Charity and such…
First of all I want to thank each and every one of you for your words of encouragement and wisdom.
I want to clarify a few things about the previous post.
1) I deserve no credit or approval regarding this child. My neighbors Dana and Jeff are the ones who are taking her in. They and the others who are volunteering, donating, and supporting deserve all of the praise.
2) From what I have been told. The parents were never reprimanded nor even brought on charges despite the attempts from several people.
3) I do not assume what goes on in other parts of the world and am not condoning the thinking that a whole country acts this way. I appreciate everyone being civil to eachother in their posts and respecting eachother’s views on this horrific act.
4) I am definitely interested in pursuing some sort of charity book. I will continue to look into it. But I also appreciate those who’ve pointed me towards other projects and events that I can participate in as well. I’m going to do my best to help out in what meager way I can.
My wife and our boys are going with our neighbors and the girl to the Library reading hour tomorrow together. I find that I couldn’t even entertain her with me drawing or showing my books or animations. How horrid it feels to be an artist at this point with a blind child in front of me.
I got nothing.
So I thought musical toys and such may be fun for her. If anyone has any experience with blind children. I’d appreciate any recommendations for a 4 year old.
Again. Thank you all. I can’t tell you how nice your comments are to me. I’ve read each and every one of them and it keeps bringing tears to my eyes.
I am almost done with Chapter 9 of Dreamland. And as many of you suggested. Dreamland is my place where good conquors evil. Where the world isn’t so dark.
It may not be much. But it’s something.
Thank you all for visiting Dreamland with me. Even just for a bit.
that’s so horrible. I’m glad that the girl now has people that care about her. I don’t know how you could play with her, but I’m sure that you’ll find a way.
This poor little girl! You can read her stories, you can play a game where you put a whole bunch of bowls on a table and fill them up with different things that she can touch and tell you what noises they make and what they feel like to her (beans, macaroni, flour, soft yarn, tinfoil). As you are an artist you can make her a picture using different fabrics to create textures, and glue them in place. The colors don’t matter, the texture matters. Most fabric stores will sell 1/8th of a meter, or even give you samples of fabrics for free if you tell them what it is for. Four is very little, and children like toys to cuddle at that age, not toys to act out scenarios with. A really soft stuffed toy (hold it under your chin to see how soft it is), that is small enough for her to feel it’s features, but big enough to hug would probably be appreciated, especially if you tell her a story about where the toy comes from that she can relate to and that will spark her imagination. You can play with play dough (there are homemade recipes to be found online) because she will like the feel of it. You can take her to a botanical gardens and get her to smell and touch the plants. you can make a rattle with her out of a toilet paper roll, some tape and paper, and some beans. Hold her hands, say what you are doing, and show her with her hands. Try keeping a blindfold on at home when you think of activities for her and see how fun they are with the blindfold on. She might like scraps of soft fabric to touch, feathers, bits of velvet ribbon, and scraps of fur. Cat toys are often made with rabbit fur, are inexpensive, fun to touch and often have rattles in them. Bake cookies together and let her play in the dough, hold her hands and roll the dough into balls with her, let her use her thumb to squish the middles down. Let her touch and taste all of the ingredients, and always describe everything that you are doing with her; “Now I’m going to put the eggs in, can you listen for the crack and tell me when you hear it? There we go! The eggs have two parts inside, one is called the yolk and one is called the white, they are in different colors and they taste a little bit different when we cook them. Do you want to touch the eggs? they feel very gooey and sticky. Now we will put the flour in, can you tell me what sounds you hear when I put the flour in? (let it whumph into the bowl) flour is very soft would you like to touch it? Can you tell me what it feels like to you?” and so on. I hope this helps a little bit!
Hey…
While I don’t have any personal experiences with the blind (I had a childhood friend that was deaf, but that’s it), but I saw a story on CBS recently about a blind boy… I did a little digging and found that someone uploaded it to meta cafe: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/318066/blind_boy_that_sees_using_sounds_like_dolphins/ (sorry for the long link).
