Saturday, February 2, 2008

Living outside the box




Our house is quite the obstacle course these days. We're working with Jack on sitting up and standing more often. The child likes to rock and lie on his back so I've created space in our living room to encourage him to sit and stand while playing with many of his toys. The challenge has been keeping toys close by because he is a "tosser"- toys go flying across the room because I think he enjoys the sound of toys falling to the floor. So I've attached the toys to his space so he can find them again. The thing I'm learning about raising and living with a child who is visually impaired is that it keeps you on your toes and always thinking about how to challenge him.


One thing I learned this week was related to language development. I sang the "name song" to Ella frome an early age- she would shout out a name or word and I would start "Ella, Ella bo-bella..." I read this week that non-sense rhyming doesn't help visually impaired children develop their language skills. So I've nipped singing the name song with Jack . Ella and I started working on the Old McDonald song but instead of animals we thought of sounds heard around our home. It was fun and Ella was so creative and thoughtful- thinking of things like doors, shoes and hands clapping. This journey is one that is going to make us all think outside the box!

2 comments:

Troy said...

Hmmm....does the name game not help because it doesn't provide any one to one associations?

Heather BT said...

Watch out - Acer still oves to throw eveything, I haven't figured out how to stop it and he loves it so much too. He just cortles happily on his way to throw stuff down the stairs and jumps for joy at the sound if it.
heather BT