[blindkid] Becoming aware of services?

[Rosina Solano]

Yes, I totally agree.  When Roman was born they told us right away that he had congenital glaucoma and referred us to specialists.  He underwent multiple surgeries his first year (one per month).  He also developed cataracts because of all the surgeries.  However, during all of this, I never really knew what the definetion of "blind" was or even "legally blind".  All I knew was if you couldn't see, you were blind.  But my son could see, okay not very well, but he could see.  Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't denial on our part to resist him being blind.  I just never knew that he needed these things.  Now yes, I did lots of research, but it was all medically related about the disease and such.  It never dawned on me to do anything more until he was in a private pre-school and I figured I would have to teach him braille.  I asked the teachers if they knew where I could find out about getting some books to teach him.  See I had searched about
 braille, but I never got anything about school services for it.  They, the teachers told me that the school would probably be able to help me find out.
When the school found out that they had a child coming up that was going to need braille, they asked for medical info and then sent off a special ed teacher to become a TVI.  Yes, my school is great in the fact that we get our TVI each and every day and that they give us almost anything we want (to a point).  However, after my second son started school and then we found out about another child that was only 3 and getting services, I wished we could have got the ball rolling for us sooner.  Granted, school did not know about my kids, but I never even knew that we could be getting this help.  I sure wish we could have started them with a cane and braille soooo much earlier.
Roman and Ethan have a degenerative disease and so even though Ethan's vision is better than Roman the school is giving him services with the idea that it is a very strong possibility that he will need it.  How nice, but it could have been so much better to start it early.  How come parents don't get this information?
 


 


I think all of this sort of begs the question-- How do we make more  
parents of blind children aware of NOPBC philosophies and resources,  
and make them aware as early as possible?...

Richard