[blindkid] Social behavior

[Richard Holloway]

There are a couple of things to try. First, increase his "motion and sensory diet" and then later, redirect unwanted behaviors. Your OT is right to try and address this as soon as possible. Waiting will just make things worse and you'll no doubt want to let your child "fit in" as well as possible from an early age to not allow "blindisms" to get in the way of social development and building friendships.

Our daughter is nine and has no light perception. When kids, especially young kids new to learning alternative skills of blindness are sitting about, they begin to try to introduce movement into their behavior that feels "safe". It starts very early on. If a kid knows that waking, or certainly running across a room or a field may end up with a trip or a crash, but feels that it is quite safe to rock or spin, what are they going to choose? I suspect it is entirely unconscious. Little kids need to move around and they are going to do so no matter what. The only question is HOW the movement will manifest itself. Surely my typically-sighted 5-year-old son moves around a great deal. He reminds me of the old "Family Circus" cartoons in the Sunday paper where the little boy follows a dotted line through the entire house just to cross the room at times.

Find movement your child enjoys. Our daughter, Kendra loves to spin and that is not ideal (another fairly classical "blindism"). We try to redirect the spinning unless she is "dancing" (more appropriate) and the best thing we have found has been a small trampoline with sides on it. We have actually had her jump through something like 8 of them (I have lost count) of various designs. She jumps until the springs break, and frames tear-- in once case the frame collapsed entirely. We always keep a small one available to her inside the house (in our playroom).

We started with the one with a handle on the side and then moved into several designs from about 4 to roughly 7 feet in diameter with sides. She uses it a bit less now (though still often) but at age 5 it was not uncommon to have her jumping for an hour or more a day. When she might try to rock, or for her more often to just start spinning, we'd take her to the trampoline. After a while sometimes she would actually get up in the morning and walk straight to the trampoline and start jumping.

We also installed a heavy duty mount in the middle of our playroom and set up a way to have several different styles of swings, some of which could also spin. We went from baby swings to tire swings as well as various cloth and net "hammock" style swings that offer compression as well as motion.

Compression, much like swaddling a baby may help in many forms. We would roll Kendra up in blankets and make her a "Hot Dog", adding on various pretend condiments. She found it hysterical. We would take her in blankets and swing her with a parent on each end. Be careful how you do this, but if you know how, gentle joint compression can help too. Consult an expert on that first but results can me amazing.

Kendra has been taking swim lessons since she was 4 or 5--private lessons to help her become quite a good swimmer by this point. There is an obvious water-safety benefit as well, but mainly we wanted to offer her more ranges of motion. It is much harder to crash into things in a pool so it feels very safe, especially when you can stand and touch the bottom still. Now that she swims so well, the depth is no longer an issue. Once we were terrified that she might walk into a pool one day. Now is it not a concern any more than with any typically-sighted child who swims well.

Kendra takes yoga lessons, more great safe-feeling movement because there is no cavorting about to cause crashes. She took it privately at first and now does classes. Again, years of this. Yoga is especially nice because the safe movement is also very socially appropriate and shared with sighted friends. We have taken gymnastics classes too, as well as years of ballet, tap and jazz classes. Sometimes she likes to bike- she'll go slowly solo, or at speed on a tandem. When she was younger, we had a couple of the small "bouncie houses" that she outgrew, so we even went so far as to buy a used commercial one-- it is huge and heavy but what a grand place for her to go and jump for hours at a time when it is warm out. Far safer than a large trampoline. 

We have also had many outings to places like "Monkey Joe's" where they have maybe a dozen or more flavors of inflatable play structures. There will be one at a Halloween party this weekend so I'm going to make certain to take her. We take her to the park where she swings and slides and we built her a huge playground at home too. The home playground was great for her because she knew where everything was when she was young. (At age 9, she's more comfortable exploring a playground.) Another big help is that by her current age, she had friends at school who will show her around and play with her on the playground. (We have worked hard to help the "para-pros" learn when to back away in these cases.) They even show her where to climb on climbing structures. That's a harder thing to get comfortable with as a parent, but it is age appropriate behavior and motion. ("If not now, when?")

It should also be noted that her school understands that she is expected to participate in gym class, and she does. (Get this in his IEP.) Generally an aide helps keep Kendra informed and oriented as to what is going on. At the school fundraising run/walk last month, she walked around the block with the rest of the kids, and wonderfully, several of the "upperclassmen" (5th graders and she is in 3rd) slowed their pace to let Kendra walk with them the whole way. I was very touched. I was there walking with her (parents were invited) and immediately moved aside and gave her friends as much room as possible to walk with her. Sure there are risks, especially with the jumping and climbing. She could break something, etc., but so could any child. All we can do is offer reasonably safe ways to get what she needs to have in her sensory diet.

Don't forget running either. At first, running may not feel "safe" to a blind child, and more than that, it frightens parents and teachers, but it need not be avoided. Kendra will take my hand and run, and on occasion has taken off running with great enjoyment in an open field or on flat sand stretches. We even found an indoor place with a huge open areas and astro-turf-- the thick kind like for playing football or soccer on. Some people set up ropes with something like a cardboard tube or can on them stretched between trees (with something to mark when to stop) to offer kids more ways to run. She's a great cane traveler but so far cane-running has not worked well for her.

At this point, after so many years of having alternatives, unwanted movement is not to common for our daughter, but certainly if she goes for a while with less movement she starts to want to spin. Now with a variety of ways to redirect, we can usually just say "do you need to go and jump" and she will. In fact, more often she'll stop herself and say " I need to go to the trampoline". That is the ultimate goal obviously-- self regulation. 

Good Luck!

Richard



On Oct 26, 2011, at 8:51 AM, Erin Teply wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am some questions around social behavior (at least I think that is the best description!).  My son Max, is 5 and in mainstream kindergarten.  He has some 'blindisms' as I call them or some different social behaviors when he gets excited.  He tends to rock his body back and forth and sort of do a strange 'arm-straightener' thing when he gets excited or really wants to say something.  We see this at home in just these cases and I believe the same at school, but because he has to 'sit still' so much more at school, I think the behaviors are more pronounced and/or more often.  I have a meeting tomorrow with his OT and mobility teacher on what we can do to replace or minimize these behaviors.  As we all know, you simply can't tell the child to *stop* this because then they think, "well then what?".  How have some of you dealt with this type of thing?  I think the main concern from his OT that this is socially not acceptable.  Any thoughts are appreciated.
> 
> Thank you,
> Erin Teply
> 
> 
> 
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