For Parents

If you have recently learned that your child is blind or visually impaired, you may not yet know quite what that means. You probably are concerned about how it will affect your child's growth and development; how it will impact on behavior and learning; what sort of school she should attend; whether he will be able to play with toys and have playmates.

What can you expect? First of all, expect that your child will be like other children in most respects. Visual impairment doesn't alter the need that every child has for:

• Love
• Affection
• Nourishment
• Discipline
• Learning
• Patience

Children who are visually impaired use their hearing, their sense of smell, their own hands and the hands of others to learn about their world. If they have some vision, they use that too. So expect your child to:

• Be curious
• Ask questions
• Listen
• Get close to objects
• Need to be shown how to do things
• Be unaware of what he cannot get close to unless you tell him
• Do things for herself
• Not realize that he or she is visually impaired, or understand what that means, until someone explains it

Learn more in Parenting Preschoolers: Suggestions for Raising Young Blind and Visually Impaired Children, by Kay Alicyn Ferrell, Ph.D.