Child with Visual Impairment

[LKeyteach]

Hi All Just looking for support with one of our little treasures.

She is a rising 4 year old and has been wearing glasses since little.  She had a check up yesterday and Mum is distraught. Her prescription has gone up 3 points in each eye with the right eye being more severe.  The lenses of her glasses at present are really thick so can only imagine that the next pair are going to be thicker.  This worries Mum.

Little Treasure is bright and will play in all parts of the nursery, she is not too keen on noises but other than that she engages in everything.

Mum reports that her left eye is doing all the work and that the patches have not worked so she is going to be putting eye drops in to stop the good eye working in the hope that the other eye will strengthen.

My question is what can I do to support?  I am imaging that by putting things to the left of her will mean that her right eye will have to track in that direction and will help strengthen the muscle.  Would I be right in thinking this?  I am going to google and find out more but thought that some of you may have had this experience and would like to share.

[finleysmaid]

do you have a sensory consortium team..they could give you more advice. I have never adjusted where I place things for children with VI but I became very aware of visual perception so colour contrast is important ...don't put blue playdough on a blue table or be aware of same colour on the floor etc. if you are doing close work then a slope may help and if you are printing anything you might want to increase the line size or font size, it may also help to change the colours of printing...but this is an individual thing so you might need to experiment. Our biggest issues were often with gross motor skills the children often found it tricky to ensure their foot placement was right so found climbing and balancing tricky. Has this little one been sent to a specialist ? there are lots of deteriorating eye conditions in children of this age. Making sure that nothing happens to their eyes is also an issue so wearing appropriate eye protection for woodwork etc, not really answering your question but hopefully a bit of help

[catma]

To be honest I'd get in touch with your sensory service or whatever your team who deal with VI is called. They may already have worked with her or know her, but they should be able to provide the appropriate guidance - each VI child will have differing needs so any advice we give here may not be appropriate. Once our team did a traiing for us and we got to wear different glasses which mirrored many types of VI, which made me realise how varied it would be.

Cx

[LKeyteach]

Thank you for this. Makes sense about slope and colour of background. Think it is this kind of help I want to start with while I wait to get the other sevices in.