I know this doesn’t directly help, but it’s kinda of uplifting knowing that there are other possibilities out there.
I wish ya the best of luck and it’s very kind of you to help out.
-Bryan
Can you give her some of the Dreamland figurines? I’m sure she’d really enjoy something like that (if you think she’s old enough). It’s one way you can share your artistic visions with someone that cannot see them.
I might be able to help. My mom is a special ed teacher of two blind girls. I consider them my sisters. I can talk to my mom about what she would recommend as far as sensory ideas. I’m sure we can come up with something fun for her!!
Sara S.
ps. feel free to email me if you want and we can talk about ideas.
All the previous suggestions about the sense of touch are very good. I’m a child developement major, and I just recently finished a class about teaching young children who have special needs. I would agree with everything Jenny said, except that this young lady is too young to want to act out senarios. I work with two year olds, and I regularly see them acting out many different senarios. They’re simple, but they are still using their imaginations.
I would also say that you could engage her other senses more, however. I don’t know how much English this little girl knows, but you can teach her some with these exercises. If you’re a cook, you might have some extracts in your kitchen cabinet. If you’re interested enough, you could get some from your local grocery store for not too much money. Soak a cotton ball in any extract you like – lemon, orange, etc. You can go online and look up scents from her area of the world, so it’s something she recognizes. Then you can trade words back and forth. If you learn even two or three words that you can say to her in her own language, it will mean more to her than so much else. Keep in mind that she’s in a strange place, and although she’s young and therefore super adaptive, she would probably welcome smells, sounds, tastes, and textures from her own world.
Also, engage her ears. Play simple music, and teach her the words of the songs. Look for MP3s online of Indian childhood songs, along the lines of Row Your Boat or Twinkle, Twinkle. Music is a great tool and inspiration. Look for upbeat, silly songs that have crazy sound effects, people using multiple voices. (as in a deep low voice and a high squeaky voice to distinguish characters in the song)
I would recommend finding out a little about the woman who called herself a mother to this little girl before you delve too deeply into things that remind the little girl of her previous life. You wouldn’t want to bring up any bad memories or associations. This is all I can think of at the moment, and I hope the examples I gave are helpful. I truly hope this little girl finds peace and happiness in her life, and that her stay in America is a good experience all around.
Like everyone else has said, engage all of her other senses that you can. Toys with textures and sounds to them are wonderful, if she still has some degree of vision, try toys with very bright lights on them that she would be able to see. I found this guide for you from the American Foundation for the Blind. I hope it helps:
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=62
Hi Scott, met you at the San Diego con.
We’ve done well with pretty much anything from Parents Magazine’s toy line. The things beep, play music and have tons of sliding beads and such.
But the best thing we’ve done lately for our toddlers is hit Home Depot for a stack of 2’x2′ boxes. Holy mackerel, it’s party time when the cardboard shantytown goes up. We’ve attracted kids from neighboring houses with them, and end up having to feed them too. Highly recommended, also inexpensive.
DonationCoder.com has run a contest a while back for accessible video-games; I haven’t actually looked deeply into each game but some are for the blind, others just require one button to play.
The following link has their 5 audio only games (about half-way down):
http://www.donationcoder.com/Contests/agame/
http://www.lighttechinteractive.com/ was mentioned in the above page.
Also if you’re interested braille terminals have been around for a while, I’m certain by now there is a program the outputs the braille while simultaneously using a speech-synthesizer to read said text (which would help learning braille).
Been reading for a long time, and after seeing this, i have to say she has had one really good bit of luck, being helped by someone so caring and kind as yourself i doubt there would be many that are better if any.
I would think she might any simple instrument. The percussion instruments are usually simple and fun. A keyboard or recorder can be pretty neat, too. I thank God for those who reach beyond their own families to help others in need.
Bre