Social skills Issues for Kids with Visual Impairments

Several parents expressed concern that their children act younger than their typical peers.

Children with visual impairments including CVI might have problems seeing distance items, people and faces. If children have problems seeing things at distance, they can’t see how other children are behaving. They can’t imitate what they can’t see.

They can’t see other people’s reactions to their behavior and modify it. Their difficulties with facial recognition means difficulty reading facial expressions. Reading the facial expressions of your peers is feedback for your behavior.

Sharon Sacks wrote a wonderful book about social skills and children with visual impairment. It is filled with ideas to support kids who lack the visual feedback to act like their peers.

Active Learning Slantboards Based on Child Preferences

                         

Two children in our preschool have distinct object preferences and recognition abilities, one for ribbons/strings and one for balls. To provide an active learning experience at near, we created slantboards with some pegboard materials placed in their preferred visual field. We started with one item then increased the array. With building skills, we could more to the child’s other weaker visual field. In the beginning, their own movements created movement in the materials. Now reaching and batting is happening intentionally! It goes to show that using favorites is the way to go!