or visually impaired develop meaningful concepts through experiences.  While a child with sight might understand what a dog is by an illustration in a book, a child who is blind or visually impaired might need to pet a dog and hear it bark. For more click HERE.

Let’s Make a Texture Book.  Early literacy begins in the first three years of a child’s life.  A texture book is a simple solution and they’re easy to make yourself.  It might become your child’s favorite book! For more click HERE.

Early Emergent Literacy.  Literacy begins at birth and builds on relationships and experiences that occur during infancy and early childhood.  It takes intentional planning to provide meaningful early learning experiences on which to build literacy skills.  Here are seven suggestions of "what to do" and "things to consider."  For more click HERE.

Planning Literacy Instruction for Children with Deaf-Blindness.  There is a lot to consider when planning literacy instruction for children with deaf‐blindness.  These questions will help you plan successfully.  For more click HERE.

Easy to Create Story Boxes.  A Story Box is a way for young children with visual impairments to experience a story. It is an early literacy event that can easily fit into your daily routines as well as a tool to enhance the learning of concepts. It's a fun, interactive learning experience for children and adults alike.  For more click HERE.

Making a Story Box.  Making a story box is fun and easy!  Here are three steps for you to enjoy a story box with your child.  For more click HERE.

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Orientation & Mobility

Orientation and Mobility. Orientation and Mobility (O&M) includes the skills needed to orient to surroundings and to move independently and safely in the environment. To learn and master these skills, children who are blind or visually impaired commonly work with an O&M specialist from infancy through late adolescence. For more click HERE.

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Tactile Skills

Grasp and Hand Skills for Infants with Visual Impairments. Developing your baby’s use of their hands is very important because your baby cannot see. Hand skills will allow your baby to progress in an orderly sequence from feeling their own clothing and your face and body as you hold your baby, to picking up objects and exploring them in detail with their fingers.

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Transition to Preschool

Parents’ Tips on Getting Your Child Who Is Blind or Visually Impaired Ready for Preschool. Transition to preschool for children who are blind or visually impaired is a big deal. Your little person is transitioning from the routine that parents set up to the whole new world of school. I’ve worked with a number of parents over many years who have made discoveries about how to navigate the transition experience. Here are some of their thoughts. For more click HERE.

Pre-Preschool Anxiety for Parents of Toddlers Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired. If you’re thinking, “I just can’t put her on a bus and send her away for half the day,” you’re not alone. The very thought of being separated from their three-year-old makes many parents uncomfortable. Add to that the anxiety of knowing their child will be in an unfamiliar environment, and it’s not hard to understand their feelings. For more click HERE. (For Spanish click HERE.)

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Dual Sensory Loss

Early Interactions with Children Who Are Deaf-Blind. All babies communicate. It is through communication that relationships are formed and sustained. All parents must learn how to interpret and respond to their baby’s communications in order to form the bonds that become the foundation for development. When your child has both a visual impairment and hearing loss, however, it may be more difficult to understand what she is trying to tell you and you may not be sure how you can best communicate and interact with her. We will share some ideas to help you discover how you can make your child’s world safe and understandable and how you and your young child can share many enjoyable “conversations” together. For more click HERE.