Day 32

Okay, I'm a little time-crunched tonight, but I have been reading in History and Theory of Teaching Children and Youths with Visual Impairments (2000), edited by M. Cay Holbrook and Alan J. Koenig, and I'm really struggling with feelings of sorrow and distress concerning Zack. The following list is a shortened version of pages 128-129 describing how developing, seeing children use vision: to give a reason for moving, to provide continuous contact with the environment, to give an estimation of space, to stimulate coordination and control, to refine movement patterns, to participate in others' movement, to facilitate body image and perception, to provide consistent and verifible information, to stimulate exploration of the environment and to provide an incentive for tactile exploration and finally to help with concept development. What a list!! Vision seems like a crucial piece for children to develop. . .but yet Zack is healthy just like many other children who are blind. . .so how does he do it? I've been processing all of this today, and I'm struggling to not see this list as a list of what Zack can't do but a list of what seeing children CAN do. If I am going to be able to help him, I need to respect his abilities, his intelligence and his capabilities. I don't want to be guilty of sheltering or babying him or taking his abilities from him because I am so caught up in the fact that he can't see. . .but I'm really struggling. . .hopefully I can continue to read and learn from the text and from Zack and his team so I can be effective in his development. . .