We had our first visit with a representative from the Florida school for the Deaf and the Blind. She was incredibly positive and encouraging. She said several times that Buddy will be able to do tons of things, and that his sight will improve over the next several months and years. Also, she said not to rule out anything at this point, because he will surprise us with all of his accomplishments. She went over the program and filled out a lot of paperwork. She will come back next Monday to perform an evaluation of his vision. In the meantime, we have homework.
We will be playing with Buddy with a flashlight to see what he is interested in.
We learned several things tonight. One, Buddy will be a lot more sensitive than we are to bright lights, so while he enjoys looking at them, he can see the things around him a lot better in dim light. So we will be using a lot fewer lights from now on. Also, we got him a great little night light that projects a picture that we will put in his Easter basket, and she said that will probably be great for him. I am looking forward to giving it to him.
Two, faces have very little contrast, so they are very hard for people with low vision to see. This means that Buddy does not look at us so much because the features on our faces are difficult to distinguish.
Three, a normal child's vision does not completely develop until they are 5-6 years old. So, Buddy's vision will continue to improve for awhile, and we can see just how much he can do!
There are also upcoming events that we can think about going to. On Saturday, there is an information fair, and later in March, there will be an Easter egg hunt. They have eggs that beep and chirp so that blind and visually impaired children can find them. Obviously, Buddy is too young to hunt for Easter eggs, but it might be nice to meet some other families.
I'll let you know how the flashlight games go.
Encouraging!!!
ReplyDelete