When you live with somebody who has cortical/cerebral visual impairment, CVI, you think you know. Especially when you’ve known them from birth, when you’ve devoted your life to caring and learning about your person with CVI. Sounds are hard, I get it. We’re going someplace new, we’ll talk about it a lot, compare it to a familiar place, prelearn a map whenever possible, I get it. He looks at faces but faces are hard. He cannot recognize faces, he cannot recognize me. By now I’ve seen him not recognize familiar friends, kids, teachers, people, many times over. You know this person, you know CVI, and its impact still catches you off guard, even after ten years.
Continue reading “Faces are hard”Category: complexity
When it is both CVI Literacy awareness month and the time of the coronavirus, you know it is going to be a brief post. What follows is a description of one approach to early literacy and books that began with the use of familiar objects (because of the CVI characteristic, novelty) as suggested by Christine Roman-Lantzy, PhD.
Continue reading “CVI first books”
“Mommy, if you can’t find me, look for my orange shirt!” When we go running.
“I knew it was you because of your blue bag..” At the grocery store.
It is no coincidence that most things in our lives are brightly colored: shirts, jackets, bags, hat, bike…the car. Everywhere we go, we talk about how to find familiar people and how wearing a bright solid color sometimes helps my son who has cortical visual impairment (CVI), recognize or at least find me, his mom. Continue reading “I’d know you anywhere”
The first Start Seeing CVI t-shirt was created with the idea that when an educator looks at a child with cortical visual impairment, they see the CVI, the ten characteristics (Roman). It is intended as a reminder: “I need to talk to him, I’d better take him to a quiet, less noisy spot” or “I’m showing her this object, I need to remember to hold it over to her left” or “I’m color highlighting this photograph against a plain background, I’ll be sure to use his preferred color yellow.” Each time, you are reminded of ten things to be mindful of when working with that child. Continue reading “CVI Iceberg”
Back to school for students with cortical visual impairment (CVI) means right back to navigating what can seem like brutal school hallways, sometimes even when they are devoid of students. Already this school year is a reminder of the difficulty of navigating hallways for a student in Phase III CVI. Continue reading “CVI in the hallways”