Helping Hands

After our trip to the neurologist, which pretty much confirmed that our child has significant, if not complete vision loss, I got on the phone and started calling...The Blind Community Center, The Braille Institute, the school district, the county, and several other places that I'd found on the internet. I had no idea where I needed to start, but I felt an urgent need to get started somewhere. I finally found that our school district (also my employer) has an early intervention program for infants with all sorts of disabilities. Brian and I arranged to meet with the Vision Impairment specialist (VIS) at Alcott Elementary, the school that houses the program. You can read about their infant program here.

Coincidentally, there was a parent support group going on that morning that we attended. We met other parents, and the facilitator of the group who is also a teacher and social worker, is going to come to our house for a few days to teach me how to do infant massage. Supposedly it's a great way to bond with any baby, but especially one with limited visual capacity. I'm sure I'll be talking about it soon.

The following week (yesterday), Audrey and I went back to to Alcott for a mommy and me gathering and then we met again with the VIS, Judy. I filled out mountains of paperwork for her IFSP (Individualized Family Support Plan). It's like an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), but for babies. (For those unfamiliar with these acronyms, these are legal documents and educational plans for children who have special educational needs). Once all of the paperwork gets processed, Judy is going to visit us weekly in our home, observe and work with Audrey on social, cognitive, gross and fine motor, and self help skills. I have a feeling that dad and I are in for some schooling too! She gave us loads of information on the development of kids with visual impairments, some tactile toys, braille books, and high contrast paper for Audrey to look at, which is good if she has some workable vision. I got a tour of the school and met the principal and other support staff that we will be most likely working with in the future (physical and occupational therapist, school nurses, etc). I'm very impressed with the program so far.

We are happy that Alcott is only 10 minutes from our house. The district's elementary, middle, and high school programs for visually impaired children are actually our neighborhood schools, Bay Park Elementary, Marston Middle School, and Clairemont High School. It's great news that we will be so close to her. We'll be able to be more involved in her education and we won't have to drive across the city to get her every day.

This week I also had the pleasure of meeting with a very nice lady at the Braille Institute in La Jolla. They are starting to develop a resource room for children there, but it's in the early stages. There are so many resources there that the center provides free of charge. We will get free braille books that come with audiotapes and manipulatives that will help her understand the concepts in the books, we'll get a special cassette recorder for listening to books on tape that will allow us to adjust the speed and pitch of voices since some people with VI are sensitive to sound. We will be able to check out digital books from their large library, they have Brailling resources available, and they offer camps for kids and classes for parents absolutely free. Although Audrey won't be reading anytime soon, you can bet she'll be playing with and listening to the books this year.

We are finding out that there are so many resources for us to tap into for our daughter, and I have exhausted myself this week in research. We're realizing that we have to take this one day at a time and focus on what she needs now--lots of love and attention.