Summary: If your child has a vision impairment and is approaching the age for playschool or school, there are some practical ways in which you can help them to develop their senses, helping them to gain independence.
Children with vision impairments need to explore their environment to discover sounds, shapes, textures and smell. You can help your child by talking about different sounds around the house and the weight, size and feel of different objects.
Learning the sounds of everyday objects and activities will help your child to develop their hearing and use this sense more effectively.
With your child, find out about the different sounds of surfaces such as concrete gravel, grass, sand, twigs, leaves, wood or carpeted floors. Together, you can listen to sounds outside, like wind, rain, dogs, horses or bicycles. Make collections of sounds on a cassette tape to listen to and talk about later.
You could also talk about the rhythms of movement, including walking, running or skipping. Listen to rhythm and reproduce it by clapping or tapping. Start with a single beat at first, then a double and so on. Clap the rhythms of names. Make loud sounds and quiet ones by raising your voice and whispering, or banging and tapping. Produce high notes and low notes, standing up for high ones and sitting for low ones.
By listening to people moving, you and your child can guess whether they are running, walking, jumping, skipping, limping or hopping. Listen to people walking out of a room, or going away. Call your child from one part of the room or ring a bell. Play this game outside too, because sounds will be different. Drop something on the floor and encourage your child to listen as it falls so that they can try to find it.
Movement will play a very important role in the development of children with vision impairments. Feeling free to move around and explore their home environment will encourage independence and confidence. It will also make it easier for children to find their way around unfamiliar environments.
You and your child can have fun by moving into all kinds of different positions, like lying on your back and tummy, sitting on all fours, stretching high and narrow, stretching high and wide, bowing, bending to the floor, crouching, squatting etc.
You could also introduce games that involve climbing in, over, under and through, as well as playing on the slides, swings and pushing or pedalling a tricycle.
Orientation is very important for anyone who is blind or vision impaired. By walking around the edge of a room, following the walls, your child will learn about the size of the space and the relationship of objects to one another, for example, the armchair is to the right of the door.
Find as many different shapes as possible in the everyday environment, such as cups, wheels, toy bricks, tubes or a magazine and trace around the shape with your child’s finger. Cut out round tarts with a pastry cutter, or round tin lid. Tiptoe round a mat on the floor. Roll dough into round sausages.
Talk a lot about size, using the words big, little, medium-sized, bigger than, biggest, and smallest and organise everyday objects like spoons or forks by size.
Become familiar with what may be hot, warm, cold and icy cold.
Talk about the texture of materials from which everyday things are made, like wood, plastic, stone, metal, wool, silk, leather and paper. Are they smooth, rough, very rough, crinkly, soft, hard or spongy?
Playing in water and sand with containers can help your child to learn the meaning of empty and full. Try emptying several small containers into one large one, or transferring water or sand from containers of similar size but different shapes.
Develop your child’s sense of quantities and numbers by counting fingers, objects, stairs and cup.
Learn to recognise everyday smells like soap, perfume, flowers, bread, meat or grass.
At this stage you will be encouraging your child to feed themselves and to go to the bathroom independently. The skills your child learns at home will be continued on when they start school.
The Department of Education and Science provides a regionalised visiting teacher service. This service is available from birth and follows through to third level. A visiting teacher visits children with sight loss in their own home. The visiting teacher will carry out an assessment of a child’s needs and provide guidance on the implications of sight loss on teaching and learning. Emphasis is placed on working as a partner with families enabling them to make informed choices in the education of their children.
Apply to the visiting teacher service (vision impairment) on Tel: 090 6474621
Find out more about the visiting teacher service.
Public health nurses are employed by the health service executive and work from your "local health centre":. Use the help and support of your local public health nurse who will offer both advice and practical support about caring for your baby. You can contact with your public health nurse by calling your local health centre or call the health service executive infoline at 1850 24 1850 Monday to Saturday 8am to 8pm.
Family Resource Centre in St. Josephs School for the Visually Impaired offers an extensive calendar of events for families who have a child with sight loss. Read more about the Family Resource Centre.
Féach is a parent support group of parents of children with sight loss is another useful support service.
If you have not already done so, it may be helpful to contact your local NCBI community resource worker. A community resource worker can visit your family at home or if you would prefer you can drop into see them in our local office. Your community resource worker can also refer you to some of our other services that you may find useful including our low vision service, resource centre, library service or family therapy service for example.
The NCBI’s Early Learning Centre (ELC) in Clondalkin caters for children with sight loss from the ages of 0 to 6. If you would like some advice or additional information please call the staff at the ELC on 01 4056950 or email the ELC at elc@ncbi.ie.