These were the words of my son’s kindergarten teacher on our last field trip of the year. Earlier that week we had yet another IEP meeting, to hash out his vision goals, at my insistence. Partway through the meeting, it seemed appropriate to stop and acknowledge the final stretch of the school year, and my son’s progress at the end of kindergarten. Continue reading ““Thank you for making me cry at an IEP meeting””
Category: CVI
Jasper is learning from the animals. He names and sorts fake plastic animals, each one carefully described the same way, every time. Giraffe – or G-raff – is tall with a loooong neck and brown spots. Cat has pointy ears, a long tail, and whiskers. Cow has spots, udders and a wide nose. At the zoo, lion, tiger, snow leopard, jaguar are all Cats. Wolf and arctic fox are related to Dog. (salient features, comparative language, categorize, Roman-Lantzy). What makes a dog a Dog. What makes a cat a Cat. Harder than you think it is. Continue reading “Jasper and the Animals”
Novelty. Complexity of array. Sensory complexity. Preferred color. These are some of the characteristics of cortical visual impairment. More importantly, these are descriptors for my son’s vision. Such words have become a second language. At times it feels like a secret language. Learning any language is easiest when you are immersed in the culture. Our cultural immersion began with my son’s infant stroke and subsequent diagnosis of cortical visual impairment in 2011. Continue reading “What we talk about when we talk about CVI, part one”
Clapping, waving, pointing. For the longest time these have been descriptors for Jasper’s cortical visual impairment, explaining what his vision is, and what it is not. Well, he still doesn’t clap, wave, or point. To countless store clerks who insist on waving goodbye to young children, We’re still working on bye bye…. I say, smiling and walking away. We have practiced each one – clap, wave, point – in context, for over two years. Practiced. In our failed PEPS group, when Jasper was about a year old, another mom described her highlight of the week: when she came home from work, her six month old baby, waved to her, she squealed. Had you been practicing?? I desperately wanted to know. How did she get her baby to do that? And how could I get my own, older baby to do that? And what’s so great about waving bye bye after all? Continue reading “Point.”
As Jasper learns to ride a bike, it is hard not to think back to those early days in 2011 when he was diagnosed with Cortical Visual Impairment. He was about a week old when his neurologist gave me the diagnosis, “Cortical Blindness” she called it. She recommended registering him with Services for the Blind and added that “color vision is usually intact.” She continued, because my son’s visual impairment involved the brain, and not the eye – there was nothing wrong with my son’s eyes – there was nothing that could be done to improve his vision. Continue reading “Learning to ride a bike”
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