[blindkid] social skills

[hpscheffer at aol.com]

Dr.V
in reading your suggestions to Zunaira I´m courious about the introduction handout you created for your sons. If you don´t mind sharing it with me I would really appreciate it, my e-mail is hpscheffer at aol.com  I always thought about it but I´m not sure how to do it. 
Thank you
Heidi



-----Original Message-----
From: DrV <icdx at earthlink.net>
To: NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List, (for parents of blind children) <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Fri, Dec 30, 2011 1:39 am
Subject: Re: [blindkid] social skills


Hi Zunaira,
 few additional thoughts:
e brought in fun modified games for our kids to play with their
lassmates in preschool through 1st grade or so.  My wife put together one
hat was a "sorting game" that was really popular with the kids.
ides are a touchy & emotional subject on this & other listservs, but in
ur case the aide facilitated socialization.
hrough 5th grade we created a handout for our kid's classmates' parents
hat we would pass out at the beginning of the school year that had info
bout our sons & on suggestions on how to encourage interactions. I
ncluded some kid-friendly websites & also photos of each of them doing
un age-appropriated activities like rock climbing, surfing, skiing,
nowboarding etc. The parents really appreciate this & it opens up
pportunities to talk with parents & to be invited to birthday parties &
uch. I can email you a copy if you like.
n California playdates are popular & are a really nice way to foster
ocial interactions.
y younger son really benefited from the social interactions in the speech
herapy group sessions.
est wishes.
ric V
On 12/29/11 7:51 PM, "Penny Duffy" <pennyduffy at gmail.com> wrote:
>Zunaira,

I think its very common for blind and visually impaired children to have
issues socializing with peers.  My daughter became blind last year.
Sometime before she ended kindergarten and she is in second grade right
now.   Its been an adjustment for my daughter socially.  She has always
been a very social and kind child.  One issue she has is finding her
friends during recess.  How we handled this was we gave her ideas and we
had her come up with her own solution.  She will try and pre-plan who she
will play with during recess and set up a spot to meet the friend she is
playing with.  Her friends are well 'trained' They still say who they are
when they come up to her even though she knows who it is most of the time
by voice.  Abby  has some of her peripheral  vision but in a crowd of
people she can't pick anyone out. She has a very understanding group of
friends that have learned that she can't find them on the playground.

She has a very hard time with those temporarily friendship situations.
 Like meeting someone new at a park you may never meet again or going to
camp for a week.       She miss all visual clues like smiles and waves.
It
takes her longer.

Does the school facilitate social interaction with her peers?  Like
breaking them down into pairs?  It may help her if you arranged 1 on 1
playdates with peers.  There is so much going on that sometimes large
group situations can be overwhelming. Little bites and take it slow. My
son
is not blind but he has struggled life long with speech issues.   He has
always bonded more with adults. He has slowly started to make friends with
peers. I realized that it was the adults that had more patience deal with
is difficultly talking.

There is no quick and easy answers. Its hard to see your
child struggling socially. I will say i know a lot of blind children who
are true social butterflies.

-
--Penny
----------
A lucky mother to two amazing children - visionfora.blogspot.com


On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Zunaira T. Wasif <zwasif at fau.edu> wrote:

> Do any of your visually impaired children have trouble socializing?  I
> have a four year old in pre-school who has miner difficulties with
> inniciating conversations and so forth with other children in her class.
>  Do you know of any interventions for the mainstream class room setting
> that work?
> Thanks
> Zunaira
>
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>



-- 
--Penny
----------
A lucky mother to two amazing children - visionfora.blogspot.com
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