Parenting Blind/When sight escapes us

This is Benjamen trying to escape right in front of me while I have a camera in my hand.  At the rate of bruises on his forehead I insisted that now was the time to switch to a big boy bed.  At night he’d try to persuade me to let him sleep in the captain’s bed in his room rather then the crib but as soon as I’d left the room he’d climb onto the ample window ledge and watch the cars go by.

The picture is so yellow because the dull light we get into the apartment is so indirect this bright yellow looks like buttercream frosting.  I’ve tried to off set it with hunter green and primary blue.  Teddy bears are everywhere, but in a few years it can change to cars or trains easily.

Well it’s a hit.  It took us two weeks of quietly putting him to bed.  Explaining once and then after that just putting him back to bed until he got the hint that this wasn’t playtime.

A month later he’s given his toddler bed to the cats and sleeps all the time on his captain’s bed.  He’s set up a routine that changes a little but once all his habits are satisfied he’ll go to sleep easily.

His habits no specific order:

1) into pjs

2) brush teeth

3) 1-3 bed time stories (18-24 pages each Tonka books)

4) snack and drink

5) I sing to him “Head and Shoulders” at a bare whisper while he settles on the stuffies he’ll sleep with and hunkers down to sleep.

6) Mommy finally gets a good night kiss on the lips (we’ll work later on where to kiss at least he’s showing affection)

Below is a picture of the family:

Tonight Ben told me at 8pm “not tired” Peter allowed him to stay up to 9 pm.  At 9 pm I picked him up and sang to him, he didn’t leave his bed once. Peace at last.

Next step, losing the sippy cup and the novelty of “sharing” the computer.  Peter has figured out e-mail and so is taking FREE courses for the blind and family members of the sight impaired at Hadley School for the Blind,  www.hadley.edu this is a school in the USA that caters Internationally to any blind or legally blind person and their families.  With anything from caring for yourself, children, reading braille, learning a language or finishing high school. The founder and many of the teachers themselves have sight problems.

We were mailing audio cassettes to them but they were getting hard to find.  Now Peter has been able to achieve email and it is speeding up his lessons.  This is the closest we’ve come to finding help for us so far but it’s not the same thing as we are writing about.  It’s often “expect your child to do this don’t panic” type of book while ours is more “ok you have a dirty baby, here’s how to wash their hair” 

Well nightly medications are kicking in so I’m going to have to sign off ttfn

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Notes for Manual, Trials of Day-To-Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.